The American Dream

I have had an interesting phenomenon happening to me lately that I am feeling the need to address: older people talking to me about the American Dream. Sometimes it is not as direct as an individual coming right out and asking, "What are your thoughts on the American dream?" Most times it is more subtle and presumptuous, such as a person saying, "That's what's so great about America," or "Aren't we so lucky that we live in a place like this?" or "See what can happen in America if you have a little guts?" I'm always fascinated with comments like this because they are rich with layers of misconceptions, assumptions, and shameless arrogance. When I was a kid growing up in Kentucky where the culture was some hybrid of Southern and Midwestern traditions, I bought into the idea of America hook, line, and sinker (as they say). As an adult now having lived in seven different states from the southeast to the southwest, the west coast to the Midwest, and now in the unique culture of the Northwest I don't have the slightest idea what people mean when they make comments like the aforementioned. Perhaps it is I who should be considered judgmental, but I have to assume that people still throwing out their chests and boasting of American patriotism either live in a cave of money insulating them from the entire world population, or they just don't give a shit about what we've given up for financial success.

Let's rewind (because these same people also love to talk about the beginning days of America and the wise forefather's intentions). America in its beginning was a lush untapped (by western culture) nation full of indigenous people. Europeans fleeing from oppression and persecution of religious intolerance and tyrannical rule showed up here and immediately split. There were the people who found the natives to be wise and knowledgeable and thought perhaps Europeans could find a way to live side-by-side with these people (on their land mind you), and there were the people who, pardon my French again, didn't give a shit. The intellectuals did their best to reason with the natives and share cultural elements and talk through disagreements and forge treaties, and the conservatives (as they do) said, "Enough of this compassionate chitchat, let's kill these weirdos and get to building our country. Manifest Destiny! This is what God wants." And so from the very beginning we had religious zealots who thought it was a higher power's will to commit genocide and use slavery to reap this land of its resources and create a nation of wealth and power and compassionate intellectuals trying to use reason and tact to create a more peaceful and enjoyable situation. The previous, I can only assume is the American Dream that conservatives still boast of today as being so great--the dream of accumulating wealth and using "inferior cultures" (not excluding overly exploiting plants, animals, third world nations, children, etc.) to further maximize our income. However, at the same time these conservative skull crushers were raping and pillaging their way to economic success, we had intellectuals finding easier ways of doing everything and infusing our culture with those things that last: art, writing, architecture, progressive politics, technology, etc. What is interesting is that the parts of America that conservatives are so proud of were created and conjured by progressive, liberal minds. It was conservatives that started slavery. It was progressives that ended it. It was conservatives who kept women from voting. It was progressives who pushed through women's suffrage. It was conservatives who kept African-Americans from being considered full human beings. It was progressives who debunked this myth and created affirmative action in an attempt to help balance the playing field. And now it is conservatives who don't understand homosexuality and are trying hard to push them out of our mainstream while progressives are succeeding slowly at making their lives more comfortable here. In fact throughout our history it has been straight, white, conservative men who have been working hard at creating fear and hate toward those who aren't straight, white, conservative men so that they don't have to work hard at getting an education, learning of other cultures, exhibiting the least bit of talent or problem solving skills, or doing anything that requires them to speak in full sentences with what I like to call, "Grown-up words." They are also the ones who seem to think that making money, without regard for humanity, environment, cultural sensitivity, or respect for spirituality, is all that matters in life. They don't seem to know what they would do with the money besides buy shiny, fast-moving crap once they have it, but they know that's what the American Dream is about and that's what they plan to spend their life working toward in hopes that they can spend the last fifteen years of life not making money. Fascinating.

On the other hand, intellectuals, scientists, artists, inventors, writers, and other progressive minds attempting to bring beauty, truth, and solutions into the world seem to get relegated to a small corner of our society to be poked fun at and alienated and ignored until something serious happens that needs their input. For the most part these creative and brilliant minds seem to be okay with working behind the scenes and allowing their life's work to be what is carried on and not their toys and dollars that will later be squandered by ungrateful offspring. However, once in awhile, as we have seen in the last eight years, conservatives screw things up so royally with their mythological belief systems and hot-headed misconceptions about "scary bad people" that we find introverts churning out volumes of works and flying from the woodwork to push things forward. In a way I guess it can be viewed as positive. Perhaps without the freedom to elect ignorant rich puppets our progressive minds would just get lazy or leave the country entirely. This way, the thought of things getting so bad in their absence seems to be superb motivation to work harder at educating the masses and passing laws that prevent conservatives from killing themselves and everyone else in their blind pursuit of wealth and shiny fast things that make girls like them. Thus, both progressives and conservatives get to be happy. Progressives can feel important by keeping conservatives safe, educated, healthy, and making the country look good historically with their contributions to the arts and sciences and conservatives can yell their brains out about how scared and threatened they feel while building suburbanite super fortresses and turning their God into another way to make money and buy more stuff. Which is what the American Dream is all about, right? What a great country this truly is. USA! USA! Go team go!