I have mentioned before that certain things that Americans want to believe can be destructive, particularly when many Americans lose all sense of objectivity and balance in order to believe certain myths. The most prevalent myth today, and the one that I personally believe is doing the most damage both inside and outside of the country, is the belief in American exceptionalism, which tends to amount to American superiority.
The other damaging belief is certainly not entirely related to this last one and, in fact, the last one may have had it's roots in this belief which has permeated American history for a much longer time. That is the American Dream, which all Americans have heard of, and which many Americans still choose to believe in right to the present day.
The problem is that it is no longer really all that true or relevant anymore. In truth, it may always have been exaggerated or overly idealistic, but nowadays, such blind faith among so many Americans who still want to believe in the American Dream is actually proving detrimental in reality.
Why? Because the relentless fixation on "deregulation", which flew under the banner of providing people with greater economic freedom and less government control, actually was a method of transferring that power over people from governments to corporations. Now, corporations have entirely too much power, too much sway over a government that once upon a time kept them in check, and these corporations have only one loyalty: to themselves. They generally focus on one thing and one thing only: short term profits. Good quarterly reports, so that stockholder and the board are happy. Everyone else (that's us) can be damned.
This is a problem, because corporate profits tend to be for the few. And as I have said here before, when you have rich people, by definition, the vast majority of others will be poor. With the trend clearly being that greater wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, that essentially means that the majority of Americans, including a great number of those who gleefully believe in "American exceptionalism" and "deregulation", are getting screwed over by the very system that they collectively voted for.
The political trend in this country in recent decades has consistently been for increased privatization across the board. Even the schools now are increasingly privatized, with the trend towards chartered schools growing.
Yes, privatization is the new be all for everything. In this country's political climate, it is the tonic for everything, apparently. Bush's "Ownership Society" is alive and well.
And we are all paying a very steep price for it indeed!
SATURDAY, MAR 7, 2015 10:45 AM EST The myth destroying America: Why social mobility is beyond ordinary people’s control Americans overwhelmingly believe they control their financial destinies, but a huge body of research says otherwise SEAN MCELWEE
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