"Then There's That Other American Dream, the Numbed-Out, Dumbed-Down, Make-Believe World"

"Franklin Roosevelt: '[F]reedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.' The proposition goes deeper than sentiment, deeper than policy, deeper even than adherence to equality and 'the pursuit of happiness' as set forth in the Declaration. It cuts all the way to the nature of democracy, and to the prospects for its continued existence in America. 'We may have democracy in this country,' wrote supreme court justice Louis Brandeis, 'or we may have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.' Those few, in Brandeis's judgment, would inevitably use their power to subvert the free will of the majority; the super-rich as a class simply couldn't be trusted to do otherwise, a thesis that's being starkly acted out in the current era of Citizens United, Super Pacs, and truckloads of dark money."

Ben Fountain at The Guardian connects the American Dream to the "Fantasy Industrial Complex" in a 2016 article.