Meet greg. He's super smart.

I mentioned in my last post how “My Super Sweet 16” was perhaps beyond critical evaluation due to its fundamental alteration of the very equilibrium of sociodynamics; included in that post was a quick mention of the “American dream.” I would like to revisit this point.

I was playing Grand Theft Auto IV today when it hit me: isn’t “My Super Sweet 16” just the pinnacle of the American dream, the very embodiment of American success? What do we strive for, after all? What other reason do people trudge off to dead-end jobs each and every day, following the last person into the neo-Marxist industrial hell that is much of American capitalism? Isn’t it for the sole purpose to acquire wealth and to spend that wealth as they see fit? What other aspect of the American dream is there?

GTA helped me see this by asking that very question—for many, it is large houses, fast cars and beautiful women. Lupe Fiasco, in his song “Put you on game,” states: “I am the American dream; the rape of Africa; the undying machine; the overpriced medicine; the murderous regime; the tough guy’s front and the one behind the scene.” Scarface, Blow, Empire, American Gangster—all are contemporary versions of the American dream, are they not? When we evaluate socioeconomic dynamics, we must probe the intentions behind the acquisition, accumulation and spending of wealth—we must, in a phrase, deconstruct the very essence of what it means to be an “American.”

Is Americanism capitalism? Is it the predatory search for wealth? Is it the giant home, the Mercedes Benz, the private schools, country clubs, yachts and 12:00 tee times? Is it the spiritual, intellectual and ethical hollowness and hypocrisy of contemporary American suburbia, the yuppie culture of cookie-cutter McMansions? Is it the illicit drugs, the hard alcohol, the illegal prostitution, the back-alley abortions, the “abstinence only” policies, the failing educational standards, the deterioration of church and state, the racist, sexist and homophobic social practices? Is it the sensationalist media, the fear-mongering, the war-mongering, the political scandal-infused tabloids? Is it the undying obsession with celebrity culture? Is it the ability to purchase individualism on a “hot topic” shelf, bitch about it on your blog that night, fall asleep under a sheet of gold, wake up the next morning and try on a new personality fit? When all is said in done, past all the bull shit of “freedom” and “liberty” and “justice”—terms that have been thrown about with such jargonized vigor that our founding fathers are surely rolling over in their graves—what the hell does it mean to be an “American”?

Once Lazarus wrote upon a parchment what would grow to be the New Colossus, the definitive dictum of freedom for a new world to beckon its eager explorers. It read: 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-tost to me.” The American dream was an opportunity, a beautiful nuance between one world and another, a promise that, in America, freedom IS free. Now, it reads: “Give us your rich. Keep the rest. Fuck it, we’re America.”

Hell, at least we got the "greg-alogue"