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USA: MIA
By Nancy Greggs
All of us have been there. Your grandparents start a conversation with the words, “Why, when I was a kid …,” and you and your siblings roll your eyes in the universal sign language for “here we go again.”
For those of us of a certain age, this conversation was usually about walking fifty miles to school and back each day, especially trying because the trip was somehow uphill in both directions.
They talked about surviving the Depression and World War II, and how these kids nowadays never learned the value of a dollar.
But there was a difference in what my grandparents – and their grandparents – said then, and what is being said now about the American Dream and what one had to do to attain it. Because in their day, the American Dream still existed.
Their’s was a time when parents scrimped and saved to send at least one child to college, a sure ticket to a good-paying job that included benefits and a pension you could rely on in your old age. Their’s was a time when hard work at the factory or the textile mill was rewarded with promotions and raises. Their’s was a time when a farmer could take his son out to view the vast acres of wheat or corn and say, “Someday, all of this will be yours,” and it was statement full of promise.
Today we live in a different, more complex world, but the American Dream – to pass on to our children, and to our children’s children, the hope of a better life for themslves, and a stronger nation for all children – is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
How many American parents are now sacrificing to get a child through college, where they are garnering expertise in a job market that will end up in China or India by the time they complete their studies? How many American students will never make it to college, because their parents are too financially-strapped to send them? How many proud fathers won’t be able to secure a job at the local mill for a son or daugther, because the mill was moved to Mexico? How many proud parents won’t be able to pass on the family farm that took generations to build, because they cannot compete with the mega-agricultural corporations that are putting their kind out of business?
And so I find myself falling into the pattern of saying to my children, “Why, when I was a kid …”
When I was a kid, growing up with the Edward R. Murrows and the Walter Cronkites, I never thought I’d turn on the TV someday and see their alleged successors spouting the talking points of a particular political idealogy to the exclusion of reporting the real news. I never thought I would regard print journalism as propaganda, rather than as a dissemination of fact. I never thought I’d see my nation’s lawmakers not only allow a president to blantantly break the law and dismiss our Constitution, but actually support him in doing so.
I never thought I would see the day when American jobs would disappear on a daily basis and my government would not only turn a blind eye to the inevitable consequences, but would actually reward those responsible with tax breaks.
I never thought I would read the morning news on a home computer – nor did I foresee the day that it would be the only source of honest reporting. I, who grew up during the Cold War and was told the horror stories of the lack of a free press in Russia, never envisioned that such a situation would exist in my own beloved country – land of the free, home of the brave.
“When I was a kid …” It has a different meaning now when I say it than when my grandparents said it. I’m not talking about the hard work it takes to grasp the American Dream. I’m talking about the fact that the American Dream is no longer within the grasp of millions of Americans – not due to some outside force, some enemy nation or idealogy, but due to the people we elected to represent our best interests, and their willingness to sell out their fellow citizens for political gain – or, much worse, for the promise of a few bucks shoved into their own pockets.
I once lived in a moral America, where the bad guy was the other guy – the one who tortured, who imprisoned without legal recourse, who obfuscated the truth and dispatched his opponents to the gulags, the work camps – the Guantamo Bays. When did we become that guy, and why is no one even bothering to ask?
We, as a nation, were never perfect. But there was a time when we strove to form a more perfect union, rather than a means by which to divide it. We once pursued life, liberty and happiness for all, and not the chosen few. We once moved forward with each generation and each administration, in a never-ending effort to bequeath to our progeny a nation better than the one we had inherited, but not nearly as good as the one our children would bequeath to theirs.
And I keep wondering where those ideals have gone. I keep wondering why there are question marks hanging in the air about whether my elected government was duly elected, questions about their truthfulness, questions about their ability to govern – and why so few are demanding answers.
I keep wondering why the children of my contemporaries are dying on the other side of the world in an undeclared war whose mission no one can truly explain. I keep wondering why a city in Iraq must be made secure, regardless of the cost in dollars or human lives, when a hurricane-ravaged American city was deemed not worth saving.
I keep wondering why the health and education of the upcoming generation of Americans is seen as a drain on our resources, rather than the foundation which our country must sustain in order to survive.
I keep wondering about our grandchildren, and whether they will roll their eyes when we talk about remembering the olden days, totally ignorant of the fact that when our grandparents talked about the American Dream, it was considered to be not only attainable, but was our birthright.
I remember my history teachers, back in the ‘sixties, talking about the eventual demise of the United States. They pointed to the Roman Empire and the British Empire, and other nations once thought to be invincible, only to expire with the passing of time and the changes wrought by human history.
I didn’t want to believe it would happen to my own country – and if it did, certainly not in my lifetime, nor that of my children’s children’s children. But lately it seems that ending is not only inevitable, but imminent.
It is one thing to watch my country die by natural causes. It is quite another to see it end by way of suicide, as those who have been entrusted with her care and wellbeing slice a razor through her veins, and watch her bleed out without so much as shedding a single tear.
“Why, when I was a kid …” I say that to my American son now. I wonder if, when he tells his children there was such a thing as the American Dream, they will roll their eyes and think he’s just another crazy old man, holding on to something that only exists in the memories of those who insanely claim it was once a reality.
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