What's really left of the 'American Dream'

Trump will come to power and the American Dream will have survived him too. If we believe that the Dream depends on who sits in the White House, we don't understand America.

After all, this has been a constant for 250 years: the rest of the world has almost never understood the profound nature of this country.

The dream was born discredited from the start, at least in the eyes of European elites ... but not the tens of millions of immigrants welcomed by the Statue of Liberty.

With the exception of the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, author of an immortal analysis of the superiority of American democracy, European judgments have always been dismissive.

Hitler was convinced he would win the war against a "nation of shopkeepers" (the Americans). But before him, it was the Vatican that condemned the "materialism" of the United States, despite its consistently higher rates of religious practice than Europe and its unparalleled traditions of philanthropy.

Lenin and Stalin prophesied the downfall of American capitalism, but when their successor, Khrushchev, visited the real country, he was shocked by the prosperity of the American working class. Then came Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese communist fascinated by the market economy.

But for entire generations of young Americans, the opposite was true: in the 1960s and 1970s, their idols were Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara. The burning of the Stars and Stripes in America's squares was the rite of passage by which they declared the Dream a fraud.

Trump makes us forget this: anti-Americanism - even within the United States - was at its peak under progressive presidents like John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

As for Europeans, for many, America was the only threat to world peace even in the days of Truman (a Democrat, architect of the Marshall Plan, but "guilty" of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), then Nixon, Reagan and Bush Jr.

There was a brief wave of solidarity after September 11, 2001, when not only Corriere della Sera but also Le Monde dared to write an editorial with the headline "We are all Americans". It did not last long, as the counter-narrative quickly spread that America "had it hard to happen", that it deserved the massacre of three thousand innocent civilians: another wave of anti-Americanism, denounced in these columns by Oriana Fallaci.

Among the rare instances of clarity regarding America is the Draghi Report of 2024. With data that in some cases dates back to the 1980s, this report focuses on Europe, but to diagnose its problems, it makes comparisons with the performance of the American economy.

The assessment is ruthless: America has achieved remarkable achievements in innovation, dynamism, job creation, and income growth. It has distanced Europe—and made the famous “overtaking” by China increasingly impossible—under very different presidents: Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, Biden. There are structural factors that shape America. The policies of presidents are not as important as people think.

The stubborn European denial clings to the caricatures of America. It is anything but a Dream: a hell of inequality and racism, a Wild West of unbridled capitalism, an ignorant and uncivilized nation where only billionaires thrive. And of course, since the Great Satan has been in the White House, a militarized and fascist country. Not to mention the blame for all the conflicts and evils that afflict humanity (even though the war in Ukraine was Putin’s will under the Obama and Biden presidencies; even though the most polluting power on the planet is undoubtedly China).

The dream is actually a nightmare; that's what many Europeans seem to agree on, as well as a good part of the progressive American establishment: from Hollywood to the New York Times, plus those financial, academic and social elites that Tom Wolfe called "radical elegance" in 1970.

Reality sometimes mocks our prejudices. Fans who flock to the World Cup discover a better America than the disgusting descriptions they heard after leaving. The great exodus of Americans to Canada or Europe remains a legend: few celebrities, microscopic numbers.

Trump, on the other hand, continues to attract the best European, Indian and Chinese talent to Silicon Valley. And if current visa restrictions were to be eased, the masses of aspiring immigrants would push the borders back. Voting with their feet, in favor of the Dream./Corriere della Sera