Many American commentators are always going on and on about the “American Dream. A recent example is a column by Ellis Close in the September 8, 2008 issue of Newsweek magazine. In his column titled “To Dream a Little Dream of Us,” Close argues that this year’s US presidential contest “is not about who is the best orator; it is more about who is the best dream merchant. Make no mistake, both candidates and both parties hsve dreams to sell. Or, more accurately, they have different versions of the same dream – the American Dream. In the end, the election is likely to go to the candidate who best argues his dream is the more authentic – and his approach the most American.”

Close adds, “Both candidates claim they are children of the Dream. Both are eloquent in offering up their versions of what it did for them, and of what it can do for other Americans. McCain’s Republican version emphasises toughness, individuality and loyalty – to country, to friends – that trumps virtually anything else…Obama’s Democratic version of the Dream focuses less on celebrating individual success and more on protecting the vulnerable. But Obama also believes something that McCain does not: that the Dream itself is endangered. Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, said the dream ‘feels as if it’s slowly slipping away’.”

But just what, exactly, is the “American Dream”? There was a time when it could have been said that the American Dream was encapsulated in the words written at the base of the Statue of Liberty (given to the US by France in 1884 to celebrate the American and French Revolutions). These words are: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless tempest-tossed to me! / I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Today, however, in President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 America, any “wretched refuse” from the “teeming shore” of other countries that land on America’s shores is viewed as a potential terrorist and is likely to be detained for questioning, or incarceration, or worse. Is this today’s “American Dream”? Or is it an American nightmare?

“Are you a terrorist?” asks the American visa application form. “Do you intend to overthrow the Government of the United States by violent means?” the form asks. Such questions seem to be premised on the absurd assumption that any applicant who is actually a terrorist, or actually intends to overthrow the Government of the United States by violent means, will answer these questions by declaring: “Yes, I am a terrorist” and “Yes, I do intend to overthrow the Government of the United States by violent means.” The naivety inherent in such ridiculous questions almost defies belief.

And if “toughness” is one of the elements in McCain’s Republican version of the “American Dream,” does the so-called “toughness” shown by Bush in bombing the defenceless people of Afghanistan and Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the process, epitomise today’s “American Dream”? Is “collateral damage” – that horrific euphemism used by the US military to describe civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq – part of today’s “American Dream”?

Some of Bush’s critics say that he is the most illiterate president in American history. The soaring cadences of Jefferson’s and Lincoln’s speeches, and the moving words of John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address, have been replaced by the incoherent mumblings of George W. Bush. Are those mumblings, too, part of today’s “American Dream”? If they are, then all one can do is to paraphrase Mark Antony’s funeral oration for Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play and say, “What a fall there has been, my countrymen.”

Has the “American Dream” of the mid-19th century slogan “Westward Ho, the Wagons” been replaced by anxious lines of visitors at Washington’s Dulles Airport? Has the free-spirited American cowboy who roamed the prairies listening to the sibilance of the wind blowing through tall grass and cottonwood trees been replaced by a corporate executive in a Brooks Brothers suit, an angst-ridden figure with a button-downed collar, and a button-downed mind? Is this part of today’s “American Dream”?

Does today’s “American Dream” include the fact that America is the crime capital of the world, with an average of 14 million reported crimes a year (according to official US figures)? Does today’s “American Dream” include the fact that there are now more than 2.5 million people in prison in the United States, the highest number by far for any country in the world. The 27 countries that make up the European Union have a combined population of roughly the same size as the United States. Yet the number of people in prison in the EU countries is less than 20 per cent of the number of people in prison in the US. Is this huge difference, too, a part of today’s “American Dream”?

Black Americans constitute about 16 per cent of the US population. In percentage terms, the use of illegal drugs among Black Americans is about the same part of the total black population as is the use of illegal drugs among whites as a percentage of the total white population. Yet the arrest rate among blacks using illegal drugs is far higher than the arrest rate among whites using illegal drugs. A survey of 52 American cities carried out by the USA Today newspaper in the 1990s showed that in some cities the arrest rate among blacks using illegal drugs was 12 times to 18 times higher than the arrest rate among whites using illegal drugs. This was clear evidence of the fact that America’s so-called “war against drugs” has turned racist.

America spends more money on its military (over $ 500 billion this year) than all the other countries in the world put together spend on their military forces. America has the highest number of nuclear warheads and missiles in its arsenal, enough to wipe out all of humanity several times over! Not content with this, the Bush administration is building more nuclear weapons. These are known as “tactical nukes”, or “bunker busters” in US military jargon.

The term “tactical nukes” implies that the US visualises situations where these weapons may actually be used – spreading huge swathes of destruction across the countries where they may be dropped, poisoning the land for generations to come, killing tens of thousands of people in an instant and infecting thousands more with radiation poisoning, causing them to die agonising slow deaths over the ensuing decades – as has happened in the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese cities destroyed by US nuclear bombs in August 1945. Are these tactical nukes part of today’s “American Dream”?

America is the world’s biggest market for illegal drugs. An estimated $ 350 billion a year in drug money is laundered through the US banking system. Money laundering is a serious crime in America, as it is in most countries. A few US banks are occasionally fined a few thousand dollars by the US banking authorities for money laundering, but that is all. No American bank has ever been closed down by the US banking authorities for indulging in money laundering. Is this part of today’s “American Dream”?

An estimated 270 million guns, including automatic weapons and even machine guns, are in private hands in America, where no adult citizen needs a licence to buy and keep such weapons. A licence is only needed for pistols and revolvers. But even this restriction is of very recent origin. It came into force only a few years ago, in the shape of the Brady Bill enacted by Congress. But far more lethal hardware than pistols and revolvers still requires no licence. Is this part of today’s “American Dream”?

The US is the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases, the main cause of global warming. Yet one of the first steps the Bush administration took after coming into office in January 2001 was to pull America out of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty aimed at cutting the automobile carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. For all practical purposes, the US’s pullout had the effect of sabotaging the Kyoto treaty, thereby increasing the dangers the world faces from global warming. Is this part of today’s “American Dream”?

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the Bush administration railroaded through Congress (with hardly any debate) the draconian USA Patriot Act of November 2001 – an assault on constitutional civil liberties so vicious that it has been rejected by over 200 communities across America. In January 2002, the Patriot Act was followed by the passing of the even more draconian Homeland Security Act, which has turned the United States, in many respects, into a virtual police state, where even public library book-borrowing records and bookshop sales records have to be turned over to the FBI on demand. Is this also part of today’s “American Dream.”