DREAMS

 America has forgotten how to dream. I saw something like that in a quote and it started me thinking. My thoughts: Yes we have. No we have not.

It seems to me that we have forgotten to dream of the things that make our country stronger.

We once dreamed of eliminating poverty. Lyndon Johnson tried. It may have represented a classic example of applying the right solution to the wrong problem. Perhaps the problem wasn’t poor people in poor areas. Perhaps the problem was the exploitation of poor people in almost every segment of our country since 1619.

Ronald Reagan dreamed of accommodating poverty by enabling the rich to become richer and the poor to become ashamed of being poor. More wealth was to trickle downward from the rich to the poor and obviate the need for the ones he pictured as being like his “Welfare Queen.” Wealth, falling from the sky like manna from Heaven would enable those below to free themselves from the quagmire of poverty.

It may have contained a twinge of applying the wrong solution to the right problem. It is a characteristic of the rich that that last thing on earth they want is to share in their hoard.

Our poor still wait like hungry pets for the largesse to fall their way.

Oh, we dream alright. The rich dream of a pure capitalistic society in which they face no regulations or pay any taxes.

The poor dream of not having to make a choice between food or shelter.

Many of the rest of us dream of our state’s college sports team winning a national championship.