The Fading American Dream: A Reflection on Lost Promises and Fleeting Optimism

If there still is such a thing as the American Dream, it feels like the type that immediately dissolves as soon as you wake up.

The shit your parents may have been promised in their youth—whether they were born here, were forced to come here, or arrived on their own volition—was probably promised to you, too.

But anyone too young to recall where they were when the Towers fell could tell you that pathway is all but obsolete.

Where true optimism may have once been abundant, it now comes in small, ephemeral doses.