The American Dream has Become a Burden For Most

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/american-dream-has-become-burden-most



The final chapter of America's Promise, a high-school textbook on American history, ends with a rallying cry to national mythology. "The history of the United States is one of challenges faced, problems resolved, and crises overcome," it states. "Throughout their history Americans have remained an optimistic people, carrying this optimism into the new century. The full promise of America has yet to be realised. This is the real promise of America; the ability to dream of a better world to come."

Such are the assumptions beamed from the torch of Lady Liberty, coursing through the veins of the nation's political culture and imbibed with mothers' milk. Their nation, many will tell you, is not just a land mass but an ideal – a shining city on the hill beckoning a bright new tomorrow and a dazzling dawn for all those who want it badly enough. Such devout optimism, even (and at times particularly) in the midst of adversity makes America, in equal parts, both exciting and delusional. According to Gallup, since 1977 people have consistently believed their financial situation will improve next year even when previous years have consistently been worse.

But when President Barack Obama was planning his run for a second term his pollsters noticed a profound shift in the national mood. The optimism was largely gone – and with it both the excitement and the delusion. The time-honoured rhetorical appeals to a life of relentless progress, upward mobility and personal reinvention didn't work the way they used to.

"The language around the American dream wasn't carrying the same resonance," Joel Benenson, one of Obama's key pollsters, told the Washington Post. "Some of the symbols of achieving the American dream were becoming burdens – owning that house with the big mortgage was expensive, owning two cars and more debts; having your kid go to college. The cost and burden of taking out those loans was making a lot of Americans ambivalent. They weren't sure a college education was worth it."

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1. The problem is that he American Dream is based on a false idea.

At its best time, the American dream only worked because it only benefited to the white man, and by extension their families (assuming their wives were happy to stay home). The idea that, if everybody works hard, they will succeed, does not work in an extended work environment. This is why I have so much problems with those who continue to push the idea, as progressive as they may be. The concept is based on a delusion. The American Dream never existed.

Frankly, I think the notion has directly produced the Tea Party (how do you dare taking " my" privileges to give it to "these " people). It is time for progressives to stop clinging to this idea and rethink the idea, but it will be on a different basis, a sharing of the resources around us.