"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"—Emma Lazarus
Written in 1883, the poem, The New Colossus, defines the American story: anyone desperate or hardy enough may come in search of a better life in the new world, that America was a country of the people, not kings, a place where commoners forged their own destinies and emerged, from shackles shadowed in European, aristocratic pomp, into light, so all could see what they accomplished by their own hands.
Whether that chapter in America’s history has ended, we—from the most left-wing communist to the most right-wing fascist, and all in between—read the words and feel the ideals stir in some pit under our heart, I can only refer to as the soul—sighing silent woes for fear we cannot, or will not, honor the deal, that the tired, poor, huddled masses will never breathe free.
It’s popular sentiment to shit on the American dream, the American story—perhaps for good reason. Most college students read The Great Gatsby, the closest thing to the great American novel we have, and accept the spoon-fed interpretations of the American dream being flawed or dead or in some other depressing state. The state of politics is abysmal—with the left pitting the middle class as the source of the poors’ problems and the right pitting the poor as the source for middle class’ problems while the rich laugh at our squabbles—and both sides refuse to compromise on anything. Politicians, news agencies, candidates, voices we should be able to trust, exploit crises, warp the truth, so they can push agendas. People, gripped in fear, ready and willing to forsake freedoms for an illusion of safety. People, with best and honest, if not misguided and naïve, intentions in their hearts, wanting to care for people a world away, while we neglect our veterans, homeless, and despairing youth—our tired, poor, huddled masses. We traded the shadow of European aristocracy for the one cast by the American celebrity, the American politician too, under the pretense that it’s somehow better. As the lamp at the door now flickers, dying on wisps of breath, the shadow grows and we find a nation, a people, forlorn hope and paralyzed.
With the sense of the dying American dream, it shouldn’t be a surprise people support fringe candidates, each in their own special way promising to make America great again. And who can blame them for wanting a radical—a communist or a fascist hiding in sheep skin—when a vote for another candidate maintains the status quo? And how long can we maintain?
History will be made November 2016. Due to an absence of moderate candidates, a disappearing faith in the American dream or fear for the death of the American deal, a political extreme will most likely rise to power. And all America, regardless of its political stance, will be equally to blame and blameless. In their hearts, the American people will believe they have done their duty to democracy.
I looked upon the face of liberty, and
she was weeping: her child was dead
and we had killed her.
