What is the American Dream?
Although vaguely defined, the general notion of the American Dream is widely accepted domestically and abroad.
For generations, the vaguely defined, generally accepted notion of the American Dream was powerful enough to prompt wave after wave of migrants to leave their homeland and make the trek to America—with the understanding that if they were willing to work, they would punch their ticket to the middle class.
The American Dream, however, wasn’t just for migrants. US-born citizens grew up with the same understanding—if they were willing to work, they would earn financial security as members of the middle class, and eventually own their own home.
But entering the middle-class was just the American Dream’s floor.
The ceiling? The ceiling didn’t exist. The upper class and beyond was accessible. And access was merit based. Go to college, go to law school, go to medical school, start a company. Sell more than your competitors.
If you were the best, you would be rewarded accordingly.
But today, the American Dream’s floor—a middle-class guarantee—and the American Dream’s endless ceiling—a merit based assent without limits—both seem like bygones, benign forms of distorted nostalgia. Something so distant that maybe it never existed at all.
Now, we are seemingly left with the carcass of the American Dream under Biden and his failed minions in Washington.
I’ll spare you the hard numbers. You know what the numbers look like—a hollowed out middle class. Stagnant wages despite increased productivity. Skyrocketing tuition prices despite return on the back end. Staggering student dept. Affordable housing shortages.
It’s not pretty out there. The gulf between rich and poor is widening—so much so that our political leaders have arguably become a communal oligarchy, with a handful of tech billionaires controlling more wealth than the nation’s masses all put together.
And the nation’s labor force, meanwhile, putting in time, working Monday thru Friday—or more—doesn’t guarantee access to the middle class anymore.
Willing and able workers are struggling to earn livable wages. To buy houses. To purchase groceries. To pay medical bills. To save for retirement. To send their kids to college.
Meantime, the homeland’s masses live on credit card debt and self-medication and broken promises—in the shadow of the American Dream—which has all but abandoned the citizens, but the superlatives, too. Not wholesale. But in large part.
Just attending college doesn’t mean you are going to land a meaningful, or even a sustenance-supportive job. Attending law school doesn’t mean you are going to be able to buy a home, or even live in a decent neighborhood.
Increasingly, the perception is that upward ascension is not merit-based at all, that rather opportunity is reserved for the already affluent, elite chosen political party members who also benefit from a two-tiered legal system of justice, authorized by dishonest and deceitful lawyers and judges. Which is the inverse of the American Dream.
Indeed, the American Dream, as once understood, no longer seems to exist—which is an especially bitter pill for the millennials and Gen Z Americans watching their parents’ make a living for themselves proportionate to their work ethic and talent level.
So, you ask, “Is the American Dream on the ropes in the twelfth round of the final event?” Americans certainly are asking the question, since about 2008, when Barack Hussien Obama took over the White House, saying that “I want to change America.”
Sifting through the wreckage of two economic collapses, then and now, lock-downs, two forever wars, soaring inflation, mounting national debt in the trillions, Americans are answering “Yes, the American Dream is dead on its feet.”
Though corporations, especially in the banking sector, are posting healthy profits, they are not hiring new workers. At the same time, government cuts are sweeping through city and state governments alike, threatening tens of thousands of jobs and slicing away at services once thought vital. Schools, street lighting, libraries, refuse collection, the police, fire services and public transport networks are all being scaled back.
America appears to be a society splitting down the center, shattering the middle class that long formed the cultural bedrock of the American republic and dividing it into a country of haves and have-nots. A once unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal.
A corrupt political agenda of the current Biden administration and the institutions it supports—all demonstrate how partisan gluttony and predatory offenses have transformed the American Dream’s pure ideals into a scheme for materialistic power. Further, their realm of socialist culture lacks any sense of morals or consequence.
In order to support this same message, author Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby presented the original aspects of the American Dream along with its one-sided, reformist features to show that the once impervious dream is now lost forever to the American people.
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Top o’ the morning!