Absurdistwords

yes, the self-made man, born in a log cabin he built with his own two hands…

His own two 8lb 6oz baby Jesus hands...

Being able to attribute literally all that you have to your own hard work and virtue is a key component of creating a myth of self when you're super average (which, by definition, most of us are)

It’s interesting how tenacious a cultural myth can be, when it really hasn’t applied since the end of the age when you could walk into the frontier and wrest a plot of land from the indigenous population with your own two hands, only aided by misters Smith and Wesson.

I think a point here is that it didn't even exist then. Who raised this colonist from birth, who made his guns, who ran the government that encouraged this conquest?