|
"The belief that democracy lies in the
choice between competing
brands and the
accumulation of vast sums of
personal wealth at the expense of others is exposed as a fraud." - Chris
Hedges
"The true story of
American Empire is very much the
reverse of the propaganda history Americans are taught and presented with in
the commercial media. Our entire culture has been dependent on belief in the
myth of American Exceptionalism and
denial of the global toll of the American Way of Life." - Kevin Zeese and
Margaret Flowers
"We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome
comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it
is that we're still in denial - we still think this is some kind of unfortunate
accident, not something that was created by
the group of psychopaths on Wall
Street whom we allowed to
gang-rape the American Dream." - Matt Taibbi 03/19/09
 
The Corruption of the American
Dream
The American Dream was one in which downtrodden peoples discover
freedom from tyranny.
This is not the way things are working out as
rather than finding freedom Americans find themselves trapped in the tyranny of
ponerological embrace of the
materilaistic
pragmatism of manufactured desire.
That manufactured desire includes
an embrace of American Exceptionalism - the belief that worldwide culture
should mimic Greenfield Village.
The
Church of Ford proselytized an
exceptionalist fantasy of manufacturing desire to accelerate MICE
culture.
"The
populations of dying empires are passive because they are lotus-eaters.
There is a narcotic-like reverie among those barreling toward oblivion. They
retreat into the sexual, the tawdry
and the inane, retreats that are momentarily pleasurable but ensure
self-destruction. They naively
trust it will all work out. As a species, Margaret Atwood observes in her
dystopian novel "Oryx and Crake," "we're doomed by hope." And absurd promises
of hope and glory are endlessly served up by the
entertainment industry, the
political and economic elite, the class of courtiers who pose as journalists,
self-help gurus like Oprah and
religious belief systems that assure followers that
God will always protect them.It is collective
self-delusion, a retreat into
magical thinking." -
Chris Hedges
"The
American Dream has become what
the ruling class dreams for
us.
The American dream has become one where you step on everyone
and everything you have to in order to rise to the top of the heap.
It's time to remind everyone that this is not the real American dream.
The
 Real American Dream is
a dream of a good life for
everyone, a decent job and the ability to live our lives free of other
people telling us what we can and can't do.
Most of us have no need or
desire to "have it all."
We just want enough to live a comfortable,
simple life." - Bruce McDonald
"From Bernie Ebbers and
WorldCom to Jeff Skilling
and the Enron boys, to Bernie
Madoff's Ponzi scheme, to the bait-and-switch that Bush and
Cheney
used to take the country into war, this was the Decade of Deception.
No
deceit was more malevolently corrosive than the fiction that this was a period
of expansive prosperity in which
significant numbers of our people were able to share in the American Dream of Financial
Security.
A tiny minority of insiders, on the other
hand, did very well for themselves.
Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas
Piketty report that the highest earning 0.1% of Americans accounted for 8.2% of
the country's total pretax income.
That's the highest concentration of
wealth since 1917." - Tim Rutten
01/02/10
"We are the last generation with
a real opportunity to save
the world.
We must wake up.
Our complacent dream is over.
Our nightmare has begun." - Laurence Overmire
"Many individuals and groups now find themselves
living in a society that measures the worth of
human life in terms of
cost-benefit analysis. The
central issue of life and politics is no longer about working to get ahead, but
struggling simply to survive. And many groups, who are considered marginal
because they are poor, unemployed, people of color, elderly or young, have not
just been excluded from "the American dream," but have become utterly redundant
and disposable, waste products of a society that not longer considers them of
any value." - Henry A. Giroux
The Industrial Revolution in
America was the motivating factor for the
initial corruption of the American Dream.
During the Golden Age of
the Entrepreneur, Horatio Alger wrote rags
to riches novels. In Horatio Alger's
novels a pauper, through
studious labor, always became
a wealthy
tycoon.
The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship
American
popular culture has
lost sight of the truly valuable, although ordinary, experiences that life has
to offer.
Too much emphasis has been placed on
the acquistion of material
possessions.
Moments of true value, friendly conversation, time
spent with family, enjoying the summer breeze, watching the birds feed and
preen have been relegated to a subordinate position.
The prevalent
American philosophy is now Social Darwinism which
preaches that survival of the
fittest - in the economic terms of
acquisition, control and
manipulation of resources - is the mark of the
successful pursuit of the American Dream.
"The Industrial Revolution
concentrated labor into mills,
factories, and
mines, but industrial workers
could never experience the sense of satisfaction and pride that
craftsmen derived from their creations.
Working a craft is a
mentally stimulating and creative activity; operating a machine is not.
The best craftsmen were renowned as
artists.
Some are still renowned today: Thomas Chippendale and
George Hepplewhite, for example.
The integral strength of Windsor
chairs has never been duplicated in a factory.
Handmade textiles,
Persian rugs, even handcrafted toys are
renowned for their artistry.
Today that pride and satisfaction accrues
only to hobbyists, such as quilters, but never to industrial workers.
The Industrial Revolution degraded human life to the status of coal.
People became fuel for machines.
Bought cheap, people are used
until unneeded and then discarded like slag.
Individuality, talent,
imagination,
originality, the best attributes
of human beings, are suppressed
to the point of extinction.
The Industrial Revolution sucked the
humanity out of the human race; people became things." - John
Kozy
"We become what we behold. We shape our
tools
and then our tools shape us." - Marshall McLuhan |
Americans are
constantly bombarded by advertisements pushing a menagerie of products.
Most play upon the individuals sense of
self-worth.
The individual
invariably compares his or herself to the
flashy/stylish/sophisticated,
successfully adventurous lovable characters portrayed. Explicitly implied
is the idea that once one becomes the owner or user of certain advertised
commercial products one's social status will be elevated to a position above
the current one. These new users will become as the individual portrayed -
attractive, smart and sophisticated.
Much of what Americans purchase
are called "positional goods" - objects whose value is measured in relation to
the purchases of other individuals within
the same social cultural
niche.
When individuals become trapped in the hamster wheel of ever
increasing desire to be seen as the actors they attempt to emulate and even
though these characters are
fictitious there is a fine
line between reality and fantasy which can be and is bridged in the
subconscious mind.
This "bridging" allows an individual to swallow
wholeheartedly the deception that happiness can be found and dreams fulfilled
through the continual willy-nilly purchases of the
objects they have been conditioned to
desire - just like Pavlov's dogs.
"Consumerism needs an infantilist
ethos as it favors laxity over
discipline, values
childish impetuosity and juvenile
narcissism over enlightened self-interest
preferring consumption directed
play to spontaneous recreation. This
ethos feeds a private market logic combating the
public
logic fashioned by a republican democracy." - Benjamin R. Barber
The American Dream for the founders of America was a
dream in which men were free to worship,
think and live as they saw fit - the
government was not to demand submission; was not to decree
morals; was not to grant franchises
and privileges to entrenched aristocracy; was not to
encourage consumption and was not
to conduct a never ending war. A
dream in which individuals no longer had to bow
down to tyrants and in which men were free from bondage !
No longer are
Americans free from bondage as the
acquisition of material
possessions became
a ball and chain.
No longer
are men free from the bondage of tyrants as tyrants hold the keys to the
resources.
"Economic exigencies - the exchange of time for money - have
rendered us unable to afford the virtue
and pleasure of taking care of things." -
Charles
Eisenstein
In American
popular culture a
man's worth is judged by his possessions and
his ability to maniplulate resources.
The American Dream has been
corrupted into a dream in which an individual
achieves great power and wealth and the
means in which this is done is unimportant.
The American Dream has
become a dream in which an individual achieves
great power and wealth and the means in which this is done is
unimportant.
"What America really needs is a policy vision which sparks
community building and cooperation among its citizens rather than instructing
them to simply spend their way into the American Dream. What Americans don't
realize is in so many ways
it is in their self interest to work in cooperation." - Mark Winston
Grifith
"Studies show that happiness rises with incomes - up to the
point at which basic needs are met,
after which it stagnates as aspirations also rise with income. Nobel
Prize-winning economist and psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls
this a "hedonic treadmill." Like the proverbial rats, we run faster and faster
- and so do our aspirations - but the bottom line is the old cliche:
Money can't buy happiness." -
Andrew L. Yarrow
It is the intent of those who hold power to glorify
American culture as the penultimate utopian
social order . The desire for 'everything' is the desire that is destroying
American culture today. The desire to have and experience 'everything' binds
Americans to a corrupted form of the 'American Dream'.
"It may be too late for this year, but next year
the malls and stores can put up their real
symbol of the season and Jews and Christians alike will be able to get behind
it: a 12-foot gilded dollar sign, decorated with
credit cards and
shopping bags." -
Marta Goldstein
"What is the chief end of man? - to get rich. In
what way? - dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must. Who is god, the one
only and true? Money is god. God
and Greenbacks and
Stock - father, son, and the ghost of
same - three persons in one; these are the true and only god, mighty and
supreme." - Mark Twain |
|
back to stacks
contents
 |
This web site is not a commercial web site and
is presented for educational purposes only.
This website defines a
new perspective with which to engage reality to which its author adheres. The
author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has
created a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has
been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their
agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race.
Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious
practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This
web site marks the founding of a system of philosophy named The Truth of the
Way of Life - a rational gnostic mystery religion based on reason which
requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no church
buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to develop a
personal relation with the Creator and Sustainer through the pursuit of the
knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that has
enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of Life are
spelled out in detail on this web site by the author. Violent acts against
individuals due to their religious beliefs in America is considered a "hate
crime."
This web site in no way condones violence. To the contrary the
intent here is to reduce the violence that is already occurring due to the
international corporate cartels desire to control the human race. The
international corporate cartel already controls the world economic system,
corporate media worldwide, the global industrial military entertainment complex
and is responsible for the collapse of morals, the elevation of self-centered
behavior and the destruction of global ecosystems. Civilization is based on
cooperation. Cooperation does not occur at the point of a gun.
American
social mores and values have declined precipitously over the last century as
the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and more power. This power
rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general through corporate media
by pressing emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population
through prior corporate media psychological operations. The results have been
the destruction of the family and the destruction of social structures that do
not adhere to the corrupt international elites vision of
a perfect world. Through distraction and
coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the population has been
directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt international elite that
further consolidates their power and which further their purposes.
All
views and opinions presented on this web site are the views and opinions of
individual human men and women that, through their writings, showed the
capacity for intelligent, reasonable, rational, insightful and unpopular
thought. All factual information presented on this web site is believed to be
true and accurate and is presented as originally presented in print media which
may or may not have originally presented the facts truthfully. Opinion and
thoughts have been adapted, edited, corrected, redacted, combined, added to,
re-edited and re-corrected as nearly all opinion and thought has been
throughout time but has been done so in the spirit of the original writer with
the intent of making his or her thoughts and opinions clearer and relevant to
the reader in the present time.
Fair Use Notice
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has
not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making
such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal
justice, human rights, political, economic, democratic, scientific, and social
justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For
more information see: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to
use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond
'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
 Copyright
© Lawrence Turner
All Rights Reserved
|