Is the American Dream at an end?

[XemaSab]

'Ten years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs," runs a sour joke that has been doing the rounds since Silicon Valley lost its most famous son. "Now there's no cash, no hope and no jobs." Perhaps not a contender for the Nobel Prize in side-splitters, but it catches America's dark mood – a year to the day before the country delivers its verdict on whether Barack Obama merits a second term in the White House.

Before every presidential election, there is talk that this one will be historic, a "watershed" to match the two that truly qualified for that title during the previous century: 1932, which ushered in Franklin Roosevelt and five decades of Democratic domination, and the Reagan landslide of 1980 that made official a conservative shift in national politics that continues to this day.

The year 2008 was supposed to be another new beginning – not just in terms of the colour of the victor's skin, but in the vista of change, youth and renewal that seemed to open up, despite the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression that swept FDR into the Oval Office. But things didn't quite work out that way.

Great hopes can breed great anti-climaxes, and so it has been with Obama. The shining promise has not been fulfilled, at least not yet: in part because of his own inexperience (he had served barely two years in the Senate when he announced his candidacy in 2007); in part because of the singular bloody-mindedness of his Republican opponents; but above all because of an economic crisis that has proved deeper and more intractable than almost anyone expected.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-is-the-american-dream-at-an-end-6257918.html

[FarCenter]

1. Yes. Wake up!

[ananda]

2. What dream?

It was always an illusion.

[Tripper11]

3. +1

Nothing more than a marketing scam!

[Tesha]

4. That's not true.

Many Americans did very well after WWII.

With the G.I. Bill, with the huge pent-up demand from the war years, and with
the huge need for European and Japanese reconstruction, the economy did
very well. Then, the American/Soviet space race and nuclear arms race
spurred on one of the fastest technological evolutions that the world has
ever seen.

Don't let anyone tell you that there wasn't a time when the American
Middle Class was prosperous -- there was! Then greed by the rich and
powerful fucked it all up, starting in large measure with Reagan and
his lies about how Government was only a negative force in people's
lives.

Tesha

[FarCenter]

5. Americans were rich because we plundered a continent and supplied arms to the winning side

From the founding of the United States until WW I, we expanded westward across one of the richest geographic areas of the world. We cut down forest, opened huge mines, and discovered huge coal and oil fields.

During WW I and WW II we expanded our industry and became the "arsenal of democracy". We wound up with all the world's gold in Fort Knox.

The European countries and East Asian countries had economies that ranged from severely damaged (UK) to completely destroyed (Germany and Japan).

Of course the post WW II era was one of prosperity in the US.

But it didn't have anything to do with the efficiency of our economic system, the design of our political system, or the merits of our educational and cultural institutions.

But the party is over. We have spent it all.

[CrispyQ]

8. With no more new frontiers to exploit.

Excellent post, FC.

[Fool Count]

18. That's not true. There are still Libya, Syria, Iran and North Korea

to "integrate into the world community". After that, I am hoping for some intelligent life on Mars which could be forced
to assemble iPhones for $2 per hour. Otherwise it is truly curtains for our "way of life".

[Tesha]

10. You have an astoundingly distorted sense of what happened. (NT)

[FarCenter]

12. What is your explanation?

Americans love the delusion that their prosperity is the result of their industriousness and virtue, when it is actually the result of good fortune and avarice.

[Tesha]

17. Reply #2 said the American Dream was never true.

I was explaining that, for the generation that came
through World War II, that wasn't the case; life in
America was quite, quite good even for middle-class
laborers.

And that wasn't a scam; it was based on the tremendous
economic expansion that took place after the War ended.

Tesha

[customerserviceguy]

15. Agreed

We either grow the pie that all of us take a slice of, or we fight over the shrinking pie, each trying to grab more crust crumbs than the other guy. We all know how the well-off do in that game.

[dkf]

13. You got it.

It's going to take enormous leadership and vision to get us back to the American Dream, someone who can imagine more transformation than I am capable of seeing. To me it just looks impossible.

[saras]

6. There was as many dreams as there were Americans. And then there was postwar consumerism

...which wasn't a dream, but a knowing, conscious lie.

Racial equality is an American dream.
A home not owned by landlords is an American dream.
A job that satisfies and helps one's community is an American dream.
A pure Aryan, Christian nation, militaristic and rigid, is an American dream.
Living off the grid is an American dream.
Raising one's kids in a peaceful community is an American dream.
Raising one's kids in a rapidly changing melting pot of mixed cultures is an American dream.
Having a full, rich life as a full participant in culture, without kids, is an American dream.
Separate but equal is an American dream.
Yankee self-reliance is an American dream.
Suburban consumerism is an American dream

Claiming that the root of America's troubles is "jobs", and that providing "jobs" will magically fix everything, though, is kind of like claiming that the problem in Somalia is hunger, and feeding everyone will make the trouble go away.

There are no jobs because corporations have, to a large extent, outgrown the need for them, especially high-level jobs. They will no more provide jobs than they will provide free ponies. They need to be restructured legally to the point where profit is merely a means to the legally required ends of managing resources well, providing a useful product or service for the community, and preventing the production process from polluting.

[mmonk]

7. As long as representative government is no longer representative or represents

only the anti-democratic interests.

[Philosopher King]

9. Only for those who have no imagination.

The man who has no imagination has no wings - Muhammad Ali

[dkf]

14. Do you think we can get to a new paradigm through the systems we have now?

Can capitalism and democracy get us to where we need to be? As far as I can tell our political system makes it impossible to do any sort of central planning. And "greed is good" will lead to many lower level occupations being automated out of existence.

How can we keep our lesser educated brethren employed without being Luddites?

[Tsiyu]

11. There must be a different dream

a more realistic dream, and one that can be attained by every American.

Look at Germany today....not perfect, but doing fairly well thanks to a strong manufacturing base and socialized education and health care.

Our Congress - and those who lobby them - dream that we'll become more like Somalia, lawless and unregulated....that's their "dream" for you and me, while they live like sheiks without a care in the world.

[gulliver]

16. American Mood

I think of the American Dream as one side of our collective hyperthymic disorder. And it isn't just America. I think our animal spirits will reemerge after we finish our binge of hunkering down and waiting for the bad thing to go away. I think it is already starting to happen.

I feel sorry for Obama in all this. None of this is his fault, and I truly think he is doing everything in his power to help. I just hope the unemployment rate gets down to 8.5 or below before the election. We need him and more Dems in office.

[TBF]

19. American nightmare

is more like it.