Hunter S. Thompson and the "American Dream" in the Early 21st Century

Summer 2015 was a tumultuous time. Whereas most of the nation had embraced the previously radical notion of "gay marriage," there were still parts of the American psyche - and political body - that were re-thinking the notion of the Confederate Flag, finally accepting the absurdity of flying the symbol of viciously racist men who have been dead for a century - as a symbol of government.

For it was here in the American psyche that the people of America realized that the "American Dream" was literally just that - a dream. An illusion, a mental construct, a fantasy on par with other fantasies, including but not limited to the unicorn.

And it was here (in time) that the (American) people realized that the linguistic/mental/sociocultural paradigm was false to begin with. That to speak about (and think of the world in terms of) the "American" Dream was fundamentally unsubstantiated, no more arbitrary, and no less meaningful, than drawing boundaries based on rivers or mountain ridges and pursuing unicorns defined by those boundaries.

It was at this point in which such nonsense was abandoned and we sought “to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world," as Robert Kennedy put it.

Or else, we continued to crumble until the last creature capable of thought in this fraction of the universe was drowned in what is now our polar ice caps.