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Daily Drive 365

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Israelmore Ayivor

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“America wasn’t its people,” said Murka, stepping toe-to-toe with Herbert. He was a good sight taller than the hulking mass of bulletproof steel standing in front of him. “America was a dream, son. A dream of what we could be. That any person, regardless of their birth, could rise above it all and achieve greatness. It was a dream that even the most lowly of us could stand up, fight, and even die for, if only to protect someone else’s chances for that greatness.”

AmericaGreatnessAmerican DreamRise Up
Book:Sea of Rust
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“In 2001 New York came under attack, and thousands of people simply evaporated, leaving behind only dust and bits of gold Rolex watches. We were told that we had nothing to worry about, that we should go shopping. I was eager to please my country, for shopping had long been an answer for me, but what I couldn't pay for, I stole. I started to accumulate stuff I felt would make me feel whole: I surrounded myself with symbols of status. I believed the TV commercials with all my heart. I felt that those material things I was being sold defined me.”

American DreamConsumerism911 Attacks
Book:Asylum: A Memoir About Hollywood, Mental Illness, Recovery, and Being My Mother's Son
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“I'd attended a selective liberal arts college, trained at respectable research institutions, and even completed a dissertation for a doctoral degree. In our shared office, I'd tell new hires I was ABD, so they wouldn't feel their own situation was so bleak. If they saw a ten-year veteran adjunct with a PhD, they might lose hope of securing a permanent job. It was the least I could do, as a good American, to remind the young we were an innocent and optimistic country where everyone was entitled to a fulfilling career. To make sure they understood that PhD stood not for "piled higher and deeper" or "Pop has dough," but in fact the degree meant "professional happiness desired," and at the altruistic colleges of democratic America only the angry or sad ones need not apply.”

HappinessWorkAmerican DreamStudent DebtAdjunct Labor
Book:Auggie's Revenge
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“The great American dream that reached out to the stars has been lost to the stripes. We have forgotten where we came from, we don’t know where we are, and we fear where we may be going. Afraid, we turn from the glorious adventure of the pursuit of happiness to a pursuit of an illusionary security in an ordered, stratified, striped society. Our way of life is symbolized to the world by the stripes of military force. At home we have made a mockery of being our brother’s keeper by being his jail keeper. When Americans can no longer see the stars, the times are tragic. We must believe that it is the darkness before the dawn of a beautiful new world; we will see it when we believe it.”

FreedomAmerican DreamAmerican Revolution
Book:Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals
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“My town, populated almost entirely by the descendants of white Christian Europeans, had few connections to the outside world, perhaps by choice, and so their resentments and fears festered with little reason to ever be expressed to anyone but one another. I don’t remember much talk of foreign affairs, or of other countries, rarely even of New York, which loomed like a terrifying shadow above us, the place Americans went either to be mugged or to think they were better than everyone else. That was my sense of the outside world: where Americans went to be hurt or to hurt others. When I got into an elite college, I took this small-town defensiveness with me, but slowly discovered that the world was actually kaleidoscopic, full of possibilities.”

AmericaPoliticsTravelJournalismPatriotismForeign PolicyAmerican DreamIntrospectionSmall TownWorld Travel
Author:Suzy Hansen
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