America has always seemed to be more than a country or a nation. Peopled primarily by white migrants from Europe, it has also been an idea, i.e. that anyone regardless of his/her social origins can achieve success in the form of a better life through hard work, initiative and enterprise. This noble sentiment, however, excluded America’s indigenous population and the slaves who were brought from Africa from the early 17th century onwards. Hence, in a more modern sense the American Dream was ‘damaged goods’ from the very beginning. But nonetheless there was a palpable sense in which both America itself and many outside its borders believed that America was, indeed, a land in which they could pursue their dreams. A surrounding narrative built round the dream was that of the rugged individual who overcame daunting odds and built the nation - as arriving migrants moved westwards towards California then under Spanish rule – not forgetting the helping hand given to them by the Homestead Act of 1860 in which land was given for free to those white migrants prepared to move westward regardless of whether any indigenous people lived on the land or not. 

These self-created narratives were fortified by the extraordinary propaganda machine that was Hollywood after World War I. Prior to Hollywood it was America itself that had created this narrative via the inscription on the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island that said ‘Give me your tired, your poor,/ Your huddled masses yearning to be free’. Although even in 1860 the inscription was not completely true, the real souring that the title of this piece alludes to has occurred within a more recent time, say, in the immediate post-World War II years, and the inclusion of human rights in the United Nations Charter. History does not move in discrete steps; it moves through its own dynamics through the interaction of events and forces, sometimes at a leisurely pace and sometimes rapidly. There is no single cause-effect process that can explain what has happened in America; instead, multilayered processes consisting of many causes and many effects over a century and a half have brought it about. Hollywood propaganda alone cannot overcome the lived experiences of people. The seeds for the souring that we are witnessing today must have been sown many years ago in American history. 

Most observers contend that the idea of the American dream grew out of the notion embodied in the ‘pursuit of happiness’ that the Declaration of Independence explicitly stated in 1776 would form the core of the Declaration in the form of liberty from British rule. In 1876, a hundred years after the founding of the United States of America, and a decade or so after the ending of the Civil War, possibly the bloodiest event in American history in which hundreds of thousands on both sides were killed or maimed, there were few, if any, celebrations to mark such an important milestone for the nation. The nation was still coming to terms not only with the carnage that occurred in the Civil War itself but with the fundamentally opposing views of the American polity that had inexorably led to the War itself. These were about the institution of slavery and whether slavery was compatible with the ideas of liberty that had become, at least rhetorically, an integral part of the American psyche with the formation of the United States of America in 1776 and its independence from British rule. The question was whether the rightly acclaimed ideal of freedom was not just an abstraction but available equally to slaves and to the dispossessed native Americans. 

The myriad jobs lost in industry as a result are being replaced by low-skill and low-paying jobs in distribution in which employees live a precarious existence.

The myriad jobs lost in industry as a result are being replaced by low-skill and low-paying jobs in distribution in which employees live a precarious existence.

By 1976, the issue of slavery per se no longer exercised the country, except in the old Confederate states and organisations like the Ku Klux Klan, but civil rights for the country’s black citizens did. Thus, despite the apparent successes of the civil rights movement of the 1960s some hundred years after the Civil War, such as affirmative action, it nonetheless constituted unfinished business for the country and though not as egregious as Apartheid in South Africa it was a blot on the nation’s reputation. In addition, the Vietnamese war (1965-73) in which American armed might had suffered a humiliating defeat and the miasma of the Watergate scandal that had forced the elected President, Richard Nixon, to resign in ignominy had dealt severe blows to the nation’s self-esteem. These events only compounded a palpable sense of despondency, if not of failure, in the country in 1975 and 1976. The American nation was therefore hardly in a mood to celebrate. Indeed, the prevailing mood, far from being celebratory, was one of introspection and the future was looked upon with a sense of foreboding. America’s view of itself as the shining city on the hill and faith in the American dream had clearly suffered a massive setback despite the enormous wealth of the country.  

Today, a further fifty years later, the nation again looks at itself joylessly with a lack of pride. Faith in the American dream of endless progress barely registers in the public imagination. Yes, the country continues to do well according to measures........

© The Friday Times