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Dream Small, America

Most of us will never achieve the impossible; we'd be better off admitting it

By Gabriel Winant, Newser User

Posted Mar 13, 2009 11:45 AM CDT

(Newser) – The American dream sounds great, but the relentless pursuit of "whatever glitters beyond the edge of our means" is doing us no favors, Frederic Morton writes in the LA Times. "Our passion for the out-of-reach is the very dynamic that (to use a long- familiar phrase) 'has made this country great,'" he writes. “But has it made us happy? And how much of our happiness is the bright mask of stress?”

Even President Obama comes in for a share of the blame, thanks to his taste in book titles: The Audacity of Hope means "a dweller in the land content with the possible falls short of America's spirit." Now, Morton wonders, “Do we have the courage to free ourselves from the fixation on the exceptional?”

[Images (4)]

[Quotes (2)]

An unfinished development at a master planned community in suburban Las Vegas is pictured Wednesday, March 12, 2008. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken)

A foreclosed home that was to be sold at auction is shown Friday, March 6, 2009, in Queens, NY. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Actor George Clooney pauses before a television interview on the North Lawn of the White House following his meeting with President Barack Obama, Feb. 23, 2009. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

President Barack Obama walks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 6, 2009, after a day trip to Columbus, Ohio. The Washington Monument is at right. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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The map of your truly American life charts a freeway leading from a log cabin, literal or figurative, to the White House, literal or figurative (that is, to the movie icon's aerie or the billionaire's topiary garden). - Frederic Morton

If only there weren't just one Bill Gates, one Elvis Presley, one Barack Obama able to even approximate such a journey. With the rest of us, audacity tends to curdle into personal thwarting, social malaise and, sooner or later, general economic disaster. - Frederic Morton

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Dream Small, America