The American Dream Machine Is Broken

An update on US Midterm Elections
was added on November 4/5, 2018.



Nameless painting by Weronika Gęsicka from her series "Traces" (2017), adopted by
the French paper "Le Monde Diplomatique" for their article published in August 2018


Why Donald Trump seduced the popular electorate

The Anatomy of Rightist Anger

In a very poor American state like Louisiana, stained by oil spills, a majority of the population votes for Republican candidates hostile to social benefits and environmental protection.

Sociologist, leftist woman, Arlie Hochschild investigated this paradox. A few months later, Donald Trump won the day in Louisiana.

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The dream machine is out of order.

Among the images of black people rooted in the spirit of the people I met, one was missing: that of a woman or a man who, like them [i.e the underprivileged white people], was just waiting for their efforts. The deep story told by whites, Christians, the elderly or the reactionaries of Louisiana nonetheless responded to a real trauma. On the one hand, the national ideal of the American dream, that is to say of progress. On the other, a growing difficulty to progress.

For the "lower" population, nine out of ten Americans, the dream machine installed on the invisible side of the hill no longer works, decommissioned by automation, offshoring and the exorbitant power of multinationals over their workforce . Within this very large group, competition between whites and non-whites has become increasingly fierce - whether for employment, for a place in society or for allowances.

The failure of the dream machine dates back to 1950. People born before that date saw their incomes grow as they grew older. For those born later, it is the opposite.

The article reprinted by "Le Monde Diplomatique" in August 2018 was originally written by Arlie Hochschild, sociologist at the University of California in Berkely.

The quoted article compares different pictures of the American society taken at different moments in modern history, each of them describing the prevailing way of social identification within a certain group of the American workforce.

Such pictures reflect a continuous loss of speed in the economic and social progress for an essential part of the white population until that progress finally stopped to give way to a continuous deterioration of life conditions. Simultaneously, all hope for a decent life has melted away from one generation to the next.

In other words, the American Dream Machine has come to a grinding halt for the underprivileged members of America's working class who lack a higher education and, as a result, lost any chance to improve their situation, those who now see themselves being overtaken by all kinds of "free riders", i.e. coloured shooting stars like Obama and his clan, Latino immigrants or the gay who are now competing with the traditional model of a heterosexual family.

Now, this underprivileged group has found their Messiah in a rough and uneducated man who seems to be one of them as he addresses their problems in a rude manner that each of his followers would have liked to copy but never dared.

This man, named Donald Trump, is attracting his followers even more by his posture as an extremely successful businessman who never lost his common sense, such presenting himself as an ideal leader of the chanceless and underprivileged "true" Americans and, therefore, as a personified symbol for the American Dream.

This, however, is a fake. In fact, Donald Trump was born with a golden spoon in his mouth and which made him immune against the challenges of earning his living with some hard work while competing with others who might be more talented.

All he needs to ensure his well-being is to care that his father's money is not too fast melted away by whatever foolish enterprise he might have in mind. Unable to compete with more successful members of the "millionaire class" because of his lack of education and/or experience in the real struggle for economic survival, he remains a loser within his own class of the American society, - a man you are now being asked to support in the midterm elections where so much is at stake for your country.

- Ulysses 2018 -

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A real simple guide to the US mid-term elections by BBC News

美国2018年中期选举选什么? 选举重点提前看 [人民网11月5日]




[Global News, Canada, on November 4, 2018]


In their article published on October 22, 2018, "USA Today" came to the estimation that poorest federal states have Republican legislatures and richest have Democratic ones and which is to be seen as the result of a historic development. Such development already began decades ago when just the contrary was true.

Seen in the frame of the above quoted evaluation by a Berkeley sociologist, it seems that political orientation never changed while degradation of life was taking place for the white majority, and the idea of the American Dream turned from a realistic personal challenge into a far distant "sugar candy mountain".

In addition, a changing demography brought about the increasing influence of national minorities who are now claiming their right to vote, thus endangering the local political establishment with their tendency to vote for a Democratic legislature.

That seems to be why local Republican authorities are trying to do their best to purge colored citizens from election rolls, a fact that surfaced, once again, in the 2018 midterms and is being reported by international media [i.e. Al-Jazeera on November 5].