It’s a phrase that is known around the world: the American Dream. Long before I moved to the US and eventually became a citizen my British friends would say I was chasing the American Dream. Years later when I managed to afford a loft in lower Manhattan they would say I was living the American Dream. And so would some of my less fortunate American friends. Inside the country or out, the notion of wanting, pursuing and attaining the American Dream was universally understood.
While no standardized definition of the American Dream exists it is generally connected with America as the land of plenty. It is the ideal that drove early immigration. It captured the belief that someone could prosper and be more successful and live in greater freedom here than anywhere else.
Of course in the land of plenty the idea of the American Dream was hijacked by advertisers long, long ago. It somehow came to include a house with white picket fence, two cars, a refrigerator the size of a barn – needed to feed the two or three kids that also became a fixture in the dream.
In short, the American Dream was what a young country with seemingly unlimited potential offered repressed people from around the world. It was also the powerful concept that stopped America’s poor from blaming anyone but themselves for their predicament. When everything was there to be earned you had nobody to blame if you didn’t get up off your ass and earn it. It was this part of the dream that led to America’s respect for the self-made man.
The American Dream has always been directly connected to hard work. It has been said "the American dream is the promise that all who live in the United States have a reasonable chance to achieve success as they understand it (material or otherwise) through their own efforts and resources." (Hochschild)
“Success as they understand it” – interesting choice of words that recognizes that even success means different things to different people.
As the economy teeters on the brink of recession – or slides into one, depending on who you believe – as that most important of commodities in a country this size, gasoline, edges towards four or maybe five dollars a gallon, the American Dream seems to be as fading as any dream when the dreamer begins to wake up.
When men like Eliot Spitzer throw away their American Dream lives for a few moments of sexual excitement we find it hard to understand. No matter how great that sex was!
When men at the top of companies cross the line into criminal activity because no matter how much money they were making it just wasn’t enough it certainly makes you question those words “success as they understand it.”
Today I think it’s time to give a new definition to the American Dream. The dream needs to reflect the American Reality. And that reality is not pretty.
There is absolutely no question that our President has devalued the American Dream as seen through the eyes of those outside this country. And has made it unattainable for larger sections of society within it.
It is clear to me that John McCain would do no better than George Bush.
It is clear to me that Hillary Clinton’s dream is a dream of power. We won’t even get into where her husband thought the American Dream was hiding.
If we need a new American Dream it will take a new American Dreamer. And so I hope, as the old-fashioned political contenders tout experience, which is another way of saying we need to keep doing what we’ve done in the past, that this country sees the only person offering new definitions for a new American Dream is Barrack Obama. He knows that the dream has always been the property of the average American and wants it to be that way again.
Yes we want tangible and long-lasting solutions to our problems. We want an end to fear being used as a political tool. We want to regain the respect of the world so that others stand by our side in times of need. But this will take a man of vision.
And vision is another word for dream.
