By By Hope Elena Sardella Claunch
Originally written for the University of Oklahoma
America has come to a fork in the road with its current underlying history of their nation. In this discussion, I will examine the statuses in which we categorize our politicians, in the alarming juxtapositions of The Grand Saviour or the Great Swindler or, to put simply – our nation’s habit of characterizing our politicians in roles of ‘good’ and ‘evil. When I reflect on the Obama administration, all I can think about sometimes is his use of the word ‘Hope’ in the ad campaigns, and then I laugh at the irony. Being named a Hope and having to live with the name for twenty-seven years, It wasn’t until I was older that I contemplated the ominous nature of my name; hope was a beautiful evil left at the bottom of Pandora’s box, wasn’t it? As equally good as hope can be, it is equally evil and can serve as a mirage for false hope; as harsh as it may sound, these were valuable lessons to learn. So does America have the wrong kind of hope? Do they even know what it means to Hope? And Can and Should all our Hopes be put on one man… these are the dilemmas that we must confront as a nation by reflecting on our history. For example, In 2012, the U.S was facing another evolving case of Saviourism concerning the publics’ perception of what the president’s real powers are. Forbes issued an article urging the public to refrain from perpetuating ‘saviorism’ on the U.S president-elect Barrack Obama because these belief systems are toxic for the nation and are not adequately representing the core principles of this country. The memo was a wake-up call that our founding fathers would be shocked to see American’s lack thereof understanding that our country was not founded on the principles of objectifying our public servants as saviors, quite the opposite, the sole purpose of people coming to this country was centered around fleeing governments in which revolved around tyrannical dictators (We Must Stop Treating the President as our Saviour, 2012). The following statement affirms that the evolution of these attitudes is not synonymous with how this country came to be in the first place and should possibly be viewed as abnormal belief systems that must be examined.
So if these perceptions are not a derivative of this country’s principles, one must examine the use of characters in modern American society that serve as psychological distractions of extreme poverty times. Between the time of The Great Depression in nineteen-twenty, nine through nineteen-thirty-three, the U.S citizens’ emotional mind states was more that of a literal depression; people wallowed in the misery inflicted upon them rather than seizing the opportunity to start a revolution (Andrae, T. 1980). The preliminary evidence outlines that The Great Depression was a pivotal point in which the economy within the United States was at its lowest. Andae (1980) states that observing the history of the concept of The Superman archetype within comics is usually positioned within a story as being initially downtrodden and is more of society reject who eventually gains massive success but only going outside the confines of the law. Likewise, during The Great Depression, Americans were enraptured with outlaw stories because their demeanor’s demeanor carries out their activities, uniquely reaffirms the esteemed accepted ideas about how to attain wealth (Andrae, T. 1980). Does the previous observation outline a strange mixture of the ways in which the American archetype of the Superman acquires his powers through somewhat of a path of swindling perhaps?. Maybe the answer here is that American is in love, obsessed with the Serpent and the Saint, The Swindler, and the Saviour.
References
Andrae, T. (1980). From Menace to Messiah: the Prehistory of the Superman in Science Fiction Literature. Retrieved from https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/stable/41389055?socuuid=97e1b7c4-2372-42e3-a2b4-fa304167a4d6&socplat=email
We Must Stop Treating the President as our Saviour. Forbes.
Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/10/30/we-must-stop-treating-the-president-as-our-savior/?sh=3feee9ca72e4