My American Dream

"You can dream the American Dream, but you sleep with the lights on and wake up with a scream."  Warren Zevon, Fistful of Rain 

It's likely that even cynical lawyers like myself have a certain regard for the rule of law.  I do, in any case.  Perhaps after so many years I've come to respect the vast and imposing system it is; I'm invested in it, in a sense.  Most especially, I respect those restrictions on the power of government, and others, meant to assure civil liberties.

I've always liked the film A Man for All Seasons.  In one scene Thomas More and Will Roper are having an argument regarding law and the devil.  Roper insists that he'd cut through the laws to get at the devil, and More replies:

"Oh?  And, when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?  This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and, if you cut them down--and you're just the man to do it--d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then.  Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake."

I'm unconvinced of the devil's existence, but the deviltry of we humans is familiar enough to me, and I've thought much the same as does More in the film regarding the protection afforded by the law from the harms we delight in inflicting on one another.

But there are times, increasing in frequency, when the rule of law seems less and less a fact and more and more a dream here in our Great Union.  A rule of convenience rather than a rule honored and vigorously maintained.  A rule imposed in the service of money, and power, and repression; of the monied and powerful whose interest it is to repress those without money and power.  The protection of the law is granted selectively.  The devil in us is given the benefit of the law, assuredly, but we aren't unless the devil is in us.

We may have no aristocracy, but we have a plutocracy.  That plutocracy doesn't grow, but its assets and power do.  How many now believe in, or experience, what used to be called "The American Dream"?  It seems ridiculous to assert that there is equality of opportunity here.  There is instead none for most of us, or at best a lesser opportunity for some.

The regard in which the gluttons and hoarders that make up the plutocracy are held is astounding.  Our legal system and morality encourage acquisition and retention.  Efforts at providing a minimal degree of comfort, health and welfare to all are viewed with suspicion, decried as "socialism" while the plutocracy thrives.  The extent to which it has mesmerized the middle class, if one still exists, is remarkable.  The hoarding of the wealthy is guaranteed by the acceptance of the doctrine of rights by those who have far less that they are entitled to.  The concept of rights, inherently selfish, has overwhelmed the concept of virtue.

One can't help but wonder whether the have-nots have, or shortly will, have had enough.  The pandemic, so utterly ignored by the plutocrats, may ignite a resentment long suppressed as jobs and lives continue to be lost.  Then what?  Goaded on by malcontents, so influential in these times of limitless communication and little thought, to chaos.

In the Kingdom of Fear, my fondest hope is to be left alone by government, by everyone, politicians, pundits, police, people.  That's what has become my American Dream.