I am on a quest to find the American Dream. I don't know what it is, exactly, so first I have to define it. I have a vague notion of what it is supposed to be, but I think that notion is wrong. The Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French people way back when we liked each other, is a stand-in icon for The Dream, but I doubt she knows anymore what the Dream is, either. The United States isn't the same nation it was when she came to grace New York Harbor. Hell, it isn't even the same nation it was when I first started thinking about what The Dream meant, over forty-five years ago. Of course, I might have become a cynic in those last forty-five years, and maybe The Dream isn't what's changed, but my view of life in America.
Maybe there is no such thing as The Dream. Maybe the dream is a myth, a fantasy, a legend, or - maybe - a nightmare. Maybe The Dream is the true "opiate of the masses," the carrot on a stick that keeps us going, the illusory image of Utopia, of Paradise, dangled before the lower classes to distract them from the reality of their existence. A few are allowed to win The Dream's lottery, to keep hope alive for the rest, to keep us so busy struggling to win that we "ignore the Man behind the curtain," when perhaps we should be pulling the curtains down, exposing the frauds, the poseurs for what they really are.
Our politicians, seems to me, are puppets whose strings are pulled by Corporate America, their pockets filled with graft and other ill-gotten gains. They've traded in doing what's right for the citizenry for doing what's expedient for their political careers. Yes, Mr. President, I'm looking at you, too, when I say that. "Got hope?", you asked, four years ago. Not anymore, dude.
Maybe it isn't so much the American Dream I'm trying to find as much as it is a focus, a direction, for my life. Most likely, it is that I am tired of struggling and am looking for someone to blame for those things I cannot control.
I guess I'll add 'find the American Dream' to my bucket list. Despite my cynicism and frustrations with our national (and my personal) state of affairs, I still believe The Dream is out there.
Then again, I believed Tinker Bell would revive if I just believed in her and clapped my hands when Peter Pan (played by actress Mary Martin) asked me to, right there in our living room, when I was ten years old. (She did, though, you know.)
