Cheers to the Great American Dream

Asya Lu Han

Oh my, through the flowing river of historical affairs, from the start of the 20th century till postmodernity – where on earth does one even begin to depict one of the greatest products and phenomena of our modern world, the Great American Dream?! Where does one even begin to grasp such a concept that combines all qualities in life that mankind desires? Freedom, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the door leading up to endless prosperities and opportunities which open wide to all who had done hard work and aspired to achieve?

Building on the very fact that every individual has their own interpretation of the meaning and significance of the American Dream, this text is not to provide definitions that we all know. Rather, it provides a glimpse at its bestowments and implications onto the developing world, which serves as an entry ticket offer for people to dream. With desperate yet aspiring stories stirred up in global media sensationalism, children of the developing world began to stretch their fingers afar to a lighthouse that monumentally stands across dark waters of the seven seas. Such monument’s values weave into an intricate web that encompasses all great things. Like the advancements and glories which the Western civilization had laid its foundations on, proudly enduring through history to enlighten future paths.

However, the problem prevails – in what miraculous circumstances and joyous days are poor dreamers bestowed upon the honour to redeem their deserving fruits after dreadfully endless longings and hard work? One of the most fundamental values of the American Dream is that those who possess virtues of diligent work and strive for excellence are destined to be rewarded accordingly. They would be gifted with wide-open paths of opportunities, wealth and all other pleasant things. In a ‘Land of Liberty’ cultural lighthouse of our century has sent out its olive branch, with the most vibrant free-market economy and prosperous liberal democracy.

These curious wonders, or rather not wonders, instead, merely temporal daydreams are mainly sold with targets set towards the specific demographics of many children including myself. Our unfortunate birthrights lay in the Second or Third World, pathetically trampled on by the cruelty of international geopolitical games. Such places of barrenness and despair are commonly characterized by centuries of poverty, pain, and regressive development growth. Abandoned at the turning points of historical paths, stuck in hopeless and God-less shapes.

During the roaring, dancing 2000s that even the Global Financial Crisis could not obstruct, near sight to the global world were peaceful international corporations and rapid economic recoveries. Cultural exports and diplomacy embedded in the American way of life had spread affluence, great quality of life and other fantastical dreams. Thus, so were cosmopolitan fashion icons published onto global teen magazine cover pages. Meanwhile, sitcoms and sharp commentaries were broadcasted worldwide through one universal American tongue, about sweet stories like honey or bright future days like the sun over Boston pier. Through the global village, from the thick Siberian woods to the Special Economic Zones of South-east China’s Open Market Reform, we looked up towards Washington. In such a brilliantly dazzling modern world, the cultural and political lighthouse sat mightily on the Statue of Liberty and Hollywood Hills. Astounded by the great American accomplishments and remarks, travellers across the seas exclaimed – what glorious advancements, what progressions and innovations, what treasures of humanity such a brave nation beheld!

It is of course not universalthat the qualities of a near-perfect liberal-democratic American life had cast such powerful impacts onto all children of the less privileged worlds. I only speak from my own knowledge of the conflicting and poignant emotions experienced amongst my fellow young comrades; students who proudly attended the only American-affiliated foreign language school in the poverty-stricken geopolitical tragedy of Chinese Manchuria. Surrounding our lives were the ashes and ruins of a thing called ‘socialism’ that made us all laugh. Our neighbouring post-Soviet states had their futures hazed in fifty years of perpetual economic stagnations that haunted their horizons across the bleak Siberian snow. Yet how on earth would such circumstances pose troubles to children who held the greatest endearment to Romanticist dreams of bright future paths? Wine glasses were raised to the idyllically wonderful American life. It became reflected everywhere before our eyes: in globalized media and praises of international voices, from wildly popular teen fiction books to Nobel Peace Award speeches, then to Disney Channel screens. Nothing stood in the way of strong wills and hardworking resolves. Even thick curtains of the falling Siberian snow would not do so. We had pledged our dreams and souls to timeless literature that entailed two thousand years of noble traditions and advancements of the great Western world.

In the warm sunlight of democracy and fresh Santa Monica breezes of liberty, any child of unfortunate Second World births would forget the unrelenting reality where we all sat. Amongst the fractures of a so-called heroic Socialist dream, consuming nothing other than the poverty, despair, and pain which it induced. On the grounds of nothingness, amongst shattered decays and rustbelts of last-century icons, painfully stood the corroded skeletons of once-remarkably mighty industrial factory sites from Five-Year Plans. Born and raised out of smokes and dust of eternal economic inefficiencies, the geopolitics of the developing world had written for us – no way out, and neither could we look back to the dissolved histories of heroes’ Leningrad and a Warsaw Pact built on tragically spilt blood.

Amongst us, many spoke the American tongue with contradictions, of great longings towards its promises of a prosperous life. Yet hindered with accents of poverty inherited from our languages of the developing world. Many also frequently conversed in Eurasian continental affairs with family members who passionately served in a glorious Party that we both resented and loved. Yet during the fantasies and dreams of our youths, on our own separate will, we had found closure and contentment. The course of history was to forget. To forget how once with wide teary eyes our brave tovarishchi and devushki (Russian: comrades) stood up after ten years of dirt and blood under trenches of the Northeast-Asian Front. Before their sight spiralled upwards, newly developed cities with hard steel of Lenin and victories of Zhukov. Meanwhile, radiant lights of hammer and sickle and the Kremlin red star trimmed the edges of industrial towns.

In the end, as children who saluted to the same valiant flag that was raised gloriously onto 1945’s devilish Berlin, had we not at all – during news segments anchored in our ethnic tongues by Party secretaries, regarding the devils who grew faces of America and the West – contemplated about certain politics that undeservingly evoked too much blood and pain? Had we also not, through the veil of burning fires in Yugoslavia’s Balkan soils and ancient ruins of Iraq, shed tears upon the shattered window glass and gunshots that pierced through the abundance of our endearing lands? In the once majestic Soviet Hero Cities of Crimea and Donetsk? Had we not prayed in loss and sorrow as being plunged towards an unknown future in our countries’ fates? Oh prosti nas gosputi (Russian: God forgive us), as for such tragic agonies many nations of victimhood did not ask for, nor deserve?

As a challenged student of contemporary politics, the one key principle about our world I understand for sure is that the international political arena indeed does play a cruel game. In its brutal reality, our dream is merely a dream, our longings and imaginations are merely fantasies. Our dreams swirl under the sugarcoats of mint chocolate ice cream and stacks of green dollar bills, not the sunshine of freedom on the West Coast’s summer days. In this case, as for the faraway Land of Liberty and fantastical Utopian worlds crafted by the West, coming from centuries worth of bleak poverty and third-worldly discontents I can say – it shall be in our own hard work, determinations, and strong resolve, that towards the pleasant and abundant American life we dream. Whereas the lights which we reached towards and often became abandoned by are no false saviour to be worshipped, and neither will voluntarily rid us of desperation or pain. After all, it makes sense, as the fundamental basis of the Great American Dream, vests in the power of selfdetermination and self-liberation granted to all.