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What Happens When the Dream Dies?
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What Happens When the Dream Dies?
What Happens When the Dream Dies?
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| atuuschaaw |
Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 8:33 am
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Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 781 Location: an ahwangan |
It slowly dawns on Americans that their lives are changing. For more and more of us, "the American Dream," which we assumed as our birthright -- founded on infinite plenty, a bottomless cup of creature comforts, and fair rewards for hard work -- is fading.
read more... _________________ "Speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." George Orwell |
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| wm pasz |
Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 2:46 pm
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Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 1219 Location: Toronto |
The thing we have to get our heads around is that the American Dream was an illusion right from the beginning. The promise of secure employment, decent pensions, fair wages was held out to a particular generation of workers for a particular purpose. The comfortable lifestyle and economic security were trade offs for obedience and servility in the workplace and acceptance of the corporatist gospel from a generation that had put a fright into the corporatists with talk about socialism. It had nothing to do with creating a special or more humane kind of society.
People were led to believe that they had something special but really they were just being lulled to sleep by a neatly orchestrated plan that co-opted them into an exploitive system. During the Dream period, the corporatists were willing to pay higher wages not because they were enlightened but because doing so would expand the market for their goods and services. The cheap mortgages and easily accessible credit were all a part of that objective. They also had the effect of making obedience at work that much more important. The creation of artificial "needs" created a cult of consumerism. People stopped thinking about anything that really mattered and concentrated on acquiring more and more stuff. The Dream period was short-lived. That it's only just dawning on a lot of people goes to show how effective the illusion really was. The Dream period ended sometime in the 1970's when the worrisome generation of workers for whom it was created began to retire and when it was clear that their earlier militancy had not been passed on to the ensuing generation. It really is time for working people to replace the deceptive and deceased American Illusion with something different. Not a dream but a vision of what they want their world to look like. _________________ Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else. - Malcolm X |
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What Happens When the Dream Dies?
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