The American Dream 2011

Here is a notion that has become confused, one that I spent a good deal of time pouring over during a recent personal chautauqua of self exploration. Some say the Dream is dead and we are spiraling down a dark and gruesome toilet from which America may never return, where the ideals we were built upon are soiled, poisoned, and left to rot in the effluent. Something occurred to me while I was tapping into that explorative part of my mind the was so wild and active during my college years - entitlement has tainted the American Dream.

Off the heels of the Great Depression, our grandparents and great-grandparents worked themselves beyond death so that they might provide for their families, eventually achieving their Dream and providing unprecedented level of comfort along with it. By the time our parents' generation came along, that cradle of white suburban comfort offered them the luxury of pursuing the more quixotic goals of social equality and a higher level of civil consciousness. It was the Sixties and although it's easy for anyone who grew up in the Eighties to wave an ignorant, dismissive hand at their parents' battles and write it all off as some modern version of manifest destiny, the fact is they pushed harder than even they could've imagined, and for all their effort the fourth wall finally came down and society was changed much to the benefit of the disenfranchised. That was their Dream. But now, all these years later, their entitled children gaze back in a post-ironic way, weary of nothing, posturing eco-friendlyist hipster throw-up. Which, of course, makes it all so easy to discount.

With such a seemingly withered base, it's easy, now, to lose sight of the American Dream. We have grown up easily, and even the term American Dream has been translated into a sense of entitlement, a privilege, something consumable. This is not true. It's still something that needs to be worked for, and it certainly isn't stuff. The Dream is of an easy life - and not easy when compared to working, easy when compared to surviving.

So the Dream has been tainted by entitlement, but only insomuch as entitlement to stuff, purchasing power, excess - the diarrhea of ownership. This is a false birthright, smoke and mirrors; there is no satisfaction there. There is no lotto ticket, and the prize is not millions. The prize, is comfortable fulfillment.

The American Dream is still out there. It is borne on the backs of those who toil, it is permeated with the stink of their sweat and has grown malleable from their labor. It is in the quiet nights and rowdy weekends. It is in the anticipation. It is when the windings of the air are thick with electricity and there's a static charge in the circuitry. It is the Good Times.

Let this be our new Manifesto: Fun is King, and death to those who oppose the Fun Club!