Disclaimer: Optimists and Idealists beware.
According to our friends at Wikipedia, "The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success." This idea has sustained itself through the centuries, and even American Family Insurance is running a campaign right now asking consumers to vote on whether the American Dream is in fact real.
I'd love to be blogging about something interesting happening in my comings and goings today, but seeing as I'm sitting in a live tomb right now, the odds are strikingly low. This same observation about my day leads me to give American Family Insurance my answer.
It doesn't seem to me that freedom includes this so-called "promise". At least it definitely doesn't guarantee it. Not to mention it's only the promise of a possibility. What kind of odds are those? In light of recent events in my job search, relocation, interviewing, and more interviewing, it seems that opportunity is presented to a certain demographic, or that there appears to be a certain "factor" employers are looking for. Education and ability alone does not prosperity make--because if that were the case I'd be rich and successful. Instead, I"m interviewing for jobs that offer a pittance of a salary despite the requirement for higher education and experience, or offer to give me the dementor's kiss in exchange for a day at their office.
I'm fully convinced that women are not given the same opportunities as men, people of color not give the same opportunities as Whites, large people not given the same opportunities as thin, and older people not the same opportunity as young. America has morphed in to a society of -isms, and those values subsequently and largely categorize your range of ability within your own sphere to capture this so-called dream.
This may mean that having any hope or dream at all in the face of this kind of reality is pretty slim.
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