{"id":1768,"date":"2026-04-16T08:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T08:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/scenechange\/?p=1768"},"modified":"2026-02-15T05:29:31","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T05:29:31","slug":"born-in-the-dsa-the-american-dream-evolved-into-the-cruelest-most-dangerous-con-ever-played","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/scenechange\/2026\/04\/16\/born-in-the-dsa-the-american-dream-evolved-into-the-cruelest-most-dangerous-con-ever-played\/","title":{"rendered":"Born in the DSA*: \u201cThe American Dream\u201d Evolved Into the Cruelest, Most Dangerous Con Ever Played"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What a grift. It only exists to make folks feel worthless, angry, and divisive. As such, it\u2019s the perfect tactic to sow national unrest.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
*DSA stands for the Divided States of America (aka \u201cOne Nation, Divisible\u201d). This is the last of the series\u2026for now. As always, sorry, Boss (the REAL one), and I loved your anthem about Minneapolis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

James Truslow Adams coined the phrase in 1931<\/a>, at the nadir of the Great Depression:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe American Dream is a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you\u2019re sitting in a 1931 financial shithole in which only the rich are getting richer and the poor are dying off, this sounds pretty romantic. Romantic hides the truth. The phrase was untrue then, it\u2019s untrue now, and only gets used to put forth some baseball, hot dog, and apple pie version of White, rural, evangelical America that only a comparatively few people live in (10-12%)<\/a>. And even there, the wholesome Christian folks don\u2019t necessarily thrive, what with Monsanto destroying their crops and such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were promised something that doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe American Dream\u201d is advertising bunkum. <\/strong>Much of its fervor was meant to keep people in this country from leaving<\/em>, offering unfounded hope where there was no hope. Better to starve here than to go somewhere else and give them<\/em> cheap labor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black people could never be a part of the American Dream. Fittingly, many Black people look at the phrase in disgust, with the possible exception the few that made money or gained power on the backs of other Black people, like Clarence \u201cPubic Hair on the Coke Can\u201d Thomas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The phrase has never applied to poor people of any color living in this country. Why should the wealthiest social Darwinists allow those people<\/em> to gain power by achieving something based on romantic twaddle? They don\u2019t want others to have any power. To them, the world is comprised of a hundred billionaire divas and 8 billion nonunion extras to dominate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The American Dream does not apply to these folks, despite what they\u2019ve been taught to believe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is the \u201cAmerican Dream\u201d a dangerous myth? <\/strong>According to Ruth Whippman of Time<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>the American Dream has caused material wealth to be the single most important metric of success in America. Those who have it are kings. Those who don\u2019t are failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt its best, the American Dream can be both moving and inspiring, but it is also problematic, not least because it is largely false. Research shows that in reality, American social mobility is among the lowest in the developed world. Far from being the Land of Opportunity, a child born poor in America is more likely to remain poor than in any other comparable country\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2026The subtle insistence that we should somehow all be striving for greatness can be surprisingly psychologically corrosive. One of the defining measures of happiness is the size of the gap between our expectations and our reality. The American Dream has become the mass production of unrealistic expectations. The constant thrum of the \u2018you can be anything you want to be\u2019 mantra has created a low level sense of inadequacy and anxiety in American life, where anything short of greatness can start to feel like failure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Rutger Bregman once said<\/a>, \u201cPoverty isn\u2019t a lack of character; it\u2019s a lack of cash.\u201d Cynically damning people into false hope for all time based on their ability to get money regardless of their caste level is the goal of those who worship at the altar of Our Brothers of Those Born on Third Base. Their accepted-by-all interpretation of American Dream that promotes rural or suburban wealth, picket fences, and all the White Anglo Saxon Protestantism you can stomach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
This has been their life for five generations or more. This was this Caste\u2019s baseline, not some achievement of \u201cThe American Dream.\u201d Americans are just not all that mobile, in comparison with their non-American counterparts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We treat people who are out of work, unhoused, and non-White as failures, not as people dealing with a corrupt system that leaves them nothing but hope to hold onto. This brand of failure-shaming is corrosive to the health of any country, causing unnecessary stress, anxiety, and pain to people already feeling stress, anxiety, and pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are enough obstacles to life when you are poor. It\u2019s worse when the American Dream merchants insinuate that you a failure as a human being<\/em> because you\u2019re poor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would happen if there were no more spouting about the \u201cAmerican Dream?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, other countries don\u2019t have a concept of a national dream. Many countries \u2014 including many in the Middle East \u2014 have religious-based dreams filled with just as many lies and fairy tales as any other. But there\u2019s no Liechtensteiner Traum, R\u00eave Ha\u00eftien, or Eesti Unistus. If you used those phrase in Liechtenstein, Haiti, or Estonia, respectively, you\u2019d get a puzzled look, at best. In England, they\u2019d probably pour you a cup of tea and complain about the royal family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many of you, it might be considered sacrilege to defrock the American Dream, even in 2026 when everyone\u2019s awake. Sadly, right-wing radical conservatives won\u2019t have read this far (probably bailing at the phrase \u201cPubic Hair on the Coke Can\u201d), so I\u2019m probably just preaching to the choir. Who knows, maybe you haven\u2019t read this far either, although, let\u2019s be honest, you obviously have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the phrase and its top-down stressors were jettisoned out of jingoistic existence, the following might be true as well, synthesizing ideas from the flourishing social democracies of Scandinavia and the thoughts of Thomas Piketty, Robert Putnam, and others:<\/p>\n\n\n\n