It has come to my recent awareness that—at the risk of this sounding as negative as it sounds—the American Dream is dead.
Or at best, comatose for the foreseeable future.
I mean, to start with, the foundation’s cracked. Seismically cracked. In this case, the foundation is the planet itself. With the worst, most devastating natural disaster in history unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico right before our very eyes (and being breathed into our very lungs), the damage the offspring of the Industrial Revolution has wrought upon this formerly flawless blue jewel known as Earth becomes even more evident. Each new day more shocking photos emerge of oil-drenched pelicans and other wildlife; dolphins washed ashore, choked to death by thick oily, murky water; and beautiful beaches where sands are now permanently and hideously stained with residues of black gold. These unprecidented conditions are most telling not only of modern corporate society’s apparent staggering technological inefficiency for resolve but its general position of environmental indifference.
And that certainly is not the whole of it. Long before BP Petroleum lost control of its offshore drilling operations to give birth to a problem which may actually irreparably destroy an entire ocean (if not more), man-made pollution had already claimed the skies, with Houston now sharing the honor with cities like Los Angeles for this nation’s least-healthy breathable air. Emissions from millions upon millions of automobiles daily filling the thousands of miles of roads and freeways across the country add to the volume of pollution already promoting respiratory distress, choking out life at the cellular level. Factories continue to pump smog into the atmosphere; non-biodegradable cleaning products, paints, and other chemicals continue to be flushed and poured into our sewage systems; landfills have become full of the waste they were intended to be filled with so that more land is needed to fill with more unending tonnage of waste; nuclear power plant accidents leave animals, vegetation, the soil, and people with radiation-induced damage, illnesses, and deformities.
Modern corporate farming has sprayed pesticides and utilized synthetic fertilizers to such a degree that nutrient-rich soil necessary for agriculture has become nutrient-depleted, resulting in the need to fortify vegetables and fruit—post harvest—with the very vitamins and minerals they were originally grown for in the first place.
Natural water reservoirs have been poisoned by chemicals and radioactive particles having seeped into the ground, making tap-water not only unpleasant to smell and drink for most people, but unhealthy for consumption or use in general. Dangerous levels of mercury, lead, and other toxins can be found in much of the seafood we eat, particularly shellfish from the Atlantic ocean. Thank god we can still run to Walmart and buy a few gallons of distilled water, or we’d really be in deep shit.
And now there’s talk of cell phones causing brain tumors. No, wait, I remember that threat was brought out in the 90′s before it was swept under the rug by the telecommunications industry. That was always a personal concern of mine, a signal powerful enough to reach a relay tower miles away blasting through my head from a cell phone. Zero tissue damage from that? I was never convinced it was OK, and now new studies indicate that paranoid I was not.
And the food supply. Let’s not even talk about the food supply. Actually, that’s exactly what we need to talk about, as this is likely the thing killing more Americans than any single other threat. A physical trainer would look at me today and perhaps think, “He could stand to lose a few pounds.” That’s because I’m still losing weight, coming from a top weight of 360 pounds. I have lost over 140 pounds since I stopped believing that everything the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved was actually safe to eat, real world. With GMO meats, produce, and farm-raised seafood now filling the supermarket shelves, the natural balance of what the Universe intended us to digest has been thrown significantly off. The main culprit ingredient I removed from my diet was high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), an addictive sweetener and food preservative which I was shocked to learn was literally in everything I was eating and drinking. Sodas, pastries, breads, candy, pastas, chips, sports drinks, even some of the expensive healthy superfood products contain HFCS on the ingredients list. Famous author (and apparent enemy of the state) Kevin Trudeaux has said that the term “natural flavors” was really a phrase manufacturers could use to include HFCS in a product and not say it directly. HFCS is what provides the flavorful explosion that soft drinks, candies, cakes and other treats tantalize the tongue with. The biological problem with HFCS, however, is that the human body was not designed to process the chemical structure of this product, causing a slow but steady breakdown of the immune system at the cellular level. The unfortunate outcome of years of consuming this additive is sickness and debilitation, which, of course, the drug companies have designed a pill or some other form of medical treatment which they will be glad to charge either you or your insurance company a fortune to take care of.
That’s assuming the drug actually works before one of its side effects takes you out first.
Finally, my heart goes out to all of the hard working, good citizens who, in an effort to provide more for their families, found themselves thrown out into the streets of the United States of America after relentless disasters of mortgage failure. I was taken aback when I first read of tent cities going up in LA and other great urban locations. While families suffered and struggled to find a safe place for their children to eat and sleep, having seen scenes of neighborhoods of empty houses—either going up, foreclosed, or breaking down from repair needs—caused me to realize something had silently gone terribly wrong with this great Democracy. Unemployment continues to soar at dangerously high levels, the credit system is under jeopardy as charge-offs increase while customers go broke, and good jobs are being sent overseas for cheaper labor as domestic food lines grow longer. As our economy in general continues to nosedive (with not a single strong sign that it can stabilize anytime soon) while other major currencies struggle for their very existence, my guess is that it will take nothing short of a complete miracle for light to even appear at the end of this tunnel of global catastrophe.
Thanks, corporate gods and gurus, you’ve really done a bang-up job. I think it’s safe to say that the people of the great US of A and the world at large are officially banged up. The foundations of our great societies across the globe are most definitely damaged.
And what kind of lasting structure can be erected if the foundation isn’t stable?
Perhaps The New American Dream . . .
