Letter to the Editor: Reflections on a Fading American Dream
In a recent edition of our Whispers column we asked readers: does the American dream still exist, and is it still attainable by most Americans? We received the following letter from one of our readers. Let us know what you think about this letter and about your thoughts on the American Dream. Enjoy!
You noted that a reader asked about the American Dream and if it is still attainable. I have been thinking about that a lot the last several months. With the rise of Christian nationalism and the MAGA party, what many considered to be the American Dream seems pretty remote for future generations that include my children and their children.
At 85, I look back to the day my deceased wife and I stood at the altar and spoke our vows. We were among the early Boomers, and we pictured a little fence around a little white house and kids playing in the sunshine.
I envisioned a rewarding career as a teacher entrusted with the development of young people, valuing the arrival of the American era that would provide the example of how a people could build a nation devoted to equality and justice, and the rule of law. A place that measured the worth of a man for what he could contribute to the well-being of all the people in the society, and made the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution alive.
We watched and contributed our support to movements for Civil Rights for black folks, women, and people who wanted to come here and take a shot at joining the great experiment. We stood proudly, honoring the flag that represented the best of the best in the world.
We sat with our kids as Americans walked on the Moon. We were thrilled at the call to modern Camelot, where the question was “what can you do for your country?” We watched as the divisiveness of racism declined and a man with dark skin and a brilliant mind was elected to lead the nation toward the 21st Century.
We dealt with wars based on securing a commercial empire, not understanding that we were creating a world that would reject Camelot and respect for our shining example of how man could rule himself and flourish. We were not ignorant of the problems that we faced, but we had faith that science, knowledge, and goodwill could face any obstruction and succeed.
We woke up one morning to discover that there was another part of the nation that did not see things that way. Another part of America saw the movement forward as a threat to their racially based positions of advantage, being threatened by the very people who made their status possible.
Their status and entitlement were clearly in danger, and they were led by the powerful elite in finance, business, and technology, who were threatened too. The 1% of the nation came to control the greatest part of the wealth not only in the nation but in the world as well. That minority of powerful people recruited the not-so-wealthy, but clearly faced the loss of privilege and significance.
The outcome has been that the once leader of a movement devoted to HUMAN equality and good in the world has been crushed and the essential rules for a just and responsible nation torn asunder.
So, what has been the American Dream? A home of your own, a place where your children could grow up, and dream of making an even better place than what you had.
A place where all kids could benefit from education, which has always been the key to the future. A place where they could find jobs that were meaningful and would support families of their own. A place where they could live and prosper in a healthy world, and science and medicine would be there to make their lives as secure as possible. The good life would offer confidence that retirement would be the golden years as a result of a lifetime of work.
With the opening of the 21st Century and the rise of the MAGA movement described in the 2025 Document of the American Enterprise cabal, that view of the Good Life has become a tiny candle flame in the darkness that surrounds us.
Is finding the older version of the American Dream possible now? I do not think so. I do not know what lies ahead, but building a new glorious period in this nation’s history has been crushed into the pages of history and viewed with the same dispassionate attention we viewed the empires of Rome, Great Britain, Egypt, Mayan, Spanish, and others.
– Dave Bean
Sault Ste. Marie, MI
I saw the question you posed but have been so busy caring for a 98 year old mother that I didn’t have the time or energy to answer. The first thing I asked myself was, “What is the American dream?” It seems that it has changed from the benign American dream of the past to a “dream” in which all people who are not white and not born in the U.S. are kicked out of the country or subject to second class citizenship. The fact that the voters chose the man they did as President strongly suggests to me that for many people the dream has changed from a positive, hopeful dream to a mean-spirited, ugly one.
“With the rise of Christian nationalism and the MAGA party“
I stopped reading. So unbelievably stupid.
Ever hear the saying, the truth hurts? If this line angers you then you are part of the problem with all being able to achieve the American Dream.
Did you refuse to read the article because you are a MAGA member? Are you unable to read, and take in other perspectives? A typical person will use their research and critical thinking skills together to gather as much information as possible on any given issue. Then and only then further refine and define your personal positions and any given issue. Wishing you the best in navigating the world today where many things are not as they appear on the surface and tons of misinformation are intentionally circulated to gain blind emotional support.
Typical me v. Them response. Nothing original here.
People are so entitled now, don’t blame MAGA movements or what ever excuse you can write about. The American Dream is about working hard and seeing the results of it. Don’t get caught up in blaming people. Look in the mirror you control your own life. Treat people with respect, work hard, to be good at what ever career you choose; the house, family, and everything else you ever wanted will happen. That is a millennial view point making it through life.
Look in the mirror? Work hard? You know it’s not the 1990s when you can buy a house, get out of school debt free with two part time jobs and raise a family with low food costs. And the current administration isn’t making anything easier with food, medical and gas costs let alone the cost of housing. You need to make over $100,000 to be able to even get by these days. This isn’t what MAGA promised us, look in the mirror. It’s ok to admit we got skunked.
Well said. We all have the opportunity to make good decisions, make goals for ourselves, work hard and sacrifice to achieve those goals and catch the American dream. As long as we keep on replacing the word equality with equity, the American dream is dead for those who have been brainwashed into believing that they are oppressed. You will never succeed if you believe that your problems are created by someone else. The American dream is alive and available to all. Get off your rear end and go het it!
Thank you David Bean for stating your observations of our current trajectory. This describes our current status as chaotic, a promise of a better world torn by greed and a thirst for power and domination. Both sides accuse the other of evils, manipulating facts to serve their beliefs and being unjust.
What you describe fits well with what happens when two major competing beliefs come into direct conflict, two competing paradigms as Kuhn described them. Both have their passionate believers, both explain the social order to the satisfaction of their defenders, and they are in conflict. For a time the conflict is exacerbated. One belief system and social order prevails for a time without conquering. Then the other rises creating turmoil or even violent chaos. The paradigms continue to wax and wane until one emerges clearly as a better social order. Or a deeper more inclusive belief emerges built upon systems that offer a vision that is embraced by most everyone from both sides. One that has systems that are more effective and that create a world order where more people thrive.
This in between space is difficult especially for those of the brig system that is waning.
The American dream…on the surface I’m living it. A house, two cars, investment savings and a federal government pension, a house in the suburbs. kids playing hockey, 80 acres of family property in the UP. Under the surface however, I’m in my 11th year of working a second job on the weekends in retail, now a 4-8am shift to accomdate hockey practices. A 25% disability rating for my shoulder and 10% for my back from injuries at the second job, 3 shoulder surgeries, ablations, and kids with their own health issues as federal health insurance gets more expensive AND covers less and less. The cars are both over 10 years old because who can afford to buy something new. The 80 acres in the UP…I work with the local conservation district and USDA to reforest former hay fields and save everything I can for a pole barn, but my grandparents old farm house was knocked down before I bought it so I stay in a 12ft trailer I share with the field mice and the 100 year old wooden “garage” is sinking into the ground year over year so that I have to shovel out the doors and have braced the interior to prevent collapse so I have somewhere to store my tools.
I’ve spent my entire career fighting for equality, voting rights, against discrimination and for diversity, reflecting the promises of the civil rights movement only to see white racism and resentment, in my own UP community of Finns, Norwegians, French Canadians and Swedes, a community of immigrants hostile to the Mexicans, Salvadorans, Haitian and African immigrants that have come after them.
I am witnessing the rise of fascism and Christian nationalism in a nation that committed itself to a country where Congress would make no law respecting an establishment of religion. Where a President, convicted of multiple felonies, sexual assault and who is likely a Russian intelligence asset, strongarms a TV network to fire a late night comedian by threatening to pull their FCC license…McCarthyism anyone? Where Supreme Court justices take undisclosed trips paid for by billionaires with cases before their courts. Where billionaires have publicly stated and funded organizations to stack the courts in their favor. Where billionaires control more wealth 99% of the country and are racing to colonize other planets. Did we forget our lessons from the breaking of monopolies early last century and the corruption they created? Clearly we have. We have a country half full of people proud of their ignorance, who despise people who have an education and remember history, because they would rather spite others to remain in their ignorance.
We’d rather worship orange demagogues than crack open a history book and realize we might be wrong. Where we ridicule organized labor who fought for the 8 hour day while we work 14 hour days.
The American dream is a nightmare, mostly of our own creation. We have failed to implement federal education standards, which would create an educated population that benefits our economy and national security, because of “local control” which has been snatched away by the Supreme Court in every case that serves their own interests…Bush v. Gore, the 10th Amendment Colorado ballot case which would have prevented a felon from appearing on the ballot…our Constitution is in tatter.
We can look north and see the benefits of socialized health care and deride triage as “death lists” and free higher education in Finland, Norway and Sweden as “socialism” while the hedge fund owned banks, hospitals, property management companies and even our toll roads on the East Coast empty our pocket books. Yes, other industrialized democracies are indeed free-er, safer and more equal than America.
The generations coming after me…the Millenials and Xenials, having lived through 20 year losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and enduring two of the greatest economic crises of our time, live at home in their parents basements unable to find a job because AI doesn’t really work as people who should have long ago retired from the workforce occupy jobs they no longer understand how to perform.
Yes, the American dream is a nightmare. And we ourselves are to blame for it. We’d rather get ours and blame someone else for our failings than take responsibility for our own inaction. We can change. We have friends and allies, all of whom we have recently alienated, to whom we can look to for examples of how to innovate and make America “great again” because they have experimented with their democracies, while we have destroyed our own.
My American dream is one where we recognize the errors of our ways, restore our dedication to equality, liberty, civil rights, social justice, the rule of law and experimenting with democracy to ensure fairness and opportunity for all, and we rein in the billionaires, the fascists, the racists, the despots, and the CEOs who have broken the backs and the hopes of the American people.
I know we can do better. I’m one of those educated liberal East Coast elites. I’ve gotten two law degrees, one in Arizona and one in Canada. I’ve worked in the legislative and executive branches and as a tribal judge. And I also drive a forklift, work a farm, unload frieght and work alongside blue collar Americans and immigrants. But we have to be willing to see past our own insecurities and recognize that liberty, equality and justice are for everyone, not just those that look and think like us.
Jared – Well said and sobering! Thank you.
I will second your reply to Jared.
Your words carry the same feeling that I share. Our lives seem to have been redirected over time by forces we do not completely understand. I cannot look to the future with HOPE anymore, and HOPE has always been the key to continuing to move forward. A motivator to make the tough things endurable. Someone must be found who can rekindle the flame that built this nation, and that is being crushed beneath the boot of absolutism and demagogery.
So true, there is no hope in this Administration. Only hate and the desire for revenge. There is no plans or program’s for the betterment of the country.
Thank You David for your letter and reply to Jared.
Thank you for your post and reply to me.
I do have some hope that we can overcome this era. I have days when I want to flee to Canada and days I want to come home and run for this Congressional seat or the Peters Senate seat. But I made a commitment to coach hockey until next March and at least, for now, am still employed by DOI trying to keep teachers in tribal schools.
I will tell a quick story of two experiences I had in the Chatham Pub in the last few years. One year, after closing down the tree farm for the winter I was in the Pub and an obnoxious local was spouting every GOP grievance he could muster. A tourist told him what a horrible person he was, to which he replied, “Are you a tourist?” which the tourist affirmed and to which he tyhen replied “Don’t come back.” Given how reliant the UP is on tourism, he could not have been any worse a representative of our community.
The next spring I stopped at the Pub on the way to open the farm and do my spring planting. There were 20 seniors in the back discussing how to protect women’s reproductive rights. One of them said to another “Nancy, you were on your third kid before you got married.”
There is hope. But we have to organize. We have to confront. We have boycott and divest from businesses and people that hold these views. We have to educate. And we have to be ready to protect our liberty as this Administration deploys more and more violence against the American people.
Thank You Jared,
. It seems that you read my mind and expressed it much better than I ever could.
MAGA and “Christian Nationalism” are to blame for the lost American Dream? My Dad was a WW2 vet who made $6,000/yr as a firefighter. He worked construction as a 2nd job to make ends meet. My Mom worked various part time jobs to help out, all while raising 4 kids. My first “job” was when I was like 12 or 13, cleaning up the parking lot of a ice cream joint every day for 50 cents/day (yes, that’s correct!). Later I picked and sold asparagus door to door for 25 cents and worked jobs consistently during high school and college. My parents were hard working people, went to church each Sunday and respected all those around. They instilled those ethics into all their children. We certainly were not wealthy, but we worked hard to “live the Dream”.
So why does The Left claim that this is not possible because or MAGA? You have to stop blaming others and forge your own path to The Dream.
What I wonder is if the American Dream is simply a remembrance of mostly Post WW2 America from 1945-1970. It is hard to make a case for the American Dream in pre industrial colonial America or the USA pre 1880s. Thereafter, we had the Gilded Age with income inequality like today, and very little governmental involvement(except for wars, tariffs and giving land away to the railroads) in the economy. What resulted was boom and bust periods, with recessions and depressions much more common than today. However it was a growing resource rich country and that helped millions of people move up with jobs in factories, mines, etc. After a period of federal government growth and participation in the economy and American life from 1932-1945, the country benefited from the acceleration to the economy provided by Post War consumer demand and the continued spending of the Federal government from defense and really across the board. The generations alive today remember the 1950s as golden years of prosperity, and in fact, it was a decade where the incomes of the bottom 90 pct grew faster than the top 10%, so there is truth to the idyllic American Dream in that time . It is ironic though that the current Republican ethos idolizes that period , since it was a period of high taxation and very high government involvement in the economy. I think actually that Project 2025 is more attuned to 1880-1920 which was a time of prosperity at the top, hard backbreaking work at the middle and bottom, ascent for many white European Americans but really none for anyone who wasn’t white and of course segregation and immigration restriction for Chinese and other Asians. The U.P. was a major center of resource extraction (iron, copper, timber) and the European immigrants who provided the labor certainly built lives and families and moved up the ladder despite the booms and busts. But the lion’s share of the profits went to shareholders and financiers in New York, Boston, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and London. I don’t see a clear path to a 1950s type American Dream right now.
Bryce, I believe that you have provided an accurate assessment of conditions and results for the “working man/family” through time. The key to the “American Dream” concept came from a time when, “incomes of the bottom 90% grew faster than the top 10%. If we want to see the Dream again, we have to work toward the conditions that created it. Living wages for the workers that keep up with wealth growth of the top 1%.
Your Health Care Is Gone!!
Your hospitals here will be gone!
Aspirus Ironwood has already closed its Birthing services and OB services as of January 2026!!
Hmm no kids born here??
No young families coming to UP Michigan
No need to have schools
No growing towns, no new employees needed whether private or government
Collapsing/Tax Base
Less growth means less critical services (Because you have no money!! You have no Future!!!
Plow your own roads Maga
Oh Bye the Way your -OLD NOW- nursing homes crashing and Mom/Dad/Grandma whose nursing homes depended on Medicaid, along with private dollars of individual policies has been gutted, you my Maga voter cut your own throats and neighbors who depended on these places to take care of their loved ones.
You now have to stay home and take care of your own!!
No damn crying, no damn begging for help Maga supporter
PULL YOURSELF UP BY YOUR OWN BOOT STRAPS- YOU ARROGANT FOOLS!
You have been taking an taking yourselves!
So as I stand near you at the next fund raiser to save a life because your insurance premiums are going to hit the fan in the next month, tell you what, I’ll nod my head and feign sympathy for poor, poor you?
But honestly I feel as if I want to dance on “yourself induced Agony”….and honestly would not bring a dollar or a bucket of water to put the fire that is consumed your arrogant “PULL YOURSELF UP BY YOUR OWN BOOTSTRAPS ATTITUDE/WORDS”
BURN MAGA HERO -BURN !
You brought this on yourself and America
But again if ignorance and lack of apathy were dollars, none of us will never have to worry about you and your fellow Maga friends because YOUR JUST SO DAMN SMART 😉
Very interesting discussion. I was raised in the UP, went to college at NMU, and moved downstate to get a viable, livable job. Don’t see much change in circumstances nor one side better than the other. Democrats don’t govern any better than the Republicans, both are on the negative of average. Don’t understand how some get elected, much less re-elected. We the people vote in people who are less and less qualified; can’t understand why. That is the root cause of the situation.
BTW, I’m in my 80s and have experienced worse than this. This to shall pass???
I fear the dream has disappeared because our intense capitalism has matured into monopoly. Almost every segment of our economy is now controlled by a few huge companies. Our antitrust laws are up for sale with the government. The willingness to share the bounty with the workers who helped produce this largesse has disappeared. We now have a very large number of extremely greedy and power hungry people who will never have “enough”. Along with this, our Supreme Court opened the flood gates of election bribery and spending to unprecedented levels. Put this all together and you have a Congress that does not really address the needs of the average American. The two parties serve the interests of the powerful and money, more than ever, dominates our elections. In my lifetime, corporations became people, and, very special people, having for more rights than living, breathing humans. The foundation of that American Dream was adequate income to lead a normal happy life. Way too many people are struggling to keep their heads above water, even those who bought into education and hard work. The health of our nation is built upon a happy, healthy general population. That shouldn’t be such an impossible dream, but these days, for many people, life is a very difficult struggle. Legalized greed is sinking our ship. Our capitalism exploited people around the world, now it’s turning on us.