[455] The American Dream

Stop me if this sounds off.

As it was sold to me, if I learned, tried, and cared I could get basically anything in life. My grandparents immigrated, worked hard, and took care of their four kids. My dad, for most of my childhood, worked late nights for years before becoming an iron worker. Your aching muscles or exercise of your brain was supposed to translate into you not only being able to sustain yourself, but look out for people. The degree was supposed to matter. I was literally told just to get one. I wasn’t forced into a field I didn’t care about for the prestige or paycheck. I can’t remember how many times I was told I could be anything I wanted to be.

I feel this is a common story. I feel like every time I read an article about “millennials” some wayward soul recalls how much they looked forward to the future and how that “social contract” has been broken. I begin to wonder if there ever was one. I think it was easier for people to get on the same page when they didn’t have thousands competing for their attention, but I don’t think anyone signed it. I can’t recall, nor have heard a historian claim, there was ever a period like the one in which our parents or grandparents prospered. FDR and The New Deal are total anomalies in terms of what people could be made to come to expect with regard to their place in life. The enduring legacy of history has been the privileged few and the vast majority of have-nots.

Yet you’ll read that 25% of millennials think they’re gonna be millionaires, at least according to one survey. Even the ones who know they have it bad inevitably know someone who has it much worse. You’ll read that they don’t own anything, are working jobs they don’t care about or didn’t need school for. You’ll read they live everywhere and barely connect, and when they do, those connections look superficial and silly. There’s secret amounts of them hidden from the job market while little to no attention is being paid to what those jobs they’re after would entail, why they’re relevant, and if you can even realistically put the business majors, doctors, and engineers to work on something that will “grow the economy.”

I suppose the degree in which it truly concerns me is the cultural psychological evolution. I want to know the impact of the million tiny conversations you have with yourself that you think no one else has. How you know you’re just in school because you’re afraid of looking unemployed. How you know the expectations older generations continue to beat into you are unrealistic, but no less are as noisy and damming as they can be. Would I be better off with a Ph.D. in something I was passionate about if I started making 40K a year as an adjunct teacher or research assistant somewhere? I could toot my little doctor horn, but wouldn’t I have been, in a sense, extremely existentially fucked?

How often is it mentioned that “the middle class” wasn’t made of proper hipster cunts who enjoyed artisanal beer and whatever the fuck else it is that crowd of people takes undue pride in? Because I don’t think it’s often enough. We’re past the time where we need lug-head wage slaves, though we prefer to keep them on in poorer countries and prisons, but we engulf our dialogue with a desperate grasp for the past. But even that isn’t really discussed. The country prospered on the back of consumerism and waste. Enough articles talk about all the things millennials choose to do without. Like they wouldn’t buy the same crap that stuffed my house growing up with too much money and no concept of what else to do with it.

You need the giant rationalization. You need the pretense. You don’t feel like you exist anywhere else. You need to be excited about your stupid selfies, special beer, or general shitty opinion about something online. You need to file for the LLC with your “online business” that hopes to trick people into thinking your travel advice is the wisest of them all. Your friendships reduced to “chats.” Your obligations dismissed with a swipe. What you own almost and often referred to as “lucked into” by virtue of who your parents were or some job that doesn’t make you want to kill yourself until many months in. The parents and old people need to think of us as lazy. Their whole schtick is up if they’d been lying to us! Even if it wasn’t malicious, it was still a kind of magnificent oversight that speaks to their lack of awareness or caring. To reflect on the dangers of taking things for granted would only deal a double blow against their argument and their current standing. Why start now?

And often enough I hear people complain about how life’s not fair or there’s always a bright side. Or they’re really happy to foist their vitriol at every opportunity onto those in power who’ve exploited and plundered. Meanwhile, they never get their thoughts in order to actually do something about it. We’ll rally behind a Bernie Sanders and blissfully ignore state or local politics. We’re still under an impression he can “fix the country” like my degree would have “got me the job.” We’re ignoring the sheer amount of wasted time and effort put towards things we don’t care about and have nothing to do with our long-term prospects, and unironically feel or claim we’ve been forced by circumstance. What foundation are we setting for our kids? 8 years later and several warning signs about another crash, can you still not define mortgage-backed security? Been too busy? Doesn’t concern you?

The details aren’t just lost in history, they’re lost in our minds. What did Occupy accomplish? To my knowledge, a handful of disparate groups lead by a wealthy 20-something or group of academics all picking away at whatever they think is the problem with little or no evidence it does much good. Pay off random debt? Oops, helped the bank balance it’s books. Care about the environment? Explain to me what your collective thinks about China. Angry at Wall Street? I dare you to listen to testimony about what practices they increased post crash and post protest. We trick ourselves, perpetually. We’re forced to operate under illusions we refuse to acknowledge we’re forcing on ourselves. Illusions about our effort. Illusions about our place. Illusions about our value and grasp as to the nature or scope of whatever’s pissing us off. We’re endlessly adrift anchored only in distractions and self-righteous drum beating.

And it’s going to keep us fucked. People with power have their own illusions. I don’t mean to make this too class-ist. But if there were a divide in people, it’s those capable and willing to constantly hold their illusions up to scrutiny. The one’s who doubt statistical analysis when it’s based on literally arbitrary stipulations of people looking to make a name for themselves. We need people who doubt the utility and purpose of war even if they’ve never known peace. We need the stress of thought, not the tortured convenience of binge-watching. People who actually come over to fuck instead of make the joke like “everyone’s doing it.” You know why it’s not funny?! You’re all fucking lonely losers without friends!

You saw me derail there, right? So probably a good place to stop. And just in case I’m missing something about this underground Netflix sex culture, is it too much to ask that a little foreign policy discussion happens in the pillow talk afterward? I’m not saying every time, but you’re such stud muffins, I have to believe one or two of your conquests likes to read.