Restoring the American dream

Photo credit: Lynne Gilbert/Getty Images

The collapse of faith in American democracy is derivative of a collapse of trust between the American people and a critical mass of vital institutions. The collapse is vast, and applies broadly across political, media, corporate, social, and religious institutions. There seems to be one set of rules for people at the top and one for everyone else. 

There are staggering percentages of Americans who are grinding through a daily struggle to barely hang on. Forty percent of Americans have less than $400 cash savings available in case of an emergency. According to a recent CNBC poll, 58 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

Stunning numbers face hunger as a daily stress because food insecurity is a constant and hovering presence. Vast percentages are ill-housed and unsafe from an epidemic of violence and corruption.

Tens of millions of Americans are unbanked, meaning they can’t open a passbook savings account. They are consigned to the predatory whims of the paycheck lending industry, which projects undiminished growth in the decades ahead.

Over one million Americans have been killed by opioids. Millions more have been shattered because of them. They were killed by greed and corruption. Across a vast landscape the towns and cities that powered the American economy through much of the 20th century sit forlorn, dilapidated, rusted and forgotten. Within them are the crumbling remnants and dreams of what had been — with no hope that anything will ever be as good again.

Millions of Americans have lost their dignity, then their faith, and next, their hope. They stopped believing that their children would have more freedom and opportunity than they did. Many stopped saving, investing, building and planning for tomorrow because there was no tomorrow for which to plan. Just getting by means surviving the next moment, and then the next, and the next after that, for millions of Americans. Thinking beyond the present is less a luxury and more a fantasy for scores of Americans.

Something profound has been taken away from these Americans — and it must be restored. What has been taken from them was their faith in the American dream. Its restoration should be at the heart of a reform era of American politics that revitalizes institutions, rebuilds trust and empowers the American people to pursue happiness, prosperity and stability for their families and our shared descendants. There must be a reawakening of the American spirit that is grounded in the nation’s highest ideals and promises. Like before, it is time to renew the dream that can never die so long as America endures.