The American Dream: Thing 1 and Thing 2

 

If you were like me and read the first sentence, you would’ve said “wait who was even the president in 1972?” After a little Google magic, I found out it was Nixon (not that it made it any better since I don’t know anything about him or his two terms).

Anyways, from this reading I learned that there are two, let’s say, versions, of the American Dream. While one focuses on the “values of effort, persistence, initiative, self-reliance, and achievement” (materialistic), the other emphasizes “tolerance, charity, compassion, and dignity (moralistic) (118). The first and most important claim Fisher makes is that Nixon embodied the materialistic view and McGovern the moralistic. With this claim, Fisher is telling us that for their respective campaigns, both Nixon and McGovern picked an aspect of the American Dream that they felt would appeal to Americans and thus get them elected. While Nixon tried to unite Americans by connecting with what most people think of as the American Dream, McGovern provided a somewhat new take on it. Their differing views on the American Dream leads to Fisher’s next claim: the 1972 election showed that the majority of Americans identified with the materialistic version rather than the moralistic version of the American Dream.

Since Nixon won the election and he had a materialistic view of the Dream, it showed that Americans at the time prioritized this more. Although the people who have “tried to live by it and found in practice that it is flawed by favoritism and corruption” (118) don’t believe in it, those who do believe  in the materialistic view do so because they don’t want to feel guilty. You may be thinking “what does guilt have to do with this?” Well, if they identify with the moralistic view they will have an “arousal of guilt for what we are in respect to what we should be.” In other words, they’ll feel guilty for the way they are and the fact that they have to change. This could have caused fear in the American people, explaining why Nixon won the election. The last of Fisher’s claims is that Americans will eventually losetheir identity due to the affirmation and subversion of the versions of the American Dream by the two candidates. You know how I named this blog Thing 1 andThing 2,well it’s because the two versions will always be together; they can’t be separated. If one person praises one version and another person praises the other, Americans will think they’re both good. But in the election, both candidates undermined the versions. Nixon undermined the moralistic view by saying “the choice is between change that change that won’t work” (121), and McGovern did so by asking if Americans “want a government of the special interest, by the special interest and for the special interest, one that is by the people and for the people” (123). When both candidates basically said that these views sucks, views that make up the American Dream, they’re pretty much saying that the American Dream sucks. If someone told you something sucks, would you still continue it? No. And that’s the problem Americans will face. They won’t know what to believe, or who to believe, or what is even American.

Although this happened in 1972, you can see the effects of this election in 2018. First, our whole essay we just wrote was literally about the rich and how they take advantage. It shows that what McGovern said is true: ” a government of the special interest, by the special interest, and for the special interest” (123). The rich continue to make laws and do certain things that make them even more rich. Second, people are more self centered now than they were years ago, or I’m assuming that. If someone were to get hurt or anything bad pretty much, all people do is go to their phones, take a picture, and walk away. If it happened a few decades ago, people would try to help. Lastly, what happened in the 1972 election happened again in the 2016. While Clinton embodied the moralistic, trying to change America and better its programs, Trump embodied the materialistic, trying to make those who are rich even more rich (which he is actually doing now). It shows that people haven’t really changed. Americans continue to identify with the materialistic view rather than the moralistic view of the American Dream. Is American going to lose its identity soon? Who knows.