random notes

American Dream

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Ownby (1999) identifies four American dreams that the new consumer culture addressed. The first was the "Dream of Abundance," offering a cornucopia of material goods to all Americans, making them proud to be the richest society on earth. The second was the "Dream of a Democracy of Goods," whereby everyone had access to the same products regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or class, thereby challenging the aristocratic norms of the rest of the world whereby only the rich or well-connected are granted access to luxury. The "Dream of Freedom of Choice," with its ever expanding variety of good allowed people to fashion their own particular life style. Finally, the "Dream of Novelty," in which ever-changing fashions, new models, and unexpected new products broadened the consumer experience in terms of purchasing skills and awareness of the market, and challenged the conservatism of traditional society and culture, and even politics.
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has also been blamed for over-inflated expectations
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American wealth structure still perpetuates racial and class inequalities
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"the idea of the US as ‘the land of opportunity’ persists; and clearly seems misplaced."
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George Carlin famously wrote the joke "it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. Carlin pointed to "the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions" as having a greater influence than an individual's choice.
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Many counter-culture films of the 1960s and 1970s ridiculed the traditional quest for the American Dream. For example Easy Rider (1969), written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, shows the characters making a pilgrimage in search of "the true America" in terms of the hippie movement, drug use, and communal lifestyles.
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The American dream regarding home ownership has been emulated in Europe.
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... there are several things where the American "dream" is just a dream ...
... starting with the profit cow of medicine and monetary price on human organs ...
... continuing with governments and corporations testing mass murder technology on citizens ...
... ending with theories of plausible denial ...
... where everybody is your enemy ...
... when you don't have friends but only usury interest ...
... and you are a nation under a black god, "petroleum" ...

... professor Galtung said first "collapse" by 2024 ...
... then after GW presidency, changed the date to 2020 :)...
... he is an optimist ...
... reverse the reasoning a minute and think about it ...
... no petroleum ...
... two choices for out of area operation ...
... you starve the world people to make bio fuel ...
... and go fight the people starving somewhere ten thousand miles away ...
... how many millions you want to kill of famine in America ? ...
... how many wars you can keep open ? 1,2,3,4,5 ? ...
... how are you planning of feeding south America in the time being ? ...
... because otherwise the head cutters may cross the border and barbecue you ...
... wall street can print infinite money, but you can not print petroleum and food ...

... the next step is, with no fuel for the military ...
... who is going to protect supply routes ? ...
... who is going to save US bases in the middle of nowhere around the planet ? ...
... now the military will be needed to protect government, bankers and churches ? ...
... from hungry people "of their own" ? ...
... in change of what ? green towelette papers with pictures of historical figures ?
... how much was worth money on the sinking titanic ? ...

... at the end it seems that the only dream that may remain ...
... probably the most "realistic" of all ...
... is the hippie communal lifestyle, for which there won't be other alternatives ...

... and as far as concerns the home ownership story ...
... wall street sponsored "suburbia" has been defined ...
... "the greater miss-allocation of resources in the history of humanity" ...
... but banks and oil companies made a few bucks in the process ...
... the countries that follow the American model of suburbia home ownership ...
... and private transportation ...
... will make their people and their country bankrupt ...

amun
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