The American Dream: Promise or Paradox?
Between soft power and concrete history, between promise and paradox, the United States stands as both an engine of global progress and a stage for its deepest contradictions.
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The image of Americans is often summarized in an old expression as old as the official birth of the Union a full quarter of a millennium ago: “the American Dream.” It is undoubtedly a striking term, as it links a political entity to a highly individual and personal idea. With it, living in this empire becomes closer to one of Disney fairy tales that is sure to end with the hero living happily ever after.
This is what the founding fathers decided when they established it. They wrote a constitution filled with romanticism and poetic language, glorifying the idea itself, the idea of America and its dream of democracy, equality, justice, freedom of opinion and belief, and the “pursuit of happiness,” while at the same time allowing the right to bear arms and turning a blind eye to women’s rights and the liberation of enslaved people.
On this split between reality and Disney, America was built and has continued to exist. Cinderella appears in a bejeweled dress, glass shoes, and a crown at night, then the magic breaks at midnight and she returns to her reality: a Mexican immigrant struggling through two daily work shifts to support her children, or a recent graduate burdened with massive student debt that must be repaid before even entering the workforce, or a family barely making ends meet with two salaries while debts accumulate on their credit cards, and so on.
On the same split, society continues. It is a land of dreams where races, religions, and nationalities mix, yet a constant suspicion of the other persists, of any other, unless they are exactly like you. The America that prides itself on its immigrants’ ability to integrate is the same one where an American with a different accent and skin color may be met with an obscene suggestion to return to their country of origin.
The America of two cars, a house with a garage, and a dog is also the one where the family living in it feels anxious every morning as they send their children to school, worried about a gunman armed to the teeth who might choose their school to open fire on, for reasons ranging from pure racial ideology to a dispute with his father, or bullying he suffered in childhood.
This country is almost an exact replica of humanity itself, from which everything remarkable emerges, in both its beautiful and its ugly forms. Most progress in every field, whether medical, scientific, or technological, begins there. For decades it has dominated the world’s culture, from cinema to jeans, from sneakers to McDonald’s to social media, and everything in between.
Although this American soft power is a separate debate about its merits and flaws, it remains a discussion about cultural impact itself. It also stands in contrast to official America, which will forever be marked, for example, by inaugurating the era of dropping atomic bombs on human beings, and beneath this sin lies an endless chain of wars it has waged without purpose, and the imposition of its policies by force on peoples, all in the name of America First, and ultimately for America alone.
And speaking of America First, this year it celebrates its latest version: Donald Trump’s America. America was making a statement when it brought him back to the presidency after his first term and everything that followed, including the storming of the Capitol by his supporters and his departure from every norm and tradition related to the peaceful transfer of power in the “American way.”
His return to the White House was not so much a victory for an individual as it was a consolidation of the rise of a current that goes beyond the conservatism of the Republican Party toward what could be called the far right. And because it is America in particular, transformation there begins internally before its effects expand outward to the entire globe.
This time, it is as if a giant imaginary counter has been reset, forcing us to ask again: what is America that celebrates its 250th birthday? The America we love or the America we hate? And is there really any difference between these two Americas?
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar.
Read more in our 250th Anniversary of the United States dossier :