Rugged Individualism, Philanthropy, and Pandemics

Photo by Jessica Towne is in the public domain.

Through all the ways the COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the structures of our lives, it has given us cause to reconsider—or perhaps reorder—our American ideals. While governments across the globe have struggled to contain the COVID-19 outbreak with its disastrous public health and economic impacts, a particularly critical eye has been glued to the response of the Trump administration. Embodying a distrust toward the voice of experts and an unwillingness to implement stricter preventative measures, the administration came to champion a particularly dangerous strain of what is otherwise called the American virtue of rugged individualism—an insistence on self-reliance and independence to the point of declining external aid or intervention. In this toxic form, rugged individualism not only impacted crisis policy but hindered mask mandates compliance and pandemic-related fundraising efforts. Yet, amid this wide inaction and unrest, a host of private actors—from wealthy philanthropists to friendly neighbors—worked tirelessly to give shape to what may rightly be admired as rugged individualism’s counter-ideal.

Throughout the many fumbles of this past year, philanthropists, non-profits, and grassroots volunteers have stepped up to plug holes in federal policy. This kind of private or civic action has long served to augment government aid through times of crisis; its role in the pandemic has been nothing less. While questions abound concerning the relationship philanthropy ought to have with government aid, this private action doubtlessly offers much-needed relief, solidarity, and hope when public policy lets down dearly—as with the fumbled response of the Trump administration. In times when we find our politics paralyzed by this most dangerous strain of rugged individualism, private action emerges to address what government action may not, ensuring our sense of community does not quietly flicker out.

It is worth noting that while the early failures of the U.S. COVID-19 response are certainly no longer under-reported, it can be challenging to imagine what our reasonable best-case scenario might have looked like. States like Singapore and South Korea owe their impressively low infection and death rates to rigorous contact-tracing systems. These public health measures demand a degree of surveillance that may well have clashed with the potent pride many Americans place in their freedoms. Similar contrasts might be made with the strict yet effective lockdowns in Australia and New Zealand, nations which do not share the decentralized system of governance that helped scatter the pandemic response in the United States.

With these caveats in mind, experts suggest that a bulk of the nation’s avoidable fumbles might be traced back to the pandemic’s early days, where weak travel restrictions and slow or reluctant mobilization of the federal budget sowed the seeds for further disaster. Yet, even with these early days it is difficult to disentangle an unfortunate, national unpreparedness from the individualist politics which Donald Trump, as a well-polished mirror of his constituency, does not embody alone. This individualism rested at the root of Trump’s insistence on downplaying the pandemic’s severity, his fervent repudiation of science, and his dismissal of public health policy guidance. This individualism also diminished compliance with state policies and lockdown orders when they were imposed.

In other words, while even with the greatest foresight we may still have fallen short of successes abroad, the Trump administration retreated from a consistent national strategy altogether. Its lack of quick or unified policy carried forward an attitude that Trump often champions: an individualism and self-reliance particularly distrustful of government intervention—that American virtue of rugged individualism. In a crisis where scientific experts call for imposing restrictive mandates, it is easy to see how this individualism might breed anti-intellectualism; in a moment when authoritative yet cooperative leadership could have saved lives, it is easy to see how this individualism might leave many Americans tragically out to dry.

Luckily, individualism—even when driving federal policy—seldom receives the final word. When governments misstep or step back in times of crisis, philanthropy steps boldly forward. Churches have historically provided humanitarian aid to African American families who were refused government support, and fraternal orders have addressed for African American men the unfulfilled promises of federal work programs. These private actors tend to be more agile and fluid responders and are frequently more attentive to a community’s needs. Often, many of the more successful nonprofit organizations find themselves later absorbed into government programs. In other cases—as with LGBTQ rights and marriage equality in 2015—their efforts leave tangible impacts on public policy. 

COVID-19 has marked a new installment in philanthropy’s winding history of cooperating with, supplementing, and even addressing inequalities inherent to government aid. Through 2020, grants to food banks shot up by nearly 667 percent, and organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation worked tirelessly to fill massive gaps in COVID-19 testing availability. Nor has this humanitarian action been limited to the wealthy; grassroots organizations have formed to serve their communities by providing transportation for healthcare workers or disseminating job opportunities to the struggling and unemployed.

It would be a complicated task to speak with authority on what the relationship between government and philanthropy ought to be. Non-profit organizations, even when not absorbed, are often propped up by government funding. While they often target gaps in government policy or response, they do not do so to take the full burden of responsibility: 90 percent of grantmaking foundations cite influencing public policy as a significant motivation for their work. It seems they do not usually aim to replace government support, but to serve as a self-woven safety net while waiting on—and indeed paving the way for—systemic change. 

The ideals driving philanthropy often stand in stark contrast to the virtue of rugged individualism. These private actors perceive where government support is at its thinnest and where Americans are falling desperately through. They invest not in questions of whether all Americans should be equipped to stand alone in the face of adversity—certainly they have their answers, and certainly they do not all agree—but ask instead whether all Americans can. The timely resurgence of philanthropy throughout our present pandemic represents a reminder that even across vast physical and ideological distances, there may yet remain a sense of community that glues us tightly together.

Yet through these philanthropists of all stripes, we may also find a suggestion carrying the bite of a critique. Their private action should not be a substitute for legislation or political activism. Rather, their service embodies a golden hope—too often forgotten—that our ideals do not live and die with every swing of the partisan pendulum. There is much that cannot be accomplished through philanthropy or grassroots movements, but there is also a shocking amount that can. The fear is that we shrug off the tragedies and the responsibilities of a time of crisis onto the backs of those impersonal forces that the government seems to embody or reflect. The fear is we forget that our ideals should do more than tell us how to vote.