For most the american dream has always been primarily just that, a dream.
That cannot be repeated enough because there are very powerful narratives (as old as civilization probably) that want to tell and retell stories about how things used to be better that have no grounding in reality.
You are right though, a decent amount of people actually did get to live the american dream, the US used to be a lot less hostile to a middle class existing. So long as we talk about it with the recognition that many, many, many people were excluded from that dream for bullshit reasons it is an extremely salient point to say virtually no one except the ultra wealthy is living any kind of dream in the US anymore…. which for it is worth is the impression I got from what you were saying.
For most the american dream has always been primarily just that, a dream.
That cannot be repeated enough because there are very powerful narratives (as old as civilization probably) that want to tell and retell stories about how things used to be better that have no grounding in reality.
You are right though, a decent amount of people actually did get to live the american dream, the US used to be a lot less hostile to a middle class existing. So long as we talk about it with the recognition that many, many, many people were excluded from that dream for bullshit reasons it is an extremely salient point to say virtually no one except the ultra wealthy is living any kind of dream in the US anymore…. which for it is worth is the impression I got from what you were saying.