is the American Dream really over?

Picture borrowed from The Economist online Magazine

I was a teenager when I really ‘met’ America.

I started listening (and later playing) to American music. Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, the Eagles were my heroes. In fact, I learned the English language thanks to Bob Dylan; and even before starting to have English courses at school. I remember our English teacher used to ask us to give her a sentence, and I always gave her a difficult sentence from Bob Dylan songs that she could not understand herself. It was funny! You do these kind of things when you’re a teenager, right? She was bit upset, but after few occasions, she started asking me which Bob Dylan sentence she’ll get in the class today.

My second meeting with America was just so sweet. It was my first summer holidays love, a beautiful girl from North Carolina that I met in Rome, Italy. She was staying with her parents in the same hotel and we met there. We were both 16. Looking back at it now, it seemed like t was coming out of a Fellini movie, except it was real and I was the main act.

Reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The great Gatsby and watching James Dean in East of Eden was revealing to me this open and free nation full of hope and opportunities for everyone. I was fascinated by all the 60’s/70’s movements in the US; Warhol, Lou Reed. the marches for civil rights and black rights, Martin Luther King, Malcom X. The protest singers Joan Baez, Bob Dylan. Woodstock festival ’69. The Manifestation against Vietnam war, the Bangladesh concert.

A vibrant nation and generations standing up for peace and love in the world.

Coming back to reality, what is left from all that?

The American dream is changing shape. Large disparities between rich and poor. Ethnic America is born. Racism against blacks is amazingly - despite all the sacrifices – a daily news. A new extension of racism is being exacerbated, and it's called islamphobia. Despite the active engagement and responsibility of the US administration and the CIA in several devastating wars, the current American generation does not seem to care. Too busy to follow the Kardashians on TV…

Today, you can become a star without having any talent. Look at the Kardashians! You can become a star because you have won the 2015 US contest for the best tattoo on your shoulder.
Generations of the reality show. Generations kept away from reality.

And it’s getting even worse now, look at the list of candidates running to become the next president of the US of A on November 2016, the most powerful man leading the most powerful nation on the planet.

Have you heard any Trump’s speech? I recommend you to listen to him for 5 minutes, I did it. What a disaster! His plan is simple, build a wall on the Mexican border, a neighbor country. 

The other candidates are not better.

Am I only becoming emotional, nostalgic and overreacting when I remember that Woodstock generation?

Or is this really the end of the American dream? 

I still naively request the Woodstock generation...