The legendary wrestler Dusty Rhodes once said “I've wined and dined with kings and queens, and I've slept in alleys and dined on pork and beans.”
What a way to summarize the American experience. Maybe that's why they called Dusty “The American Dream”?
What does The American Dream mean to you these days?
I guess in my mind growing up is was getting a good job, having a family, and owning a home. And like Biggie Smalls once said “It was all a dream...”
As I mentioned to my wonderful guests the other night when we were talking about what happened in Maui, that I've been fortunate enough to travel to Hawaii. Something not every son of a plumber or working man gets to do in his life when you're born on the East Coast of the United States. In fact, I've gotten to travel and experience a lot more than most people that I know will in there entire lives and I ain't done yet. There's a lot of places that I wanna explore before I turn the keys in on this rental and I'm excited to see the people on this panel in person one day soon too, but I've also been in the desperate situation of having no home besides my car and some good friends to let me sleep on their couch.
That situation back then made a trip to Hawaii seem like I fell asleep with the TV on and won the Price Is Right in another dimension. To those listening, where have you traveled on the ladder of fortune?
For those of us who grew up with humble means, that got by without having to worry about not having any food for dinner, and had good parents that worked their ass off to give that to you like me, the world can smack you in the face for not respecting the grind that gave you that. The people that took care of me, my family, my friends, all do what they can by serving our American Economy with the dream that they can survive and thrive and maybe enough to be able to help others, like the soul in the people I talked to the other night helping those in Maui.
Those people described what many of us are doing right now, which is working to be able to live comfortably in a place where those running the show are making it less and less achievable. I'm not a huge fan of class warfare. Seems like a great way to end up in endless bloodshed when people don't get to decide what side they're on. Cast systems and serfdom aren't things of the past though. Slavery is in full force in the places America “liberates.”
But no matter what you come from, where you were fortunate enough to have been born, the individual can connect to others about their life experience trying to get by from the slums of Brazil to the progressive experiments in Sweden, I've been able to connect with the souls who put that human experience to music. That connection between all of us here today that struggle to make ends meet, to achieve dreams, and to leave our families in a better place when we're gone is almost universal.
Almost because I don't know what goes through the minds of the elite. In fact, lately I get upset when people try to focus on that. Let the words and actions demonstrate what the folks at the other end of the power vacuum think. We as a people in America, have had a really hard time prosecuting the crimes of the past. We struggle to gain enough power to seek justice and we're told to wait till the next all-important election to get it. How's that working out?
The crime of the modern century will be our generation and the next trying to regain that power in our current system. Because the system was never built to allow us to do that. Our nation is built upon a structure that protects the elite from being supplanted. And even if you think you want a change up in that power vacuum at the top of this monstrosity, then maybe your kids and grandkids (if you're allowed to have them) will realized that doesn't fix this problem, that power and the way it works doesn't allow your representation to scale up to something the size of a Federal Government.
Every toppling of a hierarchy has a price. If we rid ourselves tomorrow of the top down manipulative control of the American government, could we still have the dream and achieve it?
Or does doing that hand the keys over to another group? One that's global, corporatist, and acts as an oligarchy, or will we try a different way to govern ourselves locally where we have a say in where our power goes and whom it benefits.
I don't want a king, a president, or a tyrant making decisions on my fate. I want the people like me and you. People that know what its like to work for a living, sleep in a gutter, and get back up to fight for a better world. And if you look around you...there's plenty of us.
Even at my age, count me in!