Unwinding The American Dream

Ted Mico
Ted Mico
Sep 9, 2018 · 5 min read

No one manipulates our current attention economy better than Donald Trump, but far too much time has been spent dissecting the messenger rather than his message.

At its heart, Trump’s message is a radical departure from all presidents before him. Almost all the previous forty-four have used some version of the American dream to get elected. From “morning in America” to “Hope”, the American dream is that heady cocktail of optimism and bold exceptionalism — a message that bewitches the head and stirs the heart. More than just the promise of prosperity, the American Dream is the sand that’s kept the building blocks our immigrant, emergent society together, especially after the war of Independence and the Civil War. As James Adams said in 1931, “Life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

Trump’s Make America Great Again is not reimagining the American Dream, but discarding of it. Out of the gate, Trump called out the dream for what it is — a fantasy, an illusion. Without the encumbrance of equal rights and equal opportunity, without the necessity to always have the moral high ground, America can use its size, its economic strength, and its frontier ruthlessness for simpler ends: to make ends meet. This America will no longer be obligated to look after the weakest members of society, especially those who look different. The healthy will no longer have to subsidize the sick, especially those with pre-existing conditions. These people profit from the entitlement programs that are dragging the country down and American worker’s wages down with it. They really don’t deserve to be a big part of our future greatness because they are part of the problem. The Muslim ban, child/parent separations at the Mexican borders, unwinding the Affordable Care Act all spring from this new pragmatic, undream-like state.

Apart from the seven days around John McCain’s death, when words like loyalty, bravery sacrifice, and other old American “values” were reintroduced into the lingua franca, Republicans have dispensed with the dream too. They’ve adopted and repackaged Trump’s rhetoric of carnage and chaos in a slightly more anemic form. Whether by donor design or meek acquiescence, the party of Lincoln has abandoned his dream.

Diminishing Trump’s message as populist/nationalist sloganeering is as dangerous as reducing Trump voters to a group of deplorable, low-information, nostalgic Nazi sympathizers. If Democrats continue to misunderstand both the message and it’s audience they will lose the mid-terms.

Trump’s messaging taps into the two central fears of almost every human — not getting what we want and losing what we have. And what do you do to stave off this fear? Arm yourself — literally and metaphorically. Get them before they get you. The American Dream of unity is just too ethereal to pack a punch and the neoliberalism daydream has failed to make it’s case (not just here in the US but around the world).

However intoxicating the idea, dreams don’t pay the gas bill. Dreams can’t cure cancer or placate voter resentment, that feeling of being left behind, the impotence in the face of billionaires and pork-skewered politics. Trump voters know it’s not about fixing the political system, it’s about accepting that the system is broken and it will always be. That’s why the endless list of corrupt Trump administration officials only sparks outrage from the left. The people who voted for Trump and, more importantly, the people who didn’t vote at all, expect power and money to corrupt. They no longer believe the dream that hard work will lead to prosperity. They know the system is rigged and admire anyone who can outrig, outsmart, or outlast it. Commentators are right, Washington is now a reality TV show, but it’s not “The Apprentice” it’s “Survivor” and more Democrats will get voted off the island unless they find a compelling orthogonal message. And quickly.

Thus far, the Democrats’ answer to this challenge is more of the same. Rebuilding the American Dream is about as useful as building Trump’s wall. Obama’s recent call to arms stated that America only prospers when everyone in it prospers, that global alliances matter, that sticking to treaties you’ve agreed upon matters (even if you could negotiate better terms now), that siding with the great and the good matters (even if it could cost American lives), that facts matter, science matters. In short — it’s a rallying call to believe the dream again. Like some bad Disney movie finale, if only enough people believed, things could get back to normal.

But there is no normal to return to. Trump’s addictive message mainlines into US emotions while the Democrats are still trying to engage the head, trying to make the American dream real enough to be worth preserving, or better still, worth fighting for — liberty and justice for all. Plantation owners used to call their slaves by such names. Liberty was particularly popular and not for its irony. It’s just a nice-sounding word. The echo-chamber of social media will ensure our post-factual, uncivil discourse will continue mutilate many more nice-sounding words, rendering them meaningless.

As George Carlin once said: that’s why they call it the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.” The old dream is done. Democrats are going to have to find a message that doesn’t require a dream to come true. It’s time for Democrat messaging to wake up and get us all to work on time. We need no more reminiscing about the good old days of democracy, or conjuring up more lofty aspirations of what the country might be in the future. Our country is in peril in the present. We need a response that can get emotional. Any nation that’s over a trillion dollars in debt is in real jeopardy. We need a real, cogent message delivered with the genuine passion these dangerous times demand.

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