Living the American Nightmare

Is the American Dream Truly Dead?

America—where dreams go to die?

A very displeasing intro to today’s dispatch, without question. But those are not (necessarily) my words.

That’s pretty much the cumulative cry of the vast majority of Americans today, if you believe recent polling from The Wall Street Journal, as well as polling over the last number of years from Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and education organization.

Today’s pollsters report that just 36% of Americans now believe the American Dream is alive and well. Yesteryear’s pollsters reported that in 2016, the number of Americans with faith in the American Dream was 48%.

In 2012: 53%.

The downward trend isn’t so much a suggestion of discontent as it is a ski-slope of anger, frustration, resignation, and disgust with the wealth inequality that America’s political and legal system have fostered over the last 40 years or so.

I’d venture a guess that had pollsters asked that same question in the 1970s when I was a kid, and again in the mid- to late-1980s when I was in college, the number would have been 75% or more.

I can’t call that a fact because I can’t find data on that topic so many decades back.

But you and I know what America felt like back in the day. No question that we had every opportunity open to us. I never doubted my ability to find a job in my chosen field after college. I always felt like my future was in my hands, not the whims of an economy malevolently manipulated by government and industry to further enrich the rich while robbing the middle class of their opportunity for advancement.

No question that our generation was going to live a higher standard of living than our parents because America back then really was the shining beacon on a hill.

Today… I don’t know what to call modern America without unintentionally offending my fellow Americans.

“Shining beacon on a hill” most assuredly is not accurate anymore… not unless that beacon is a high-powered flashlight some homeless vagabond is using to root through a hill of debris at a local waste dump at night.

Sorry if that was offensive. It’s just that the America you and I grew up loving is now the abuser in our relationship. We love Uncle Sam because we’ve always loved him. Once, he was truly worthy of the love and affection we offered. And we can’t quite quit him today because all of us delusionally hope we can change him, bring out the best in him once more.

Alas, we are the abused spouse rationalizing our inability to simply walk away.

Granted, I am not suggesting we walk away.

But I am suggesting we all fashion an exit strategy—just in case.

At some point, every person in an abusive relationship comes to terms with the reality that it never changes. It only grows worse in time.

Sure, there are the moments of hope… and then, like the American Dream itself, those moments fade and we’re worse off than before.

Thing is, I still love America. I think all the time about returning home from Europe, finding a little house in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, maybe somewhere up in the Catskills or the Adirondacks. A forest. A mountain lake. A little Mayberry-like town.

But every time that bucolic image drifts through my thoughts, the reality of what America has become pops that dreamy bubble. So much hate and anger in American society now. So much divisiveness that has cleaved apart friends, family, and colleagues. An egregious amount of gun violence. Healthcare and housing costs that have jumped the shark.

And a political system that needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up.

Frankly, if the two leading candidates for president remain the leading candidates, I don’t know that I see a reason to vote. Both are entirely useless. Both are much too old and mentally ossified to effectively run the country this deep into the 21^st century.

Both political parties should be neutered, neutralized, and dismantled as well. Both their belief systems and their moral code should be criminalized and outlawed. In their place, new, middle-of-the-road parties—Deep Purple and Lavender Light—should rise up to represent the vast middle of under-represented America, because voting for Red or Blue is simply going to extend the worst of what America has become.

Why the vast bulk of Americans think the American Dream is dead is not hard to understand: Wealth inequality, fueled by heinous laws and legal rulings that have come out of both parties and which have worked in concert to destroy the middle class and the jobs that funded a middle-class lifestyle.

I want to end here with an upbeat message that “It will get better.”

Alas, I see no benefit in lying to you.

It won’t get better.

It can’t get better unless and until we have a massive crisis that shakes the bedrock of American politics and American capitalism. That’s coming—probably in the 2027-28 timeframe. Or maybe it holds off until later in the decade.

Whatever the case, best all of us can do at this point is put in place a Plan B so that when all goes pear-shaped (and it will) you have somewhere to go and money to live on when you get there.

That, however, is fodder for another column.

More to come…