The Diner of Broken Dreams and Promises

In my own journey through life in the United States, the concept of "The American Dream" was everywhere. In television sitcoms, movies, newspapers, and in the education system. While there was not a specific "Map to the American Dream", it was the equivalent to finding the mess hall in the film "A Few Good Men". There were no directions or orders, you learned that at certain time you simply followed everyone to a meal.

"...that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement..." -James Truslow Adams

There was an inherent promise in the American system. The education system would provide general knowledge (reading, writing, and mathematics). You would invest the effort to achieve good grades and would then choose a path between learning a skill and joining the workforce, enlisting in military service, or obtaining a college education, perhaps an advanced degree, and entering the workforce as a teacher, doctor, lawyer, or engineer. Any of those chosen paths, coupled with ambition and effort, would lead you to home ownership, marriage and family, a car in the garage, gathering around the radio for a "fireside chat", and later, laughing through the antics of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo on the television, mowing the lawn on Saturday, and putting money into savings for "a rainy day". You traded the car in for a station wagon, listened relentlessly to "are we there yet" or "tell him to stop looking at me" followed by giggling from the back of the wagon until arriving at Disneyland. You would harbor hope that your own children would enjoy more opportunities than you had. As parents, you would pass the baton to your children as they made their own choices and would enjoy a peaceful, happy, and secure lifetime. (And I do recognize this is the privileged white male version of the promise). For the BIPOC community, sending your child off to school and hoping they arrive safely at home after a school day was and is, sadly, "living the dream".

In the 1960's and early 1970's the United States enjoyed economic growth and rising living standards for many. A strong economy reinforces the promise of a brighter tomorrow for the next and future generations. Wealth in the United States was highly concentrated to "the few" before the stock market crash of 1929 and the "Great Depression" that followed.

Through governmental policies such as FDR's "New Deal", the growth of labor unions, the implementation of a progressive tax system (people earning more paid a higher percentage of their income as taxes because it was and remains patriotic to do so), and home ownership strengthened the middle class, often correctly viewed as the economic engine of the United States. The implementation of these economic policies diminished the concentration of wealth, trending the U.S. toward economic fairness.

In the 1970's the U.S. economy, was heavily dependent on oil imports. In 1973-1974, an oil embargo by Arab nations (due geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East) caused the price of oil imports to quadruple. Because oil energy was the lifeblood of the economy, prices for consumer goods (which required oil energy in the manufacturing process, the assembly process, transportation to store shelves, consumers driving to stores to purchase goods) -prices rose dramatically. This caused an economic slowdown (stagnation), the cost of living soared, and unemployment was quickly rising.

These economic conditions rapidly eroded consumer confidence, and with it -thoughts of enjoying the American Dream.

Trickle-down economics to the rescue!

Along comes Ronald Reagan and an array of seriously bad Republican economic ideas to "save the day". Reagan promised a disciplined and fiscally conservative approach to shift the country back to growth and consumer confidence:

Slash taxes for the wealthy and corporations (Trickle-Down economics fraud) while cutting social safety net programs.
Deregulate industry -which led to the weakening and/or loss of important societal protections.
Shift the cost of higher education to students and families (which led to runaway tuition costs and the rise of the predatory student loan industry).
Shrink the size of the federal government (Reagan ultimately did not reduce the headcount or expenditure -he shifted the priorities away from social programs and prioritized a major military expansion).
Balance the federal budget. In reality, through tax cuts for the wealthy while significantly increasing military appropriations ("Peace through strength!"), Reagan tripled the national debt (so much for "fiscal conservativism).

Voters looking to restore the promise of the America Dream bought into Reagan's grandfatherly campaign without understanding the devastating economic consequences of "Reaganomics" which are all related to redistribution of wealth from the middle class and impoverished to the already wealthy.

Here are two charts to help illustrate the Reagan/Trump/GOP impact on the concentration of wealth in the United States:

**The implementation of FDR's New Deal started to equalize the share of wealth in the United States over time. Until Reagan and the GOP's Trickle Down Economic Fraud.**

Post-Reagan -slashing income tax rates for CEO's and executives has led to huge compensation packages for people like Elon Musk. This fuels the concentration of wealth -which is an indirect attack on any attempt at democracy.

Wages and benefits tend to be the largest costs of doing business. Post-Reagan, as productivity rises and worker wages stagnate -productivity is the value created by employees. Since the value is being created by the employees, but wages are flat -where is the value creation going? To executive pay, bonuses, stock buybacks, and Wall Street.

America's Wealth "Pie"

In oversimplified terms, if you consider the wealth of our nation to be finite and represented by a pie, Reagan (and later, Bush, and now Trump/GOP trickle down "economics" are all about giving most of the pie to the very wealthy while everyone else fights for crumbs). The billionaire-owned media is delighted to fuel our societal division so we continue to concentrate on the crumbs and each other instead of wondering where the hell the pie went?

According to the racist Ronald Reagan it was the "Cadillac-driving welfare queen", and big government eating all the pie. According to the criminal elect Trump it is immigrants, Joe Biden, the climate "hoax", the Fed, bad trade deals, the deep state, and proving he can out-racist Reagan, DEI programs.

The anger, frustration, and generational despair in the United States is real. It has been accumulating over the last fifty years. It's been over sixty years that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of "The Fierce Urgency of Now." It does not matter if you are MAGA in rural America, a "woke" public school teacher being told to work harder and longer hours for less money, or a librarian being threatened because there's a copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" available for any member of the public to read and then leave the library transformed into an America-hating liberal democrat who actually thinks there may have been some racism in the country long ago.

The anger, frustration, and despair is driven by the broken promises of the American system. We were supposed to evolve toward a "more perfect Union". We were supposed to be a beacon of democracy and self-governance. We are supposed to be a society progressing toward equality. A society in which the engraved words of Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus" were part of the DNA of our nation -a refuge for immigrants and the oppressed.

Anger, over time has spilled over into protests and marches. From the intersectionality of civil rights, voter rights, antiwar, women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, labor rights, and environmental movements of the 1960's and 1970's to the Koch-funded Tea Party and then MAGA movements of today. These movements all share a common theme: frustration with a lack of progress toward the realization of the dream.

While anger is certainly warranted and real, our collective anger is intentionally misdirected by major broadcast, print, and social media outlets like Fox "News", Paramount/Skydance Facebook, the former Twitter, Sinclair Broadcasting, and newspapers such as The Washington Post.

Why? Because Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, David Ellison, and other billionaires are unlikely to jump up and down in front of us waving their arms and yelling we are the "0.1%" and are why you can barely make ends meet, half of us couldn't afford an unexpected $1,000 expense, we don't have affordable healthcare, and the national debt is rapidly approaching $40 trillion.

Trump to the rescue! -Promises Made!!!

From Trump's perspective, sleepy and weak Joe Biden would never be able to "Make America Great Again". America must have a high-energy, successful businessman, who will "Drain the Swamp", end inflation, massively expand fossil fuels to make energy dirt cheap, and replace taxes with tariffs.

Just as in his first "crime wave" -I mean term he was going to build a border wall and make Mexico pay, he was going to eliminate taxes and make other countries pay them for us! Aside from fixing the economy, he was going to make a call to Putin and immediately bring a stop to Russia's war on Ukraine. He would then, before or after a round of golf, make a call to Netanyahu and Hamas, have Hamas return the hostages, and tell Netanyahu stop the genocide in Gaza.

Elect a Sociopathic Clown -

-Get a Sociopathic Circus

Most everyone enjoys the circus. Unfortunately, while entertaining, a circus isn't the best form of government. Especially not a circus comprised of corrupt criminals, incompetents, alcoholics, and sadists. Let's review some of what the criminal elect "Nobel Peace Prize Runner-Up" Trump has accomplished thus far in 2025.

Signed the "Big Beautiful Bill"

Extended the 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Raised the debt ceiling by $5 trillion (if you needed any proof that the revenue raised by tariffs will magically fill the treasury with revenue lost from cutting Elon Musk's taxes -here it is). The bill is estimated to add $2.8 trillion of debt, ends clean/renewable energy credits, and eliminates access to healthcare insurance (Medicaid), cut funding for food assistance for the impoverished, weakened Medicare drug price negotiations, and shifted massive funding into ICE, Trump's version of Nazi Germany's Gestapo/SS. Impact on inflation: dramatically worsens it by adding to national debt.

MAGAtsby!

During the longest Federal Government shutdown (while the GOP controls Congress and the White House), and ignoring court orders to use available emergency funds for food assistance, Trump threw a roaring 20's themed party at Mar-a-Lago -because nothing says you are a "man of the people" like decadence in the face of deprivation and hunger.
Impact on inflation: zero.

"America First"

While campaigning under a banner of "America First" Trump sent $40 billion of our taxpayer funds off to Argentina. Why? Argentina's leader Millei is chainsaw buddies with Elon Musk and Millei also enjoys an apparently close relationship with Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Impact on inflation: indirectly worsens inflation. It is $40 billion that could have been used to reduce national debt. Because, you know, "America First".

DOGE and slashing the Federal workforce

Musk's "Big Balls"(L), Democracy-hating Thiel (C), Musk firing up right wing extremist AfD (R)

Draining "the Swamp": Waste, Fraud, and Abuse. Anyone remember way back -when Trump welcomed Elon Musk and his team of miscreants and handed them the keys to formerly secure government systems and agencies, directing them to "streamline federal government" and eliminate fraud, abuse, waste, and redundancy, to save a cool $1.2 trillion in government costs so everyone could receive a $5,000 DOGE refund? Musk, "Big Balls", and his team did manage to take previously secure systems and make them insecure. Who the hell knows where your Social Security data, Treasury/Federal Income Tax data, and/or Medicare data is now. Guessing that Musk, "Big Balls", and Peter Thiel (Palantir) know. Impact on inflation: zero

Tariffs

In the multi-bankrupted mind of the man behind Trump Casinos, Trump Steaks, Trump University, and so on -tariffs will magically fill our treasury to pay for ICE/Gestapo wannabees, jets for Kristi Noem, and, law school ethics courses for Pam Bondi, Aileen Cannon, and Ed Martin, and Make America Great Again!

While Trump invoked tariffs under a nearly 50 year old emergency law on the books: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or “IEEPA”, to charge tariffs on imported goods (which U.S. consumers end up paying), saying it was needed to protect the U.S. economy and security.

Recently the criminal elect unilaterally raised tariffs on Canadian goods because an ad was shown from a Reagan speech (in which Reagan denounced tariffs). Trump's unilateral action completely eviscerates his emergency declaration. "It's an emergency because I saw an ad on TV." said no rational person, ever.

For those who still do not know, American consumers pay the cost of the tariffs. They make inflation worse. And they increase costs for farmers. Trump tariffs decimated U.S. agricultural exports to the point where farmers have become dependent on federal bailouts. (Sounds like socialism to me).
Impact on inflation: dramatically worsens it.

Mass Detentions and Deportations

Trump's team of white supremacist/nativist/neo-Nazi sympathizers Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Kristi Noem, and ICE are continuing to unleash masked agents to effectively perform state-sponsored kidnappings regardless of harm to families, neighborhoods, communities, and businesses. Often low wage workers, they cannot immediately be replaced. The loss of farm workers, nurses' aides, day laborers, line cooks, and others create significant business disruption raising prices and slowing economic growth. Impact on inflation: dramatically worsens it.

Send in the Marines!

Because many Americans haven't completely lost their minds, when heavily armed, masked agents, kidnap people from their workplace, on their way to school, or walking home from church, rational people tend to be concerned, even protest. When protests occur in cities or states perceived as Democratic-controlled blue states, it is important to (illegally) deploy military troops to assist ICE agents to conduct state-sponsored kidnappings. As a bonus, should any significant violence be provoked, Trump and his cabal are ready, itching in fact, to declare martial law and suspend democracy and troublesome elections like those that just occurred in New York, Virginia, New Jersey, and California. Impact on inflation: zero.

No More Cancel Culture -it's Free Speech time ...

Trump and the right-wing grew tired of "woke/socialist/communist/leftist" media "cancelling" profound talent like Scott Baio, Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, and Kanye, and universities disinviting white-wing "truth tellers" like Charlie Kirk.

Trump/Project 2025 FCC Chair Brendan Carr suggesting the revocation of ABC and Disney's broadcast license because of Jimmy Kimmel's comments about Kirk. The criminal elect Trump has frequently made threats to suspend or terminate broadcast rights for networks that are mean to him and make him big sad. That's not cancel culture at all, right? Impact on inflation: zero.

Pardon Me?

Despite the fact that Capitol Police were violently attacked by Trump-incited insurrectionists on January 6, 2021, Trump ordered those who were arrested and convicted for their crimes pardoned and released. Notably, some have recently gone on to commit violent crimes after their release and have been re-arrested. Impact on inflation: zero.

DEI Programs

According to Trump (and other white supremacist racists) DEI programs are costly to our Republic, and, as the Roberts corrupted court previously ruled -that we are a post-race society, DEI programs are completely unwarranted. So the criminal elect has worked to not only eliminate DEI programs in Federal government, he has pursued their elimination anywhere federal funding is involved, such as colleges and universities. Impact on inflation: zero.

The Epstein/Trump Ballroom

Destroying the East Wing of the White House to construct the monstrosity of a ballroom. Impact on inflation: zero.

Interestingly the priority Trump "accomplishments" over the first several months of his second crime wave (or term if you prefer) have either no impact on inflation (which, by the way, continues to be an issue) or, when considering Trump's mass deportations and tariff policy, makes inflation worse.

Should angry and frustrated Americans, from major urban areas to the farms and ranches of rural America understand the basic concept of the finite wealth pie, and subsequently know our quality of life (and that of future generations) is not being diminished by immigrants, by DEI programs, by books on shelves that provoke critical thought, and not by the LGBTQ+ community, however, it is being stolen by the 1% who are effectively hoarding massive wealth -there will be a reckoning in the United States that will make the election results of November 4, 2025 seem like a miniscule blip in an expanding universe.

Should people begin to understand that democracy has been gravely weakened by the Reagan/Trump/GOP trickle down fraud, unite, and sustain a "political tsunami" -a new United States could be born on a foundation of justice, democracy, equality, freedom, and fairness for all.

In the meantime we must defend those most vulnerable to Trump administration illegality and cruelty, while building a sustained, generational wave of elected officials who will represent all of us, not simply a gated community of billionaires.

To understand the extreme concentration of wealth, a good place to begin is with investigative reporting from journalists at Pro Publica, The Guardian, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with important stories about how extreme wealth concentration is used to attack democracy, undermine justice, and perpetuate vast inequality in America.

PS -My Articles and Subscriptions are always free.

If you find this article of value, please do share with friends, associates, & others who have an interest in the content.

Please note that my articles and subscriptions are not paywalled. This stems from a guiding principle -that any meaningful democracy requires an informed, educated, and engaged society. It is also to honor the life of Aaron Swartz, who held firmly to the belief that research and knowledge intended for the betterment of humanity should be freely shared. Also, when you subscribe, like, & share -it is good for my fragile ego.

Aside from writing, mentoring others, and projects related to democracy, economics, and social innovation, I’m dedicated to Civic Works, a 501c3 non-profit organization building and managing technology that blends social networking and civic engagement. Our core effort is around civ.works. When complete, it will be a subscriber-supported, ad-free social network that does not betray subscriber trust by selling or sharing data with marketers or sinister political operatives.

I’m incredibly grateful for all who contribute to the civ.works effort through our secure payment processor, Stripe, and all who help us gain visibility by sharing the project with journalists and others to move the effort forward.

Support civ.works

Special appreciation for all who continue to recommend my rants and musings, restack articles that are found to be worthy, and share with friends and family. And the following are some special recommendations for stacks I value -