Is the American Dream vanishing or can we save it?

"I need to get personal here. Given the Senate hearings last week, I am trying not to spiral down through hopelessness and bitter cynicism about the end of the dream that was America. It is exhausting to keep your heart beating with the hope and trust that most Americans understand or care about how things stand today and realize what is slipping away.

"If you did not see a lot of the Senate 'trial,' consider yourself fortunate, as one feels fortunate when not looking at a gory car wreck. If you did, can you help me just not give up on this country right here and now? You can criticize me all you want for this post, or give me the usual platitudes and attitudes, but there has to be someone who understands and perhaps still has a lifeline to hope that they can share?"

***

One of my closest friends in the world posted this on Facebook Sunday morning, and I have literally been sitting here for an hour looking at her post and searching for an answer.

I've thought about Mencken and his 100 years that I've quoted so often, or about Sinclair Lewis and his character Buzz Windrip. But what I keep returning to is Benjamin Franklin and his answer to the person who asked what kind of government we were going to have.

"A republic ... if you can keep it."

When it comes down to it, there are really only two different types of governments -- authoritarian and non-authoritarian. It has always been a lot easier to be a citizen of the first type. You don't really have to think. You just follow the rules.

You obey.

That's all that is expected of you in that sort of society.

The shocking thing is that in many ways, we have been living in that sort of society for the last 35-40 years.

Maybe a lot longer.

I'm not sure there was ever a Golden Age. You look at things a lot differently if you're a white male of a certain age. I do know that during World War II, folks who ran companies made 14 times as much per hour as the average employee in those companies.

I know that in the 1950s, the top income tax rate for the biggest wage earners was 91 percent and that even after a major tax cut in the early '60s, the rate was 70 percent.


I know that at peak, roughly a third of American workers belonged to labor unions, including most of those in good manufacturing jobs. Unions made it possible for someone with a high school diploma to buy a house, support a family, buy a new car every few years, take yearly vacations and send their kids to college.

Back when we made things for the world.

We made things the world needed. Cars, appliances, steel, and workers from Michigan to New Jersey worked damned hard and took great pride in what they did. As long as they worked hard and followed the rules, they didn't have to worry about arbitrary firings or layoffs.

They didn't have to worry -- at least they thought they didn't -- about health insurance or retirement. Their unions negotiated those things for them as part of their contracts.

The problem was, though, that while working class people might tend to see their gains as a sort of new normal, the megarich tend to see things like that only as temporary setbacks. They're always looking to claw back some of what they lost.

And if there is one thing they don't want, it's employees who feel secure in their jobs and in their lives. The big bosses want to see their minions sweating when they walk into the room. When they say jump, there are only two appropriate responses.

You can jump.

Or you can ask how high.

Of course the entire world isn't like that. In the free countries of Western Europe, folks pay more in taxes and get far more in return. They get health care, retirement and at least four weeks vacation a year. If you look at it, life in France and Germany for working people is a lot like it was here in the '50s and '60s.

I have a feeling America is basically finished for the baby boomers. I've got three close friends who are past traditional retirement age and are all still working. Not so much because they want to, but because they need to. Two of them have had life-threatening illnesses.

They may end up working till they drop. Nearly half of all boomers have little savings and will have little to live on other than Social Security.

My friend Christine, who lives in Florida, actually had a pretty good idea. She suggested that four or five friends who were alone in the world could get together and rent a house together. Splitting expenses five ways could enable folks to live a lot better.

Will America get past all this?

Maybe, but our children and our grandchildren will have to work damn hard -- and fight even harder -- to get this country back to a place where everyone is in it together.

I don't know about your kids, but I'm betting mine can be a big part of the solution.

In a Molly-free world, mediocrities like Trump thrive

Sometimes the good actually do die young.

It just depends on what you mean by young. Molly Ivins was 62 when she died of cancer in 2007, not that young for an athlete but as a columnist she might have had another 15-20 good years.

She was the one who coined the name "Shrub" to describe George W. Bush, the one who described a lesser Texas politician by saying he was so dumb that if he lost any more IQ points he would need to be watered twice a day.

That was when we first heard the outraged whine from the right wing.

"Molly Ivins can't say that, can she?"

She could ... and did. For more than three decades she was the funniest, most sardonic voice of Texas liberalism. More than just being liberal, though, she was the voice of the average person against the rich and powerful.

A 2019 film.

In the early '90s, when Rush Limbaugh was becoming popular, he was ranting about how racism was a thing of the past and liberals should stop complaining. Ivins was in a Texas diner and heard several men agreeing with Rush. "What will the ni**ers find to complain about now?" one of them said.

When his fans raved about how funny he was, Ivins pointed out that the definition of humor is exactly the opposite of what Limbaugh does.

Humor is about making fun of the powerful, not humiliating the powerless. Ivins said Limbaugh's ridicule of the homeless, of people with AIDS and poor people in general was about as funny as kicking a cripple.

I don't remember if Ivins ever wrote about Donald Trump. He did have some political involvement in the 2000 election, although he was never as big a deal during her lifetime as he became later.

I think Trump is damn lucky Ivins isn't around to write about him.

We will never see her likes again.

***

Here's an example of her greatness.

Guess I need to be more "woke" than I am

Short takes from a journey through a disorganized mind:

Goodnight, ladies?

CALL ME A RECIDIVIST: When it comes to Facebook, I really have a hard time staying out of jail. And this time, I probably deserved my three-day sentence.

I had been seeing the picture to the right ever since New Year's Eve, apparently taken at a party at Trump's Mar-A-Lago.

Several other people -- who apparently were more subtle than I am -- questioned whether the ladies pictured were actually ladies.

One poster even used an Austin Powers meme in which he said, "She's a man!"

My problem was that I used a word that has been around a long time, but in recent years has acquired a meaning I should have known better than to use it.

It's important to make an effort to be kind

"Only Phineas was never afraid, only Phineas never hated anyone. Other people experienced this fearful shock somewhere, this sighting of the enemy, and so began an obsessive labor of defense, began to parry the menace they saw facing them by developing a particular frame of mind. ...

"All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way -- if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy."

-- JOHN KNOWLES, A Separate Peace, 1959

I read Knowles' wonderful novel before generations of high schoolers had to read it as an assignment. I think it must have been 1961 or maybe '62 when I discovered it, and there are few stories that have meant as much to me over the years.

If all of us -- boys, at least -- were either Finny or Gene, I don't think I knew any of the former. Nearly 60 years later, I'm still not sure I have.

He was a young man with complete confidence in himself, someone who never had to make himself feel better by making someone else feel bad. If he teased people at all, it was to encourage them to rise above themselves.

Oh, to have been a Phineas.

Oh, to have been a person who never tried to make himself feel better by making someone else feel worse.

For most of my teens and 20s, I was not a very nice person. I was the worst to my younger siblings, inventing a veritable dictionary of nicknames that were not designed to make them feel good. There is no way I can ever take any of that back.

I can try and have tried to be better.

I got a very pleasant surprise a year or so ago when I was talking on the phone with my youngest sister about an ongoing family dispute I have not really been a part of. I made some sympathetic comments and said I would try and be part of the solution after it was over.

"What a surprise that you turned out to be the kind one," she said.

I may never be Phineas, but I can be -- and am -- better than I was.

And that's something.

***

Our moral leader

If kindness -- and yes, class -- is in short supply these days, part of the problem is that people we expect to be role models are anything but.

We have always looked for our president to epitomize the best in America, to be someone who makes us proud.

Instead we have Donald Trump.

Enough said.