There has never been, to my knowledge, an American Dream.
Even when the first English "Noblemen" (better known
as Privateers/Pirates) first earned, through their ability to
supply English Kings with Dutch spoils, grants for large
tracts of land to grow tobacco, their only wish was to
reacquire the old power they lost to the rising merchant class
once led by Oliver Cromwell. Religious groups came to set up
their own brand of spiritual intolerance, which is precisely
what they did. It would seem that "revolutionaries"
are usually people who covet the power of others, and in their
rage, wish to wield it much like their oppressors.
It seems to me that the concept of freedom in America
simply meant the freedom to exploit weaker, poorer nations and
people the same as the monarchies and their aristocracies. The
dream of equality, to me, was always limited in that it only
spoke to an end to the "divine right" to pillage,
steal, and kill, opening up this opportunity to anyone and
everyone who had a stomach for it, and was hungry enough,
angry enough, and ruthless enough, able to freeze their hearts
until they were cold enough not to notice the dead and dying.
If this is true, then we better be careful what we mean
when we say we want the "opportunity" to be
"mainstreamed" into the American economy; the
opportunity to "compete." Just what is it we're
asking to be allowed to do? Have we ever asked ourselves this
question? Do we know just what it means to acquire power and
the money to wield it? And if we know, then why are we asking?
As far as I'm concerned, the American Dream was invented by
poor slaves, starving, sick laborers, not by the writers of
the constitution, most of whom had slaves, and were already
"copying" the philosophies, and social hypocrisies
of the European aristocracy, as if they hadn't been able to
wait to create themselves as the new American aristocracy.
Further, the wish/demand for an equal opportunity for
education is a contradiction in terms. An education to learn
what? The real facts about the Slave Trade, The Labor
Movement, etc., the two most significant parts of the
foundation of American wealth and power are totally left out
as if they never happened. Its so much that is left out about
our government, the philosophies we truly live by.
However, I know that there is an American Dream; just not
the one I hear about when blacks are "begging" entry
to all those blood-soaked opportunities. The dream I'm talking
about is the one forged by all of us when we fight back
against wars for profit, racism, etc. The dream that says we
need to transcend capitalist democracy and enact a new
economics that is not based on profit, be it capitalist or
communist profit, because to me, in practice, both are really
the same thing. I can appreciate that because of the old
merchant class we were able to eradicate the idea of divine
right, and this eradication gave us a foundation upon which
dreams can be born. But we need to see past what we have. It
has never worked, not for the majority of people. We keep
having to "fix" it to read differently than it
really reads. If something is not founded in true compassion,
and an equality that includes all people, not just whites, not
just the titled or the rich, not just the middle class, or the
meritocratic intelligentsia__then it will always go full
circle, meaning it will always go back to serving those it
started out to serve. In the case of America, the constitution
always returns to serving the powerful wealthy whites, and
simply excludes everyone else. Although, the professional
middle class seems to be deluded that if it just keeps
changing itself to fit the mode of those (the rich)they hope
to be like that one day they'll be included as well.
Maybe we weren't meant to "fit in." Maybe blacks
(I'm black) weren't meant to "melt" into the
proverbial "melting pot." Maybe that's why Blacks
and Native Americans are always held back, kept out, kicked
out, and even murdered to make the point that they will never
get in. Because if we get in, whose going to create a better
philosophy? Whose going to create a practical method through
which love becomes a lifestyle, a way of life, a life that
shares and gives without a state to regulate that giving as it
regulates and organizes the abuses so necessary to people who
need to love, but cannot love on their own, and wind up
hurting each other over and over again.
The American Dream as we know it, is a farce, something to
keep us forever chasing something we can never catch, rather
than creating something wonderful from what we have learned.
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