Kamala, Tim, and the (Revival of) the American Dream

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Kamala’s joy and Coach Tim’s fierce vulnerability. Their energy’s transforming America. They’re teaching Americans a new way to be. That way is about…

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, perhaps. Think of Coach Tim’s life, riven by tragedy, and how he stood firm through the struggles, and grew into the man he is. Life. Think of what it means for a half-Black half-brown woman to be President. Liberty. And think of what their message resounds with. What their proposition is to Americans.

Happiness. That everyone deserves to be as joyously as Kamala, or to have the strength to overcome life’s tragedies, like Tim. Not just the rich, fortunate, well-born, or powerful. That’s a subtle, mature form of happiness, too.

This is the stuff of the American Dream. Remember that?

Leadership and the American Dream

We’ve reached the point where pundits are beginning to demand detailed policy from Kamala and Tim. But this is sort of a non-question. There’s no context to it. Policy, after all, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You get the sense that pundits would nod eagerly along with any ultra-detailed policy, or play gotcha games over eminently sensible ones, too. 

Before policy comes The Paradigm. What’s a leader, or a set of them, going to do? That’s always shaped by what they hope to achieve. 

That brings us squarely back to the American Dream.

How’s the Dream doing? Dead or alive? Let’s take a look at it, courtesy of some very interesting new data from NORC, at the University of Chicago. It breaks down various components of the Dream that people tend to rate as important. The numbers in percentages are roughly what percent people think this goal is “easy to achieve,” or within reach.

I’d say those statistics look pretty dire. The key components of the Dream feel shatteringly unattainable for many. Just 10% of people think home ownership is easy enough to achieve? Just 9% of people think they’re effectively going to retire easily? Just 8% of people think financial security’s within easy reach?

America often have a debate these days about the economy. Is it good? Is it bad? Pundits and their friends will line up to tell everyone that the economy’s good, awesome, wonderful. Many disagree. I find myself siding with…the data. But not in a simplistic way. It’s easy to say that “the economy’s booming” when GDP’s growing and unemployment’s low. 

But when the Dream is this far out of reach, should we really conclude that those measures are telling us something meaningful? Or should we perhaps begin to think at a deeper level about why people are frustrated and disappointed not just with the economy, but with their ruling class, with pundits, with the press, with politics?

The Number One Challenge America Faces

I’m not here to litigate the old debate about the economy being good or bad. I’m outnumbered by pundits, and so are you, and they’re always going to win, because they shout the loudest. All I’ll say is that if in an economy this “good,” the Dream is this far out of reach, then perhaps the bar is too low.

This is the context for America’s next set of leaders. This is the Number One Challenge they—and America—face. The Dream. Dead? Alive? I’d say maybe: comatose. And it needs to be revived. 

What happens when a society’s dreams shatter and die? Historically speaking, bad things happen. Dark visions replace those broken dreams. 

The American Dream was about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As it faded and shattered, what happened? Trump came along, and seduced his flock with a new vision. A nightmare, more than a dream. It wasn’t about you living your life, but taking away personhood from others. It wasn’t about liberty, but taking basic rights and freedoms away from all, right down to the peaceful transfer of power, privacy, and more. And it wasn’t about happiness—but about spite, hate, vengeance, violence.

See the inversions there?

How Fascism Rises, or, What Happens When a Society’s Dreams Shatter?

So as a society’s dreams die, in frustration, hurt, rage, it succumbs to darkness, all too often. Darker dreams replace the better ones, visions of vengeance or blood-and-soil or purity. This is a pattern of history, of course, from Ancient Rome to the Weimar Republic to many modern cycles of violence.

This is why America’s Number One Challenge is reviving the Dream. It isn’t just a kind of moral imperative, though there’s certainly that. It’s also that this opportunity should be taken. Right now, as we recently discussed, America’s making history. The tea leaves of macro trends say that the fascists and authoritarians should be winning. But they’re not. America’s doing something remarkable, uniting behind Kamala and Tim. But the point of this movement can and should be to revive the dream, and put an end to the cheap seductions of demagogues, weaving dark illusions.

Opportunities like this—unity and energy and euphoria, amidst decline and stagnation—are so incredibly rare that, like I said, America’s making history. It’s easier, always, to repeat it. To be the next Rome or Weimar Republic or what have you. And so they should be taken, too.

Now we have a context in which to evaluate policy. This is the part pundits miss, and that’s why I said policy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Policies are means. But what’s the end? Now that we’ve discussed it, the end I think most of us could probably agree on is: reviving the Dream.

So how do Kamala and Tim’s policies fare on that score? We can do a detailed deconstruction, but that’s besides the point. Let me illustrate why. An infinitesimal number of people think home ownership’s easily attainable—and making it easier’s a key plank of their policy. Barely anybody thinks financial security’s within reach, and cutting prices for basics will of course ease that burden immensely. I could go on and on, right down to having a family.

The point we should be understanding, though, is different.

Reviving the American Dream

We should be looking for a certain paradigm from our leaders. Leaders are there to help us attain our dreams. Demagogues, to seduce into nightmares, in which we’re the monsters. In America, remarkably, people still largely agree on one issue: that there should be a thing called the American Dream. They even agree on what its components are: financial security, retirement, home ownership, having a family, and so forth.

The question we should be asking is: are our leaders going to help us make our dreams more attainable? Is their paradigm about our dreams? 

America’s outgrowing Trump. He looks beaten, his schtick feels tired, his aura is fading. Why is that? Because as Kamala and Tim focus on these essential elements of The Dream—which most of us still agree on—it becomes clearer and clearer that Trump’s dark illusions aren’t going to help anyone attain The Dream. 

They’re not really about financial security, having a family, home ownership, etcetera. They’re about, as we discussed, the opposite of life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness. Taking other people’s rights way, erasing people from society, hate and spite, etcetera. And so as Kamala and Tim focus on the basics of The Dream, Trump begins to look and feel old, not as in “old age,” so much, but just as in…that paradigm’s time is over. Sure, it was thrilling and exciting for a time, even for those who backed him, but plenty of them are now beginning to realize there’s a better way.

Because what we all really want is The Dream. And it’s even OK for a society to get frustrated, and throw a tantrum, if it isn’t being heard, and have a brief dalliance with a demagogue. But eventually, what we all hope is that people come back to their senses. What we all really want is the Dream, not the nightmare, and it appears that more and more Americans are beginning to get that. That even making life a nightmare feels good, when you’re the monster, in the end, it’s still not The Dream.

Most societies don’t get that far, which is why history repeats itself. They give up on their dreams.

That’s a mistake in life, and it’s a mistake for societies, too. 

What’s happening right now in America is so, so powerful. Because it’s so deeply meaningful. Americans haven’t given on The Dream. And neither have Kamala and Tim. Together—and this is the hard part—they can begin to revive it. We’ll see about that part, later. The first step is making the choice: no, we are not going to give up on our dreams.

This is why it’s a special moment for America, but also for history, and the world. It feels like America’s coming back to life, doesn’t it? That’s because in this deepest of senses, it is. It’s discovering how to dream again the very noble and beautiful and wise dream that changed history. And when that happens, my friends, the future begins to change.

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