Reaction #9- "Cheerful Robots"

According to C. Wright Mills, Americans during the 1950s were Cheerful Robots. Using his excerpt, what you've read in the text, and heard in class, why is that description fitting (don't just repeat or rephrase what's in the Mills article).

The United States has always prided itself on the ideology of allowing all of its inhabitants to live freely without being wrongly persecuted for their beliefs, socioeconomic status, or any kind of physical barriers. In the time leading up to and during the cold war many people were afraid of allowing any kind of communist power gain an inch of control and like in any other time of war, Americans rights were infringed on. In addition the people were being preached to and believed that the American way of life was the best it had ever been.

Being completely free is a very difficult subject because it truly depends on what the person views as being free. Does one want merely the freedom of choice or does one want to make and participate in the change? I feel that is the ideas that C. Write Mills was trying to get out, he was attempting to tell us that the government had everything planned out in front of us and that our votes were nothing more than a formality the government officials had to fight for. The fact is that people will fight for power and once gained will very seldom look out for their constituents, they each have a dark side. What kind of freedom was this if Americans were being represented by people who didn’t look out for their best interests? The Japanese Americans that were rounded up in internment camps had done nothing wrong. The immigration quotas were nothing more than a manifestation of American racism, yet we touted the fact that we would lead the free world and that any other leadership was wrong. We did not only preach this ideology but enforced it with divisive tactics through the CIA.

As for the American way of life, people were becoming used to the monotonous routine of life, rather than happy with something they could have done on their own. More and more was expected out of the family as the caregiver became the mother and the breadwinner became the father and any alteration of this family setup was seen negatively. In addition this new society left the minorities out of the picture all together, literally to fight for themselves. The Americans were as he stated ‘’Cheerful Robots,’’ totally unaware of what was happening to and around them, yet they accepted the situations and lived life without any interruptions.