The American Dream According to Kurt Vonnegut

Personally, I am a fan of the magniloquence of the 19th century Russian novel. I say this without self congratulation, as I believe the preference is more reflective of a character flaw than a virtue. 

But — during a summer of intense original research, side projects, overnight bartending shifts, and a new rescue dog, my brain simply lacks the capacity to grapple with works as tortuous and dense as those of Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy. When there is time to free read at all (such as on my hour long commutes to the bar where I work), I need something much more straightforward. And for that, I often turn to Kurt Vonnegut. 

This is not to say that Vonnegut’s works aren’t exceptional or imbued with infinite layers of meaning. On the contrary, upon finishing God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, I had to sit without literature for about a week to process the intentional ambiguities of the plot and dialogue. Rather, it is Vonnegut’s direct syntax (even with his advanced vocabulary) and the sharp edges of his imagery that make his books accessible even when my head is swimming with other things. So, this summer, I picked up Slaughterhouse Five, or the Children’s Crusade, as it’s otherwise known, for a bit of “light” reading. 

It was there that I found the following quotation:

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves [….] Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times.” The section then goes on to outline an objectionable concept that America’s poor are “undignified” and therefore incapable of empathy for one another. 

This part of Slaughterhouse Five certainly has a philosophical kick: the character quoted here is an American-turned-Third Reich Nazi, and by all accounts is as unsympathetic a man as exists in the piece. But if you can look beyond his elitist contempt for blue collar and poor Americans, you can find a kernel of truth here. America was, at the time Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse Five, the wealthiest nation on Earth, and it still is today (this is not meant to be a comment on the potential longevity of its status as such). And then, as now, the U.S. has subscribed to a culture of capitalism, which despite undeniable benefits, has a corrupting dark side that criminalizes poverty, creates a false belief in the efficacy of bootstrap theory, and justifies blaming those in poverty for their financial situation on account of faux moral failings. In short, Americans have believed that poverty is a personal deficiency rather than a social condition.

Kurt Vonnegut died in Manhattan in 2007. If he had lived for five or ten more years, he might have seen the progress grassroots organizers have made in changing the narrative on poverty and wealth inequality in the U.S. Especially in the context of the modern progressive movement, the idea that groups striving for socioeconomic advancement are incapable of working together due to an oppressive narrative of Social Darwinism is virtually defunct. Those in power who try to perpetuate this narrative are finding, increasingly, that it falls upon deaf ears. My work at ALIGN this summer has only reinforced the notion that change is coming from within and across communities that are adversely affected by historical exclusion.