The Dream From Which We Can't Awaken

Reckoning with the American promises that became nightmares.

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Hope survives. Even in broken places.

When I was a kid, they told us if you worked hard enough, you could have anything.
A good job. A nice house. A full table.
Maybe even a little luxury, if you dreamed big enough.

They called it a shining land of opportunity.
You know the deal — work hard, get ahead.
Simple math. Simple promise.

What they didn’t tell us was that the game was already rigged.
They didn’t tell us that hope could be weaponized — used to keep you running on a treadmill until your body broke, your mind cracked, and your spirit wore thin.

They didn’t tell us that protecting the rich would become our civic religion.
You can see it clearest in how we treat celebrity in this country.
How we're trained to flinch at criticizing the rich, the famous, the golden gods on magazine covers and Instagram feeds.
How we apologize for their tantrums, defend their excess, and explain away their cruelty — because deep down, we were taught that wealth equals virtue, and fame equals moral authority.

"They worked hard!"
"They deserve it!"
"You're just jealous!"

We were trained to protect them — because if we ever admitted the truth,
we might have to question the system itself.
And the system taught us to whisper back:

"Maybe if I defend them now... someday, I’ll be one of them."

Even if that "someday" never comes.
Even if you’re still standing in the rain, waiting for a door that will never open.

And that's the cruel genius of it:
Celebrity became the ultimate distraction — but not just to waste time.
It was designed to keep the dream alive.
To dangle "success" and "fame" in front of your face every single day.
To keep you daydreaming about the moment you'd finally join them in La Dolce Vita — while quietly making sure you never actually would.

I almost fell for it too.
When I was younger, I idolized Marlon Brando. Peter O’Toole.
Not the celebrity machine — the raw power of their talent, their mythos.

But then a funny thing happened.
Celebrities stopped being legends you admired from afar and started sewing their names onto your jeans.

"Wear my name. Pay for the privilege."

$40 for the honor of walking around like a free billboard.
Oh hell no.

That’s when I knew.
It wasn’t about greatness anymore.
It was about selling the dream back to us, one overpriced pair of jeans at a time.

I remember warning my coworkers years ago — back when politics still felt like something you could ignore between elections — that they all knew every celebrity’s name but didn’t know their own House Representative.
It was easier back then to pretend it didn’t matter.
It’s not easier anymore.

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I still play the lottery.
I know it’s ridiculous.
I know the odds.
I know it’s a system built on desperation, not opportunity.

But somewhere deep down, some stubborn part of me still wants to believe there’s a crack in the wall.
A sliver of mercy.
A loophole through all their greed.

Because underneath it all — the anger, the betrayal, the scapegoating — the biggest lie still hums, soft and constant:

"Somebody’s gotta win.
It could be me."

And you know what?
I’m not budging from that position.

I know the odds.
I know the deck is stacked, the dice are loaded, the winners pre-chosen.
I know this country’s promise is more rigged carnival game than golden opportunity.

But somebody does have to win.
And why the hell shouldn't it be me?

(And no, I’m not blaming immigrants, or my neighbor down the street, or whoever’s convenient.
I’m too busy plotting which numbers to play next — because hope may be dangerous, but it’s also part of life.)

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All Americans are wired with the dream.
It’s baked into the national DNA — even when the foundation was already cracked.

Immigrants?
Many of them came here because they believed the myth even harder.
They were told the streets were paved with gold, that anyone willing to work could win.

Black Americans?
We were never even given the illusion of a fair start.
We aimed for the dollar stars — but we dreamed with one eye open, and we braced for impact before we leapt.
Maybe that's why sometimes we don't reach.
Not because we’re not brilliant.
Not because we don’t work twice as hard.
But because it’s hard to fly when you're always expecting the ground to come up fast.

White Americans?
They were promised it.
They didn’t just hope for the dream — they were entitled to it by the stories they were told.

And when they don’t get it?
When the system eats them too?
They don’t see betrayal by the system — they see theft.

"A Black man became President — and I'm still struggling?!"
"A Black woman married a prince — and I'm still drowning in bills?!"
"This isn’t the America I was promised."

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And when rage has no logic to stand on, it finds scapegoats. It finds targets. It finds excuses.
It finds someone to package their anger and sell it back to them.

Because the anger was real.
The betrayal was real.
They just needed someone to tell them it wasn’t the system’s fault — it was the fault of the "others."
Anyone but the ones who actually broke it.

He fed them the old poison in a new bottle.
And they drank it.
And they asked for more.

The ultimate irony?
They let themselves be gulled — not by a fellow struggler, not by a fighter who knew what it meant to claw for survival — but by a man who already had everything they thought they wanted.

A man whose “empire” was a mom-and-pop operation wearing a fake crown.
A man whose millions were more excuses and failures than real dollars.
A man who spent more time dodging bankruptcies than building anything real.

And when the grifts dried up, when the brand started to crumble, he did what every con man does — he sold a new illusion.
He took a leave of absence from his latest scam and went to play a businessman on TV.

And now?
He doesn't even bother keeping up the act.
He spends his days hawking watches, sneakers, NFTs, and bibles to the same people who made him a king.
Hell, when he got booked — fingerprinted, mugshotted, charged like the common criminal he is — he literally cut up the suit he wore that day and sold the pieces.

He sold them scraps of his own humiliation — and they lined up to buy it.
Still believing that somehow, by owning a sliver of his shame, they were getting one step closer to the dream he was never going to let them have.

They didn’t rally behind a builder.
They didn’t rally behind a fighter.
They rallied behind an actor — a man cosplaying the very dream they were dying for, while he pocketed their desperation and called it victory.

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And that’s the truth:
Real abundance isn’t hoarding.
It isn’t owning 18 cars for one ass.
It isn’t building a golden crapper while people outside are starving.

Real abundance is not living in fear.
Real abundance is having the space and freedom to smell the grass,
to feel the breeze upon your face,
to be free from fear and anxiety.
It’s having the space to let love and happiness in — and knowing you don’t have to crush anyone else to get there.

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We could live that way.
We should live that way.
This planet was once abundant enough for all of us.

But balance was lost when the few decided it wasn’t enough to live well — they had to live like gods.

And everyone else?
Cannon fodder for their next quarterly earnings report.

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The future isn’t in their castles.
The future is in the fields we plant — one stubborn grass seed at a time.

Because in the end, the Right of Man is to live in abundance.

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