The American Dream Is Dead

Post Reply New Topic

Typically when someone offers a solution to a complicated problem that starts with well, whydoncha just... or ends with it's just that easy there's a good chance they don't understand the problem well enough to be offering up any solutions.

Apparently the American dream is working just swell, except for all the Americans messing it up.

Which sure sounds like a way of insisting the propaganda is correct, it's reality that's getting in the way.

Which also sounds like a refusal to acknowledge reality.

There are no Americans in Baghdad he tells us, as American forces clearly cross through the background.

Race is certainly another problem contributing to inequality, but afaik there's no legislation actually stating that a newborn BIPOC citizen has different constitutional rights than other babies. They may face racism and discrimination leading to barriers throughout their lives but is it written in state law that some BIPOC can be treated differently from other BIPOC and/or Caucasians, or have their personhood determined by election results?

My point is that a baby girl regardless of race does not have the same rights as a baby boy. We may assume she does as an American citizen, but the truth is that a baby girl in New York is afforded different human rights than a baby girl in Texas. The girl in Texas lacks the rights of all American boys, as well.

The idea that the American Dream works or is good because it encourages self-reliance is absurd. No matter how hard you work, you are always at the mercy of those who pay you. You are at the mercy of macro- and microeconomics, shifting government policies, complex international relations, etc. The world is far too interconnected and tangled for there to be anything resembling true self-reliance. No one person in this world truly succeeds on their own. Not everyone wants to or is able to achieve the specific Jeffersonian American Dream which we treat as borderline-sacred of becoming a landowner and achieving self-reliance.

The American Dream says that dependence on the government is bad. Yet dependence on private employers is considered good. The rebuttal to this is that I can just change employer. This is a strange argument that ignores the fact that (and I can't believe I have to say this) finding a new job is hard and is not guaranteed to even be any better--not to mention that if I am not being paid enough, I almost certainly do not have savings to hold me over during the job search. Or the rebuttal is to move somewhere that has better economic opportunities. This is also strange and ignores the fact that (how do I still have to point these things out?) moving is very expensive and stressfull, and most people would rather not leave their home and everyone they know behind just because the economy in their area is struggling.

Tldr: to the capitalist advocate of the American Dream:
Dependence on employers who only care about you inasmuch as it benefits them: Good!
Dependence on democratic institutions which at least is supposed to care about you: Bad!

And again, as with capitalism, no matter how badly the system is working, it is actually working just fine, because capitalism cannot possibly NOT work. This means that if you take issue with the system, you are an idiot, because the system is always working. Trying to fix the system is what makes life worse! Just don't study any history and you won't question that!

"The system works and has always worked perfectly fine. Even if it seems like it isn't working, it is actually working as well as possible, because this is the most ideal system possible. Any attempts to improve this ideal system end up making it worse! Again--just don't study history or study foreign countries which have made life better for everyone with robust social programs."

I tried to watch some of that video. Anyway, I find the whole concept of an "American Dream" silly, as people all over the world want to be prosperous. When support for Communism was widespread, there was indeed a movement that told people to work for the common good rather than their self-interest, so one interpretation of the American Dream is as a rejection of that idea. Another meaning for the American Dream would have to do with the prosperity enjoyed by those who returned from fighting in World War II. The US really made bank on that war, while people in Europe and Asia struggled to recover, the US was booming, at least until the Oil Crises of the 1970s when the chickens finally came home to roost.

I guess another way to speak of the American Dream is as a uniquely "American" sort of ease. A ranch house surrounded by lots of land, a swimming pool, a outsize pickup truck with a quad cab, instead of the aristocratic lifestyle with crystal chandeliers, elegant dinners, and a staff of servants that are enjoyed by the wealthy in other countries. Also the idea that material wealth doesn't make one special, in the sense of distancing oneself from the masses, but of sharing that life with other hard-working Americans who'll give you the shirt of their back if you need it.

Nevertheless a silly concept to obsess about in this day and age. I didn't think I'd learn anything from that video, sorry I didn't watch the whole thing.

I think we're in a really strange place where there's something like a five to ten year rift where Gen Z tries tumbling into a work world that doesn't exist anymore, unemployment soars over 50%, and it's largely technological retooling where on the other side of that sort-of is Ray Kurzweil 'singularty' hyperabundance, the Micho Kaku koolaid. I'm somewhat convinced of the later as far as how well AI and automation are coming along.

What scares the heck out of me is what life will be like in that gap. It could be anything from a lot of self-aware people hunkering down and refusing to give up civilization or it could look like constant riots and even civil war. If that gets bad enough we may not get to the other side, or we might be still here as a species but our capacity for having that (manufacturing, materials, top-end chips, etc.) could end up being disrupted out of possibility.

Not a lot one can do perhaps aside from working on some light food self-sufficiency and praying / meditating just so if people are loosing their isht you're better prepared to not lose it yourself.