The death of the American dream

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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my topic is the death of the American dream… for centuries America was considered to be the ‘‘city on the hill’’ which was a statement that in America, we had the moral leadership of the world… that thought had a
utopian feel to it… that America had such a high standing in the world was based on its moral superiority… and we had immigrants from all over the world wanting to start over, in the land of plenty… where the streets were paved in Gold…and all one had to do to be rich was simple work hard…

we fast forward to today… where our reputation is in tatters… and no one believes in the American dream anymore… and how do we know this?
Everyone says so… Sammy/Lori has stated a thousand times and in thread after thread after thread, the fallen state of America today… it is a doomed country… or so Sammy has told us… every hour on the hour…
and Sammy is not alone… IQ45 has also said so,
multiple times in multiple ways… In fact the entire right wing mantra has been about the decline of America and its values for quite a while now… Barry Goldwater was just a man ahead of his times, when he stated that 60 years or so ago… and he was demolished in his presidential run for believing in the loss of the American dream…and IQ45 became president because of his constant refrain of the death of the America of his youth… This loss of the ‘‘city on the hill’’ was a common refrain of Ronald Raygun… and has the right wing mantra of the ‘‘death of the city on the hill’’
come true? Yes, because of the policies and actions of the right wing… lower taxes doesn’t help anyone…
and it is certifiable not true that lowering taxes helps
bring in more taxes later or grows the economy…

In fact, one could make the argument that every single right wing policy has in fact made the problems of America worse…less government, less taxes,
building more prisons, destroying public education,
increasing the wealth of the already wealthy on the backs of the working poor and middle class…
that has been the public policy of the GOP since
1980… in fact, we can easily make the argument that
Raygun is the author of many of our current problems
affecting us today…homelessness is one of them…
and the rise of poverty is directly tied into Rayguns
public policies…

and the other aspects of the death of the American dream? the fact is that we know that there is no justice in America today… IQ45 has shown us that justice
is simply bought and sold… his appeal after appeal
after appeal in an attempt to delay his many trials
is an example of how the justice system can be manipulated and perverted just with money…
a two-track judicial system is, in part, why we no
longer believe in America as the ‘‘city on the hill’’’

many of the arguments defending IQ45 is not about
if he committed those illegal actions, but he has a right to commit those actions… that is basically his defense
in two of his trials, the Georgia and Florida cases…
he can commit crimes and the average citizen cannot
has become his de facto defense…

and this degrades, devalues the idea of the American
‘‘city on the hill’’ the morally superior nation is no longer
morally superior… we are average now, at best…

and politically, the GOP/MAGA party is basically arguing for IQ45 to be a dictator… and that democracy is dead…
if this is true, and democracy is dead, then everything we have fought for over the last 250 years was for nothing… the dead of the two world wars, died for nothing…for they were fighting for the idea that
‘‘America is the city on the hill’’ and our leading value is democracy… and all that stands behind this idea of democracy is also gone…of freedom, of justice, of
liberty and the ‘‘pursuit of happiness’’ all gone, denounced as being un-American… and to what value do ‘‘we bend the knee to’’?

Money… our commitment to our new faith is quite
strong… we hold all our prayers for Mammon… all hail
the god of money… and as far as ‘‘the city on the hill’’
goes? if it can’t be bought and sold, it has no value in our America today… we have become strictly a utilitarian society/state today… with no faith in anything so ancient as honor or truth or justice or freedom…
cold hard cash is our only faith/truth…

and the American dream dies because we can’t afford it anymore… the America dream is about buying new things, cars, homes, TV sets, lovely new couches…

but what about values like justice, hope, peace, love,
freedom or even morality?
we can’t have those because they cost too much money… see the horror on the face of a conservative when says we should raise taxes to feed and house the poor… what about all the suffering taxpayer? thus putting the taxpayer as above the lives of the poor and
destude… people are starving and homeless but heaven forbid, we might inconvenience the almighty taxpayer… putting money before people’s lives…
yep, that is the modern value we hold, not the idea
of the morality of the ‘‘city on the hill’’ but that money is
more important and has more value than people lives…
that is the new way, the modern way of thinking…

and what of the idea of America being the ‘shining light’', the beacon of hope and of new beginning in the world… the promise of the ''city on the hill", does that still stand?

No, and this loss of the American dream, has shattered into a million pieces on the back of profits, of seeking out fame and titles and power…

those are the new idols of America…and the loss of the American dream…

Kropotkin

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American dream is alive and well. Not sure what any of that OP above was supposed to mean? Personal issues I’d imagine.

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@Peter_Kropotkin… you seem to be agreeing with Lorikeet here, minus the racial bent - you have been opining over this since early last year, so why the berating of Lorikeet’s -similar- views?

…another election year, where many Americans don’t know what they are actually voting for or the impact their vote will have on their country and beyond.

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He reads too much WSJ for his own good.

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Ahhhhh [she says, after looking up what WSJ means :flushed: ]

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lol. consider yourself lucky if you didn’t know.

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The Greek ideal of democracy , as golden it stands up to yesteryear’s scrutiny, does not give justice to the facelessness of players in the agora , who masked their roles, literally all knowing where they stood, but now, unmasked, they appear as disgruntled throngs, going for the latest ad libbers who promises them the best route to see the wizard up yellow brick roads. They all wish for the good ol’ days before unions, climate change, belt tightening pork to payoff with trash with class , pornographer inflated gun toting drug dealing god fathers for prez, for they rightly know the heavy price if the goods can’t be delivered.

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thank you Meno for your response…

today, I have other fish to fry… some have said, that my ‘‘beliefs’’ are
the same as Sammy/Lori… if you think that, you just aren’t paying attention…
Sammy hated of America is strictly based on racial hatred…
he hates anyone who doesn’t look like him…which at this point, is just
about everyone else…I have no racial bias…
(I freely admit I hate young republicans, but that isn’t racial)

I am specifically talking about the great American dream… which died
a horrible death because of the values of the right wing which,
in my humble opinion, killed the America dream…

in reading Sammy, it seems to me that he has never even heard of the
American dream, nor its death at the hands of conservatives…
I was born into that last generation that still believed in the great
American dream…in 1963, my parents bought a suburban house with 3 kids
and a dog named Troubles…with a two car garage… that is the classic
American dream… and that has mostly disappeared in the last 50 years…
and no one was happy in that American dream… my parents divorced a
few years later and kids came and went into the family… a few were born
and a few were sent away… and that is what I am talking about…
what Sammy is talking about is being a bigot and being prejudice as
a virtue, and it isn’t… for Sammy, America failed because it wasn’t
bigoted enough, prejudice enough for him… and that has nothing to do
with my observations about the American dream…

(a minor point, I haven’t read the ‘‘wall street journal’’ in 25 or 30 years)

and part of the death of the American dream came with the Vietnam war
and Watergate and the crimes of Raygun and Bush Sr… and with the
mythical WMD’s of Bush Jr… and the completely lawlessness of IQ45…
he has changed his story a dozens times, but lately, he has said, I
have committed those crimes, but I am legally allowed to… his defense
of both the Georgia case and the Florida case… I did it, and because I did it,
it becomes legal… if I took national security papers away from D.C, I would
be spending the next 10 to 20, at least, in a federal prison…

The idea of a national/specifically American dream actually had value,
meant something when I was a kid… but not today… and that is what
I am pointing out…

Kropotkin

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Sorry believe me this whole thing was a well meaning complex paradoxical perimeters, I I could, I would tell you the meaning of what has transpired, but as it is, I totally identify with Meno’s slave , by will to mean

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In fact, Oeter, Iscthus, Carleas, et al, the reversal thing if that’s what got you attests to my joyful discovery of Wittgenstein, if that’s it, I am naively neutral otherwise

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And that really is truly a miracle

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As a Brit living in Germany, I have always found the “American Dream” to be a scam. I was born into the working class, and my mother and I followed my father as he went into the army to improve our situation. The hierarchy there allowed my father to rise in the ranks and social esteem, enabling my brother and me to become “middle-class,” which meant we had a few more opportunities we could use. The class system of Britain caused me to emigrate and enjoy the republic of equal opportunities outside of the country.

America always seemed a total contradiction to post-war German society in which British squaddies revelled in a social market economy which looked after its citizens. Hearing about the poverty that could ensue in low-income households if someone became seriously ill was a sign for many people that the “American Dream” was all that was left in an aggressive economic situation that didn’t care about people in poverty and even regarded them as cursed for their failing to come up to standard. The hypocrisy of the hand-on-heart patriotism that was so hard-hearted to minorities fuelled to some degree the criticism of nominal Christianity in the USA and its loud-mouthed Evangelists.

The USA often fails to understand the criticism of people in the world, but perhaps Americans should take a long hard look at the disparity between the image they try to press on people and the reality it represents.

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And finally. fourthly, I am on the side that good believes to be evolving, not reversely. Thank you, I rest., and to search wether I can concur with Ec about eternal life, in the way Wittgenstein’s mind formulates a revisionary ego, such as it coincides with Ishthus’ notion of well then “here we are”. But then who are we, and who am ‘I’, presents the quest for individuation, (as it appears as if we are de-differentiating alternatively in a timeless time.

Lot to work on, now should I post this without editing the previous as suggested?

I will dare and see.

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Now that I am still breathing and heat beating, and not wanting to go off topic, Bob, it appears that I agree with you and in conjunction with Peter’s Forum’s objective, that is that the underlying arcihitecture of the US social experience is built on a reformation’s -formation al axis. The will for meaning reduces the ego, the will to power, in order to lessen the antagonism which can not realize the difference existing on a nihilistic undertow of meaninglessness , being a prior necessary assumption. That necessary essential power, without which society could not summon up the will, the power to preform what it sees as inequitable and hurtful to each member of common set collection of values , is meant to fail unless each member studies his own take , as Marxism became a required course for all partaking member of said social network. There is again something being underneath misconceptions, any newer developing system must begin to reform the meaning of particular meanings the Founding Fathers used before a new performance could back up what is meant, and a proper analogy be formed between the current burning concern with different forms of government should take compared with what went down in the past.

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“between the current burning concern with different forms of government should take compared with what went down in the past.”

“Forms of government” are a joke, a big lie. Yes those things meant something long ago, not anymore. Today the lie of these different forms of government is perpetuated to keep people distracted and unaware of the fact that such things no longer exist, and to keep them from seeing what is truly forming in terms of a totalized world-level panopticon digital control system. AI, nanotech, CBDC, IoE, 5G-6G, biodigital authentication, social media “nudging” super-algorithms and big data, weaponized drones and humanoid robotics, AR and neuralink,… and people are still debating old world forms of government like any of that matters in 2024 and beyond.

All the big systems are linking up. In almost every country. Look at Convid, what did that teach you? Lockstep and lockdown on a worldwide scale. But sure let’s keep pretending like we live in the 1800s or something.

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The hypocrisy here is astounding.
Love for one’s own kind does not automatically mean hatred of other.

The retard repeats his mantra, because he has nothing more to offer.

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Wow, irony much?

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The devil is in details, and subtlety ain’t one oh ‘em

cause sometimes Truth is stranger then fiction…

Just sayin’