Naomi Wolf | Romney Video Killed American Dream Myth

• Once, everyone believed they could succeed by hard work and gumption. Republicans no longer pretend to believe the myth... Mitt Romney has told us that it's now simply class war: a struggle to stop the other half getting what "we" have. Thank you for your candor, Mr Romney.
• Joseph Stiglitz | ‘The American Dream Has Become a Myth’
• Rethinking Columbus: Toward a True People's History

Naomi Wolf, Guardian UK

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Lydia Howell

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Bill Day

 

September 21 , 2012 | Mitt Romney's historic gaffe caught on video - published, with great timing, by the left-leaning Mother Jones magazine - in which he said that his campaign was writing off 47% of American voters since they "depended on government" handouts, was committed in an equally significant manner, as he delivered the remarks to a closed group of potential major donors in Florida. GOP stalwart and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan is calling for an intervention in the campaign, and even some fellow Republicans are scampering to distance themselves from the inflammatory remarks.
 
But I find the remarks fascinating and important to deconstruct because they affirm - as insider discourse captured for the public often can - the fact that a new kind of narrative for America has taken over from one of our oldest and most cherished national myths. What Romney's comments reveal is that the American Dream is dead, killed off by skepticism from the bottom up - by the 99% of lower-income and middle-class people who no longer believe in it - and by cynicism from the top down - by the 1%, top-earning people who don't believe in it.

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Related:

Joseph Stiglitz | ‘The American Dream Has Become a Myth’, Spiegel On Line

• The finance industry is to blame for the growing divide between the rich and poor in the United States, says Nobel Prize-winning economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. In an interview with Spiegel, he accuses the industry of preying on the poor and buying government policies that help them get richer.
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Rethinking Columbus: Toward a True People's History, Bill Bigelow, Daily Good

• Let’s push beyond "Columbus" to nurture a "people's history" curriculum—searching out those stories that help explain how this has become such a profoundly unequal world, but also how people have constantly sought greater justice. This is the work on which educators, parents, and students need to collaborate.
• Bill Moyers | The Bane of Banned Books