Cars 2

It's been a little over a month since my last blog entry on the American Dream, and not much has changed on my end. I still appreciate the idea that you can achieve success simply by working hard and I think it's a good thing that our country has collectively decided to give such an important value so much lip service.

But there are some damaging effects too. When people conclude that working hard equals success and not working hard equals not success, the obvious conclusion is that poor people are poor because they're lazy and rich people are rich because they're driven. And that would be the case in a perfect meritocracy. The unfortunate truth is that we don't live in a perfect meritocracy.

So you end up with a lot of people who work hard and some people "make it" but most don't, and that divides people pretty quickly. Many of the people who "make it" conclude that they have something - brains, discipline, great hair - that the poor people don't. You'll hear politicians talk about it all the time. John Boehner went onto 60 Minutes a few years ago and cried while he talked about how he worked his way up from being a janitor. The theme of the latest RNC was "We Built It". In reference to the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income tax, Mitt Romney said "My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

The implication is that these people - almost half the country - don't end up paying income tax because they're inferior, and therefore we shouldn't worry about them. That's an awful way of looking at the world, and it's enabled by the belief that if poor people would just work harder they'd be more successful.

The Cars

The American Dream is alive and well. Its rationality is questionable but the idea that we can, through hard work and maybe a little luck, move our family up the social ladder, is still prevelant. Current political rhetoric is filled with references to the meritocracy that we are supposed to aspire to (We Built It, bootstraps, social safety net/crutch, etc.). The titles of this post and my blog, once again, are ripped from a song about the American Dream.

A lot of people will say that to them the American Dream means white picket fences, a chicken in every pot, and an unhealthy fear of the displaced. Neighborhoods, as Ernest Hemingway put it, "of wide lawns and narrow minds". But to me the American Dream is a little bit more broad and much more personal. To me the American Dream means giving your children a better chance at happiness than you had. That could mean a more stable home, a better financial position, or a bigger rolodex. I've seen the American Dream play out before my eyes as I've watched my father's career and rise to a much higher level of affluence than our family has seen. As a kid I listened to my dad's keyboard tic-tack until past midnight every weekend and we've had to cancel trips to Orioles games or walks to the park because he had to be on an urgent conference call. His American Dream required sacrifices. It usually does.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaanyways. That's what the American Dream is to me. We'll see if this has changed in a few weeks.

Empty and Aching

As a high school junior preparing for college I appear to have reached a crossroads in my life. If I work hard for the next year and a half I'll make it to whatever college I want (tuition not withstanding) and from there I can pursue every intellectual subject under the sun. This, of course, is a favorite topic of adults in my life who would like me to achieve whatever their definition of success is. Parents and grandparents and family friends who truly want me to do well in life often ask me what I plan to do in life, and to be honest it's a fair question. The problem is I have no idea.

Well, that's no completely true. I have some idea. I have binders full of ideas, in fact. That's one of the problems. Paralysis by choice is not something that I expected to have to deal with when I began my search for a career at four years old. I thought it was either baseball player, astronaut, or firefighter and everything else was for boring people with no ambition. But here I am now, not playing baseball or studying astronomy or doing whatever people do to become a firefighter. Instead I'm writing this blog post two weeks late because I procrastinate on everything that doesn't have whatever I consider "meaning" (i.e. serious entertainment value). I, who in pre-k complained to my parents about not being given worksheets and instead being expected to enjoy sandboxes, have completely lost everything that I love about school. As a result the idea of subjecting myself to four more years of "learning"' (seven if I go to grad school) is, frankly, horrifying.

Theoretically school should be something that I thoroughly enjoy. Take poetry, for example. Before last year's english class, my experience with poems was limited to the ones in the margins of New Yorker articles and song lyrics. And I love analyzing lyrics. The name of my blog is a reference to a song. So is, I've just decided, the title of this blog post. But for some reason poetry just didn't click. We read Long Legged Fly by W.B. Yeats and it just didn't connect with me the way Paul Simon and Mark Knopfler could. I quickly became incredibly cynical towards poetry and ruined the whole experience for myself. And then a strange thing happened. Two days after school ended I showed my mom the poetry we had studied. While I was reading Long Legged Fly to her it hit me. Hard. Suddenly I appreciated how beautiful poetry is and how my english teacher could stand to teach it over and over and over again. It was like without the context of an impending quiz or exam or in-class discussion I had the opportunity to let the poem live in a way that could only happen out of genuine curiosity.

So here I am, heading towards the type of dull life that people who aren't baseball players, astronauts, or firefighters live. It is no coincidence that none of the things I'd like to pursue were learned in school. There are a lot of them. History, particularly the way culture has evolved is fascinating to me and it ties in with one of my other interests as well (social science). I also love statistics. This comes as a result of my lifetime of baseball fanaticism and all the Moneyball-types of performance measurements that come along with the National Pasttime. But most of all I want to major in philosophy. There are a multitude of reasons to love a philosophy major in college and exactly one to hate it (finances). If we lived in a communist society or I won the lottery I would totally try to get a job teaching philosophy and publishing my own work at a college. But I'm worried about actually pursuing any of those interests because I am fairly sure that they would be completely ruined by a structured education. Philosophy and Lit is offered at my school as an english elective, and I'd love to learn all about it. But I don't want to make one of my hobbies work. So when I'm asked what I want to do with my life I usually pass it off with a joke like "win the lottery" or "become a rapper", depending on the audience. I just have no idea what in the world wouldn't be ruined by school.

Maybe some day I'll find my "calling" or whatever everyone says you should pursue. Until then I'll be playing Mega Millions.

Traditiooooooooooooooon! Tradition!

Religion has been an important part of my whole life. My parents met in Israel as they attempted to make sense of the Baptist teachings they had been following in their pre-adult lives. My mother graduated from Philadelphia Biblical University, where her father was the headmaster, with a degree in Bible studies. My father was adopted by missionaries who raised their child in the only religious practice they had ever known. Both of my parents stopped going to church after the divorce until I dragged my mom back because I thought I would go to hell for sleeping in on Sunday.

My parents and I are the only people in my entire extended family who don't regularly attend church, and the split from the church life was a difficult one. It wasn't hard because of the theology - both of them had struggled to reconcile the differences between scripture and what they considered to be right. And it wasn't because of any actual pressure from family. It was so hard to leave because of the community that they were losing. After the divorce my mom and I lived for a whole month off of green-bean casserole brought to us by concerned members of the congregation. I still celebrate Easter with my cousins every year. And every December I listen intently as my grandfather reads his favorite sections of Luke, Matthew, Mark, and John. I no longer believe in the divinity of Christ or in the Virgin Birth, but there's something to be gained in the shared experience that religion gives. The power of community that religion holds is one of the reasons for the rise of the far right.

My grandparents visited last weekend. A few years ago they moved from their house in the picturesque mountains of Tennessee to the cul-de-sacs of a Christian retirement home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They've always been heavily involved in the Evangelical Christian community and it turns out that a good number of their friends have moved into the same retirement home. Lately the dinner talk has been all about catching up with old friends. Matthew Hooper is a pastor now in Florida and Saul McGuire has gone to Indonesia for a missionary trip and on, and on, and on. Everyone in their universe believes the same thing they do.

And everyone my cousins know goes to their megachurch, and my grandpa on my dad's side has stuck with his church because its his support group. For the believers I know religion is more than the beliefs outlined in their favorite book of the Bible. Its everyone they know and everywhere they go and almost everything they think about. This phenomenon is not limited to Christianity either. I have friends who are "culturally Jewish". I've attended the mitzvahs of people who don't believe in the Burning Bush or Noah's Ark.

So naturally as the internet and cable give us the choice to listen to our own opinion dressed in a suit the religious right has become just as polarized as the rest of the nation. Some of my relatives in Indiana think the idea of evolution is just as preposterous as most Friends students consider creationism. Religion is even more potent because along with it comes the baggage of the afterlife, morality, and the meaning of life.

A belief in a strict set of rules and the relative ignorance of any opposing viewpoint ends up stirring a great deal of people up. Just ask Australia.

Hamilton and Jefferson and that whole deal

The clash between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson is one that is bound to reenacted by humanity until some obscure ancient civilization correctly predicts the end of the world. Hamilton was the rich "London insider" who had experience in the financial sector and insisted that he was correct while Jefferson was an idealistic Renaissance man who, in the matter of principles, stood like a rock. The image of Jefferson is endlessly more appealing; he did, according to urban legend, invent the swivel chair.

And Hamilton struggled to connect with both his peers and the average American. He is often hailed as the father of Wall Street, which wouldn't exactly poll very well today. He often placed himself in the company of Tories and managed to eventually draw the ire of the American public despite his large contributions to the revolution. Burr was celebrated as a hero for killing Hamilton.

So how come we as a country bear a striking resemblance to the society Hamilton fought so fiercely to create? Hamilton wanted a strong federal government and a thriving financial sector while Jefferson preferred an agriculture-based economy supported by fiercely independent states. Today the federal government maintains a standing army and prints the money that is circulated, for the most part, by a stock exchange without even one ear of corn within 10 miles. Jefferson concluded that "a rich country cannot long be a free one". As of 2010 the United States had the largest GDP in the world; more than twice the second largest (China).

Hamilton's ideas won out in the end even though Jefferson is one of the most beloved figures in American history. You could say Jefferson was a dreamer but he certainly isn't the only one. One of the main ideas behind Rick Perry's campaign was that states should be the "laboratories" of the country, that no government can properly address the issues on a federal level, and... uhhh.... oops.

So who knows? Maybe one day we will see a Jeffersonian America. Until then his followers will have to settle for the nickel.