To give credit where credit is due--this post was originally written for Great Lake Progressive by Bob Nowlan -- I did not write this piece, just though the dKos crowd would appreciate it.
When I was a young boy, it was either late in elementary school or early in middle school, i was assigned to write what amounted to a culminating report/term paper on "The American Dream: Myth or Reality?" I argued then, and ever since, that it has always been far more myth, for the vast majority, than reality--and a dangerous myth at that. Besides the emphasis on accumulation of wealth as the epitome of success, and its interconnection with unquestioned, unapologetic exploitation of nature and of human labor so that a relative few can live blithely at the expense of the deprivation of the many and the destruction of the necessary conditions of possibility for long-term sustainable prosperity not only for humans but all other kinds of life on this planet, the American Dream has all too often struck me as an insidious form of dominant capitalist ideology, a lie that flatters a falsely and deludedly convoluted perception of 'American Exceptionalism' (i.e., a truly glaring sense of in fact unjustified entitlement).
The American Dream has for most all too often remained little more than an elusive goal the pursuit of which, and the identification with which, has long exerted a continuously destructive psychological as well as sociological impact. Why should we, in this nation, maintain an exceptional dream that we as a nation enjoy exceptional right to expropriate the wealth of the world, far and above that left available to everyone else, and why should Americans continue to believe that any and all of us, simply because we are Americans, can achieve the pinnacle of success, which supposedly equals acquisition of considerable wealth, all supposedly acquired through sheer individual will, individual effort, and individually intrinsic just deserts? But this is an enduring shibboleth that all too many Americans (including progressive Americans) are always hesitant if not otherwise altogether unable to call into question, let alone reject and seek to transcend. Today I heard on WHYS radio this excerpt from Malcolm X, which I've heard and read before, but which needs to be remembered, reiterated, expanded upon, and updated today--as it is as aptly and urgently true as ever: "I see America through the eyes of a victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare." Too many victims of the American Dream exist and persist, as well as too many victims of massive inequality and massive injustice alive and well within American society--and as a result of American state and corporate intervention outside of the US--for the American Dream to enjoy any kind of idealization.
But I also believe, if America were securely so great, so superior, it would not require that so many Americans, especially of course on the right--and the far right--continually, vehemently insist on this supposed status (and seek to marginalize any and all questioning or critique of this supposed great superiority). Americans, yes, have often made great contributions to human civilization and global culture, and to the enormous betterment of the lives of many, as well as to the quality of life for many, and of relations between humanity and the natural world. And Americans, yes, continually do so, now, today, all the time. But Americans have usually done so when they have not been puffed up with a great sense of their inherent superiority to everyone else, as Americans, and of the inherent superiority of this nation to all others, past, present, and future. Why is our national dream equated with hyper-individualism, hyper-accumulation, hyper-commercialism, hyper-domination, and hyper-exceptionalism? Why is it not about working to realize humane, progressive values, in this country and beyond? Why does it not maintain any sense of genuine humility and genuine solidarity with the rest of the people of this world--and with the natural world?