I was born, raised, and lived in the US until the age of
twenty-four when a certain wanderlust took over. That thirst since quenched, I have settled in
Poland, and now only occasionally visit the country. The result is a contrasting perspective
whenever I visit: almost twenty years having passed, the US I grew up in is not
the US I see now. Besides technology, one
of the biggest differences is the erosion of the middle-class into the
lower-class—the upper class absorbing the gap in wealth. On the surface you cannot see this: people
still drive new cars and have the latest model cell phones. It’s the knowledge that banks actually own
the majority of this is where the difference lies. The majority of Americans now living almost
their entire lives in debt, a kind of neo-feudalism can be observed, bringing
about the question: is the American Dream of owning the white picket fence, two
car garage and a dog named Rover still alive?
Noam Chomsky in his Requiem for
the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power (2016) takes his view.
A blunt critique of the American system, Requiem for the American Dream is a
concise outlay of the American economic, financial, political, and social
system as it stands today in relation to the past 100 years. Chomsky postulating that the few contrive to
maintain political and economic power over the many, the scene framed is
difficult to deny. Citing quotes from
writers of the constitution all the way to Donald Trump, Chomsky lays down the
ten principles he believes are key to ensuring the system predominantly
benefits those in power. From another
perspective, it is Chomsky’s views distilled into the most basic elements.
No cow sacred, Chomsky throws a number of revered American
beliefs onto the pyre. Included in this is the idea of democracy in the
US. Despite the doctrination to the
opposite, Chomsky posits it exists only in very limited form. Citing several major instances of popular
public opinion as it contrasts Washington’s decisions, he puts the big
multi-nationals and their lobbyists square in the cross-hairs of explaining the
difference. Chomsky in turn damns the
tried and true form of government known as lobbying as cronyism. And lastly, as the title suggests, that the
American dream of a person building themselves from the ground up is almost
entirely lost to the interests of multi-national profit-seeking and government
collusion. He believes it is still possible,
but nothing like the scale it once was given pace and greed with which larger
business absorb the smaller. One of the
interesting examples cited in this ase is the number of people who voted for
Obama believing he would change the system, then switched teams and voted for
Trump believing he too would be able to change the system, when in fact both
simply want to keep the good ol’ boys system in place, the dream of something
more for the common man evidently futile given the opposite direction which reality
is moving.
In the end, Requiem
for the American Dream is a sampler platter of criticism of the American
political system and its handling of economics, democratic rights, and social
issues. As such, it operates as an
excellent gateway into Chomsky’s books. (Concise, it is, in fact, a
“transcript” of the television documentary of the same name.) Light reading (for what the expression is
worth in the context of the most critical aspects of America’s financial and
political future), the scholarly reader will be begging for more references (which
are available in Chomsky’s more in-depth books, but not here) while the casual
reader will have much food for thought given that the reality Chomsky describes
is evident all around us. Or, as Chomsky would have it, the classic American dream now appears more in the pipe than in reality. Thus, regardless
of political leaning or whether or not the reader believes Chomsky to be right
or wrong, Requiem for the American Dream
is a book worth reading.
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