American Dream

Wednesday

Kathleen Willcox

Champagne and America is a love story without end

From the beginning, Champagne has never been just a drink, or a region: it’s a celebration, an occasion, a trophy, a reward; a symbol of joyful decadence and glamorous debauchery; the overflowing drink of the American Dream. In short, it’s a boozy cheat sheet for the zeitgeist and the anxieties and dreams of the people who sip it. And, for the past seventy-five years or so, that zeitgeist has been driven by the United States. “American culture pervades everything,” says Christian Holthausen, a dual French-American citizen and founder of the Paris-based Champagne consulting firm Westbrook Marketing Partners. “Driving through Paris just now, I saw a Coca-Cola machine on one street, and a billboard for Apple on the next.

champagne

Sunday

Bridget Phetasy

You can never escape the suburbs

Had you told me when I quit drinking that one decade into sobriety I’d be a suburban Texas mom, I probably would have kept drinking. A friend and I were recently talking and I said, “I don’t know, a part of me feels like I’m giving up, moving to the suburbs.” She laughed and said, “That’s what the suburbs are — surrender.” The suburbs in all their sameness and picket-fenced perfection represented a life I never wanted — with their Live, Laugh, Love Etsy signs and swingers. They weren’t for eccentric artists or messed-up comedians. They were for sorority girls and women who loved game nights and crafts and the Bible and botox parties.

suburbs

Tuesday

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

The paradox of political power

Since the founding of the Republic, the average American, if asked to express in a single word what his country stood for, would likely have answered “Freedom!” (or “Fweedom!” as the childe Kamala spake all those many years ago). The so-called American Dream, a concept dating from the 1930s, has always been materialist in nature. H.L. Mencken predicted that the socialists would ultimately fail in their attempt to transform the United States into a Soviet paradise on the North American continent for the simple reason that every American hopes to become a millionaire before he dies. Almost a century later, money is being progressively eclipsed in the pantheon of national values by power.

power

Monday

Teresa Mull

Inflation destroys the small town soul of America

My friend Dave Sr. owns the diner up the road and runs it with his son, Dave Jr. The family business is coming up on its fortieth anniversary, and Dave Sr., who’s eighty now — though you’d never guess it — reflected to me recently on the mom ‘n pop shops that have disappeared over the last fifty years or so. He and another local old-timer counted dozens that used to dot the two-lane road between our town and the next town over. “Now, I don’t think you can count more than five or six [small businesses]!” Dave Sr. said. “And they all made a living out of these places. Between government intervention and red tape and so forth, people are afraid to get into small business.” Running a small business is the epitome of the American Dream.