The Great American Dream

[Sugar Hill Kevis]

OK, not so sure where this is actually gonna go... but over on DeviantArt someone had posted a thread asking what the American dream means to people...

I just thought I'd share with the restrictees what it means to me;

I was born in the states, live in the UK though...

I used to be real proud of my American heritage, hell I even had the stars and stripes hanging up in my room as a kid... But as I've grown older (wise beyond my years, heh), any ounce of patriotism inside of me has died...

I have no national pride and I hesitate to call myself British, American or associate with any other country due to nationalist connotations... Anywho, I'm digressing.

To me, I'm attracted by Miller's outlook on the American dream - one thing I took from Death of a Salesman was that there's no single idea of the American dream; such as Biff Loman having dreams of being free and not tied down to anything (which is the impression i've got about Kerouac's "on the road" which I'm gonna start reading soon), while Willy is tied down with the ideas of greatness, capitalism and being able to make it.

While fictional, I think Willy Loman's struggle trying to achieve the American dream sums it all up quite well... I think the idea is good "to become number one man", but my personal belief is that greatness is created by cooperation not competition. Willy gave to the system all his life and just when he came to the stage where he needed support (afterall, the best way to judge of a society is by how it treats it's most vulnerable) he was cut down.

The same has happened to my dad, a real flag waving patriot. He bought in to everything America has ever told him, from contempt for workers strength in McCarthyist discrimination against what it saw as communism infiltrating the country, to the theme of this topic - the great American dream.

My dad was in the USAF, he fought his way up the ranks (not THAT high, but he had a degree of precedence). As is common knowledge the retirement age of military servicemen, which my dad reached some time within the last one or two years (my contact with him isn't so great) - my dad asked for a six month extention just to pay off his mortgage, he was declined and subsequently lost his house. Because of this, he lost all contact with his son and moved back in with my step mother (who he'd split up with), the two of them too poor for him to afford to call his son in England.

He was promised a new exciting life working with Badbington technologies (or something like that, give it a google)... travelling over the world teaching US troops how to operate some super cooker or something, that fell through.

My USAF patriot of a father now stacks soda on to a truck for 8 hours a day.

To me, the great American dream represents false hope. Sure, some people can make it - but some, too many are left behind.

(Sorry if any of my DOAS ranting wasn't quite akin to the play, I havn't familiarised myself with it for a year or so...)

[Tower of Bebel]

True, the American dream is no more, or has become one of your worse nightmares.

Reminds me of an article form socialist alternative (branch of the CWI (comitée for a workers international) in the USA):

Vanishing of the American Dream
The American Dream has now turned into a nightmare.


While CEO salaries and corporate profits soar, workers are working harder and faster for less pay and benefits.


Americans now work six more weeks per year than in 1979 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Congress has frozen the minimum wage at $5.15 an hour for 10 years, even though the cost of everything (gas, healthcare, education, housing, etc.) has been steadily rising.


Personal debt is now a record 130% of disposable income—up 33% since the mid-1990s. The number of Americans with no health insurance has risen to 46 million people.


The widening gulf between rich and poor is the highest it's been since before the Great Depression. The richest 1% of the population now owns more wealth than the bottom 95%! (CommonDreams.org, 9/14/03)


These are not the signs of a capitalist system that is taking U.S. society forward, but rather the signs of a decaying system.


Each corporation is scrambling to squeeze more profits out of its workforce in a desperate attempt to extract themselves from the crisis, but the overall intensification of the exploitation of the working class is only paving the way for an even deeper crisis, because workers will be even less able to buy back the products we make.


All the endless flag-waving and rhetoric about freedom, liberty and opportunity in America, which are deeply ingrained in the American psyche, are going to come back to haunt the ruling class with a vengeance. There is simply no way that U.S. workers will accept their living standards being driven down to the level of a third world country.

Full article (http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article20.php?id=432)

[Dimentio]

The American dream is the freedom of the open land where you could go everywhere you want and have an abundance of what you need at your disposal. I.E, the native American dream. ^^

[Chris Hiv_E_]

Isn't the American Dream just buying into capitalism and using it to your advantage, despite all the suffering it will cause?

[Sugar Hill Kevis]

Originally posted by Chris [email protected] 07, 2007 07:20 pm
Isn't the American Dream just buying into capitalism and using it to your advantage, despite all the suffering it will cause?
it's the idea that anyone can make it if they try, achieving 'greatness', becoming number one

[Pawn Power]

2.5 kids and a mini van

[RedCommieBear]

I think George Carlin puts it best: "It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

[ZX3]

Originally posted by Red [email protected] 07, 2007 07:59 pm
I think George Carlin puts it best: "It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."
George Carlin will tell you all about his hard knock upbringing, and how he moved up in the world to where he is well known, while sneering at others who believe the same. Nice.

[RebelDog]

America is a dream place, for the bourgeoise that is. The US has socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.


I think George Carlin puts it best: "It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

Just about sums it up, I would say.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 10:59 pm
George Carlin will tell you all about his hard knock upbringing, and how he moved up in the world to where he is well known, while sneering at others who believe the same. Nice.
Yes. He is realist enough to know it is not something that everyone could do. In other words, he is not a liar.

Luís Henrique

[ichneumon]

the old junkie probes for a vein. inside the syringe, blood blooms crimsom like an oriental rose. as the he plunges home the junk, the youth he once was shines immaculate through his withered flesh - a teenager in Iowa, jacking off in a hayloft, surrounded by the nutty smell of young male lust and golden summer sunlight streaming down upon him as he sits in his hovel, staring out at the gray dawn with the cancelled eyes of junk.

america is a junk nation. junk food, junk money, junk crap, just junk. addicts to consumerism, food, sex, power, drugs, televised delusions, but jukies all. you see it in their starting piggy eyes, surrounded by rolls of sloughing obese flesh, as their push their carts through walmart looking for another fix. this nation was old before the indians, ancient and twisted long before the dinosaurs. this is our nightmare.

(thanks to william burroughs!)