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American Dreams

The Big Score

by Rod Amis

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Photo courtesy of DB Daugherty, San Francisco.

Nothing gets American juices flowing like the prospect of making the Big Score. People working on the Web dream of their Internet millions if they can get bought out by a larger concern or work their efforts up to an IPO. Multi-Level Marketers promise each other than this latest scheme will lead to them wearing diamonds as big as horse turds. Real estate developers promise their limited partners that the new strip mall will pay for their grandchildren's educations. Wall Street brokers insist that your life savings fuel the engines of capitalism while amassing a tidy nest-egg for your retirement. America would not be America without the promise and dream of the Big Score.

But, as Cyndi Lauper sang, money (and the dreams of money) changes everything. I can give you dollars to donuts that the very whiff of the aroma of a Big Score will turn your pal the "average working stiff" into Mr. Hell-Take-the-Hindmost overnight. One day he's talking about the virtues of the average folks who bring home a paycheck every week, repair their own pick-up trucks and have a nice little trailer in the suburbs --- the next, when he gets that first whiff of Big Score, he's telling you about "evaluating priorities, husbanding our assets, how best to utilize our available resources."

Huh?

What happened to the guy who had sympathy for the victims of pompous and misguided managers? He has stock options now.

You Can Make A Difference

FEED THE HUNGRY. You can help someone else in this world and IT WON'T COST YOU A DIME. If you simply remember to drop by The Hunger Site every day that you surf and click a simple button ONE LESS PERSON WILL GO HUNGRY. The food is distributed by the United Nations World Food Programme and paid for through the sponsorship of companies that care. Do your part.

The siren song of the Big Score is pervasive in the culture. If every high school athlete shaves his head and wears the right sneakers he can be like Mike (rich) and if every young woman uses the correct hair coloring she can be like Heather Locklear (ditto.) Every brother who knows how to live the lifestyle and put it to a boombox beat will get paayyd. It's the American way.

All of these assumptions which feed the dream are belied by the evidence of our own eyes, but --- as Richard Pryor so famously said --- are you going to believe me or your lyin' eyes?

For every fortunate person who has the timing, talent and grit to accomplish the Big Score, there are a hundred with the same talent and grit who labor away on that bridge called Tomorrow and end the day still dreaming. Or worse, they become so fixated with the scent of the (potential) money that they begin to believe their fellow humans *are* the hindmost and treat them as such. They see other people as assets to be utilized (stepped upon) on their way to that ephemeral Score. They wonder why people avert their gazes.

Questioning the dream of the Big Score puts us in peril of the accusation that we are

1. A damned whiner, or
2. A socialist.

That, too, is the American way: rather than question the validity of an opposing argument, it's always best to attack the opponent. If you can't eat it or fuck it, all that's left is to fight it. Debating the ideas is for sissies and nothing more than another form of intellectual masturbation; the way to get things done is to run over the competition --- and make the Big Score.

The TeknoSurf AdWave The use of the Anglo-Saxon for coitus in the preceding paragraph was intentional. The fact is that our sexual relations are also described in terms of the dream of the Big Score. We accept that linguistic versimilitude as part of the --- ahem! --- thrust of what is central to the American attitude unapologetically.

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Adhering to this view of life, and what American life is most about, it makes it easier for us to disengage from peripheral issues like the decline in our educational institutions, the decay of our cities, the appropriation of our political structures by the monied-classes, and the fact that we have for five decades now committed to eating our young.

The only time we trot out that smarmy little phrase, "For the Children," is when we intend either to reach into your wallet or hoodwink you in some other fashion --- for instance, by taking away another of your personal liberties. Ergo, it is for the children that I must ameliorate your right of free speech and association. What would happen to the children if they stumbled upon something detrimental on the Internet? (I don't have to worry about them finding the same thing at the public library because there are no public libraries in the mall, and the ones which continue to exist have been forced to cut back their hours due to lack of funds.)

Rather, in pursuit of The Main Chance it is my birthright as an American to ignore social obligations and social responsibility. Instead, I am behooved to insist that those who don't practice aggressive self-interest are losers, socialists, shiftless, or some combination of all the foregoing. If they were more like me, they would be on the way to a Big Score of their own. It's not my responsibility to worry about their welfare, after all. I am not my brother's keeper. In fact, people who believe we *are* our brother's keepers are delusional bleeding hearts not worthy to lead our great enterprises.

Just look around you, the poor are poor because they are inferior, flawed, genetically challenged individuals. Those who make it are obviously receiving the rewards of good breeding and a natural superiority to the common herd.

The challenge of the next century will be for America to find a way to separate its undesirables from those who wish to enjoy the benefits of the Big Score without having to consider the social costs.