American Dream

What is the American Dream?

In the words of Zack de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine...

Yes I know my enemies
They're the teachers who taught me to fight me
Compromise, conformity, assimilation, submission
Ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, the elite
All of which are American dreams

The other thing which I keep hearing talked about is that the American Dream is all about home ownership.

In a video I posted last week, the statistic was given that in the United States, approximately 66% of the population own their homes and they compared this with a level of 22% in Switzerland.

Home Ownership... Now that's an interesting thing... Do those 66% truly own their homes, or are they simply leasing the home from a bank or other financial institution?

Something interesting which was in the video as well, was that the idea of home ownership being a part of the American Dream only really came about after the Great Depression, with the idea that workers who have a mortgage payment to meet, won't strike.

The American Dream? When I was a kid, and the idea of America came to mind it did so with an entirely different set of ideals.

America was a force for good in the world. If you needed help, America was like the big brother who would be there for you.

The US does send out a great deal in foreign aid, but it seems like much of that gets used to fund military actions. We need look no further than the State of Israel, which the politicians would have us believe has the only productive economy in the middle east, and yet, they're supported with hand outs by the US. And don't even get me started on the foreign wars.

America was supposed to be a country run by good and true men... If that was the case, you'd think the US would be higher than 19th on the Corruption Perception Index - instead of lagging behind all the "evil socialist" states of Europe and Australasia.

The American Dream was supposed to be about freedom as well... Including religious freedom, which all the wacked out Christians keep yelling about, but they're front and center when it comes to preventing another religion from claiming the same rights.

I think the American Dream still exists, but it's not what we think it is. It's not the right to bully the rest of the world and it's not the right for a corrupt set of elitists to rape and enslave the poor. It's not the expectation for a generation of obese and lazy kids to expect a shot at a job, when they don't have the desire to actually work for it and it's not the idea that you can sell your soul to the rich to get a home or luxury items.

The American Dream is about achieving your best, and the realization that your only limitation is yourself. Sure you'll come across jackasses along the journey who want to prevent you from that achievement, under the guise of freedom, or the aforementioned dream, but at the end of the day, it all comes back to you.

The American Dream? No, it's more like the dream and potential of everyone who breathes life on this planet. We're all given different circumstances, different opportunities and different challenges, but at the end of the day, we all have the opportunity to dream and to achieve something greater.