The Failing American Dream

The idea of the American Dream has fueled the growth of the country.

My ancestors came here first on a boat as Pilgrims seeking religious and economic self-determination.

Later ancestors negotiated the purchase of land from native people in Massachusetts.

Only six generations ago my ancestors homesteaded land in Michigan as farms.

Three generations ago my great grandfather owned a bank.

The bank is gone in the run up to the great banking collapse of the 1920s.

I do not know if any distant cousins live on the farms. Probably not.

Pursuing the American dream, people left the farms to move to the cities to work in industry.

The idea was that if you worked hard and deserved it, the good life would come.

Things did not work out quite that way, but reforms in the 1920s made things better

Until the Great Depression wrecked it all.

Then following World War II, things got better again.

People of all races and ethnicities moved north to work in the plants where unions secured good wages and benefits.

For a generation things were all right.

Then in the 1970s, the Arab-Israeli conflict on the other side of the world came to Main Street USA.

Oil prices shot up, supported by greedy American companies happy to take advantage of a crisis.

Inflation drove up prices faster than wages, especially has manufacturing left.

Some went south to avoid the unions, decent pay, and good benefits.

Some could not compete with an emergent Japan.

Eventually an emergent China would finish it off.

As the tide of social mobility supported by manufacturing receded, it left towns and cities with no opportunities.

Those who had stayed on the family farms fared no better. Rising interest rates and the rise of efficient agribusiness saw the collapse of the farm.

Small towns and rural areas also lost hope and opportunity.

New information economy jobs promised a new pathway to success, but these jobs required education and were concentrated in a few places.

At first the Internet and web promised a democratization of information and careers by lessening the tyranny of location, but those hopes died quickly.

Have you ever been to a beach after high tide as receded and seen fish trapped in the tide pools unable to get back to the ocean?

This is the state of the American dream with small towns and medium towns across the country trapped and isolated.

Yet in the big cities, the same dynamic plays out in poor neighborhoods where residents have no access to work or the education to get out. 

Rural or urban does not matter. All are segregated and trapped.

Without new money coming in from jobs, even the local stores and businesses failed to be replaced by the giant corporations sucking money away to other places.

At least entertainment got cheaper. Cheaper and bigger televisions. Smart phones and social media. Hundreds of cable channels and streaming.

But these are all passive. Winning it big on reality tv is not an accessible dream for most.

The American dream is about self-determination and action. Moving up through one's efforts and merit.

The epidemic of COVID was a powerful distraction. Why worry about economic opportunity when one is worrying about not dying?

COVID finally opened the great relocation promised by the Internet thirty years before.

Yes as COVID has receded, employers have increasingly required that workers return to the office to enable managers the illusion of control.

COVID like other plagues before was a great equalizer. Wealth and status was little protection.

A dead rich man is still dead.

Power abhors decentralization as it weakens power.

Return to the office is a bargain with the devil to give up autonomy and self-determination and to pay more in rent and expenses for the privilege of being watched.

I think Trump will win again in 2024.

He promises an alternative to the deflated American dream. 

He is the role model for anger and vengeance. For breaking things that he cannot have so no one can have them.

He is the little con many that provides a distraction from the bigger con.

A nation divided and at war with itself will not notice the real enemy getting richer and consolidating power.

Trump is the American dream of growth and improvement misdirected into angry not for those who stole the dream, but towards other victims. 

The nation will not magically get better by getting rid of the immigrants.

The nation will not magically be better by cutting off aid to the poor in the cities.

The problem is not Trump. He is the symptom of the disease.

The problem is the lack of an alternative vision that is based on love and collaboration to solve our shared concerns.

History teaches us that at a certain point when wealth and power are too unbalanced, revolution will occur.

In a bloody revolution and it won't just be the fat cats who end up against the wall.

Heck, most of the fat cats will fly away in their private jets.

Revolutions are big bombs not sugigical strikes that spread the collateral damage.

What we need is a new and real American dream. 

Not just for some of us but all of us.