The American Dream is an ideal which many Americans possess, in which theoretically anyone who is either ambitious enough or at least willing to work hard, can prosper financially and materially. This dream involves a belief that each generation will have a better life than the previous one had. Under the myth known as the American Dream, anyone in America can get a high paying job or career, have access to an enormous bank account through their own efforts, be able to afford a luxurious house, have a home filled with the latest and most desirable luxuries and material goods, own one or more cars, and perhaps have a spouse and family if they so desire. Unfortunately, although the American Dream exists as a concept, the fruition of the American Dream does not always occur in American reality, especially as we may be teetering on the possibility of another Depression or similar large-scale economic crisis. I heard Geoff Charles, a Providence, Rhode Island area disk jockey once say: "The American Dream only truly exists when you're dreaming." (to be cont'd)
[The original version of this essay appeared in Eastern Connecticut State University's Campus Lantern student newspaper in the early '90s and part of my unpublished manuscript "In Mediocrity We Trust... In Debt We Die" And Other Essays]
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