The American Dream
美国梦
By Larry Romanoff, July 26, 2022
通过 拉里·罗曼诺夫，2022年7月26日
译者：珍珠
美国拥有任何国家中最根深蒂固的民族主义意识形态之一。伴随着爱国主义和自由的大规模歇斯底里，在创造美国身份感的意识形态链条中，最普遍的一个环节是对“美国梦”的信仰，这是一个想象中的理想，提供了一条从穷到富的繁荣之路。在这个神话般的世界里，每个公民都可以平等地获得所有机会，在这个国家，即使没有学历、教育或经验的人也可以积累数不清的财富，甚至成为国家总统。在这种背景下，美国是一个梦幻般的乌托邦神话，被宣传机器宣传为机会和希望的理想主义香格里拉概念，即使是最弱势群体也有公平的机会获得财富和名声。
Americans almost universally believe they are unique in this regard, the US virtually defining itself as the land of opportunity, but this has always been a delusion. While it may be true that the US has accumulated comparatively more wealthy individuals than other nations, and which status has been broadcast to the world as evidence of virtue, this is much more an indictment of the predatory and anti-social nature of American-style capitalism than of equity and opportunity. It is true that the uniquely predatory form of American capitalism will create some kinds of opportunities that do not exist in other countries, but we can develop a very strong argument that those kinds should not be permitted to exist. Let’s not erase 2008 from our memories too soon. Moreover, there have been precious few large personal fortunes created in the US that were not accompanied by the commitment of even greater crimes, and the executives of a great many US multinationals from the Rockefeller’s United Fruit Company and Standard Oil to Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart should have faced trial and been executed for crimes against humanity.
美国人几乎普遍认为他们在这方面是独一无二的，美国实际上将自己定义为机会之地，但这始终是一种错觉。虽然美国比其他国家积累了相对更多的富人，并且这种地位已作为美德的证据向全世界传播，这可能是真的，但这更像是对美国式资本主义掠夺性和反社会性质的控诉，而不是对公平和机会的控诉。诚然，美国资本主义独特的掠夺性形式将创造一些其他国家不存在的机会，但我们可以提出一个非常有力的论点，即不应允许这些机会存在。让我们不要过早地从记忆中抹去2008年。此外，在美国创造的宝贵的个人财富中，很少有不伴随着更大犯罪的，许多美国跨国公司的高管，从洛克菲勒的联合水果公司和标准石油公司到可口可乐和沃尔玛，都应该因反人类罪受到审判和处决。
The US does indeed have a large number of billionaires, but this is directly offset by the vast decline of the middle class and the huge and increasing number of impoverished. The elite 1%, the bankers and industrialists who control the government, forced legislation that freed them from taxes and regulation to permit that free accumulation of wealth. The fact that other Western nations have fewer of the extreme rich is also directly offset by their corresponding lack of poverty. One need only examine the data on income inequality to realise that opportunity in America is increasingly reserved for the privileged few and that the masses are not only excluded by design but are being plundered by that same privileged few.
美国确实拥有大量的亿万富翁，但中产阶级的大幅下降和贫困人口的大量增加直接抵消了这一影响。1%的精英阶层，即控制政府的银行家和实业家，强制立法使他们免于税收和监管，允许自由积累财富。其他西方国家的极富人口较少，这一事实也被它们相应的贫困状况所直接抵消。人们只需检查收入不平等的数据，就可以意识到美国的机会越来越多地留给了少数特权阶层，大众不仅被刻意排斥，而且也被少数特权阶层掠夺。
As with almost every other American claim of supremacy, the few examples offered of anything are virtually the only examples that exist. Americans will proudly point to a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffett as evidence of the truth of their conviction, but Gates (William H. Gates III) was third-generation old money whose family was connected at the highest levels and not, as the myth would have it, an unknown computer geek who dropped out of Harvard and struck gold with a good idea. In any case, Gates and Buffett are two individuals of 300 million, and the brutal truth that seems to escape the consciousness of Americans is that these two accumulated their wealth while tens of millions of others were losing their homes and jobs. Americans will point proudly to Apple, with its accumulated offshore profits of $300 billion as evidence of America’s limitless possibilities, but are apparently unable to see the millions living in tent cities and sleeping in the sewers of Las Vegas as one inevitable result of the accumulation of that same $300 billion. And they are also unable to see the criminality of firms like Foxconn in China who produce those Apple products in what are essentially forced-labor concentration camps. The rich in every nation do not become rich because they are smarter, but by taking advantage and almost always by brutalising those less fortunate.
与几乎所有其他美国的霸权主张一样，提供的少数例子实际上是唯一存在的例子。美国人会自豪地指出比尔·盖茨或沃伦·巴菲特是他们信念真实性的证据，但盖茨（威廉·H·盖茨三世）是第三代老富翁，他的家族关系最为密切，而不是像传说中的那样，是一个不知名的电脑怪才，他从哈佛大学辍学，并凭借一个好主意获得了金牌。无论如何，盖茨和巴菲特都是3亿人口中的两个人，而美国人似乎没有意识到的残酷事实是，这两个人积累了财富，而其他数千万人却失去了家园和工作。美国人会自豪地指出苹果公司，其累计3000亿美元的海外利润证明了美国的无限可能性，但显然无法将数百万人生活在帐篷城市，睡在拉斯维加斯的下水道中视为这3000亿美元累积的必然结果。他们也看不到像富士康这样的中国公司在本质上是强迫劳动集中营生产苹果产品的犯罪行为。每个国家的富人致富并不是因为他们更聪明，而是因为他们利用了机会，而且几乎总是通过残酷对待那些不幸的人。
We can easily create an almost perfect analogy to the American dream: “All Americans have the opportunity to learn to fly. Not in an airplane, but like Superman, cruising through the air on mystical superpowers.” Of course, if we examine the landscape, we find precious few individuals who seem to have taken advantage of this great opportunity, but this lack of evidence in no way invalidates our premise. In precisely the same fashion we can claim that all Americans have the opportunity to become rich and successful. Again, when we examine the landscape, we find precious few individuals who have actually managed this, but again the lack of evidence does not serve to invalidate our premise. Of course, the entire argument is just nonsense. The success of Warren Buffett is indicative of nothing but one fortunate and talented individual who was in the right places at the right times and who is remarkable only for his rarity. We have a few Elon Musks and others like him, but again this is indicative of nothing. If the American dream as stated is real, we need at least many tens of millions of individuals who have achieved some reasonable measure of this dream. But they don’t exist, and the reason they don’t exist is that the entire narrative of the American dream is a fraud.
我们可以很容易地为美国梦创建一个近乎完美的类比：“所有美国人都有机会学习飞行。不是坐飞机，而是像超人一样，借助神秘的超级力量在空中巡航。”当然，如果我们审视一下这片土地，我们会发现似乎很少有人利用了这个巨大的机会，但缺乏证据绝不会使我们的前提失效。我们可以以同样的方式宣称，所有美国人都有机会变得富有和成功。再次，当我们审视这片土地时，我们发现很少有人真正做到了这一点，但同样，证据的缺乏并不能使我们的前提失效。当然，整个论点都是胡说八道。沃伦·巴菲特的成功只表明了一个幸运而有才华的人，他在正确的时间出现在正确的地点，并且只因其罕见而引人注目。我们有一些埃隆·马斯克斯和其他像他一样的人，但这也表明什么都没有。如果所说的美国梦是真实的，我们至少需要数千万人实现了这个梦想。但它们不存在，它们不存在的原因是整个美国梦的叙述都是骗局。
While the US government, controlled by its bankers and financiers, its multinational corporate elite and the FED, has been working for decades to eviscerate the middle and lower classes and to effect a continuous and massive transfer of wealth to the top 1%, the bottom 99% have been singing the praises of the ‘democratic’ capitalist system that has been progressively abused to facilitate this transfer. In truth and reality, they are praising the very components of their system that are dragging them further into poverty with each passing year. I can think of no greater tribute to the power of propaganda than for a nation of increasingly impoverished, uneducated and unemployed to not only be blinded to the deliberate manufacture of their own misfortune, but to worship the system that permitted it and venerate the individuals who caused it.
虽然美国政府在银行家和金融家、跨国公司精英和美联储的控制下，几十年来一直在努力让中产阶级和下层阶级脱胎换骨，并将财富持续、大规模地转移到最顶层的1%，底层99%的人一直在歌颂“民主”资本主义制度，这种制度逐渐被滥用以促进这种转移。事实上和现实中，他们都在赞扬他们的制度的组成部分，正是这些组成部分每年都在将他们进一步拖入贫困。对于宣传的力量，我想不出比一个越来越贫穷、未受教育和失业的国家更值得赞扬的了。这个国家不仅对自己的不幸的蓄意制造视而不见，而且还崇拜允许这种不幸的制度，崇拜造成这种不幸的个人。
It is noteworthy that religion plays a significant supporting role in the propagation of this fraud. The simplistic and simple-minded American versions of Christianity, with their two-dimensional and heavily moralistic view of the world, encourage a belief in the eventual triumph of virtue, hard work of course being characteristic of virtue and success being one measure of its practice. In this context and under this indoctrination it is perfectly plausible that the blame for one’s failure to ‘succeed’ should be attributed to one’s own shortcomings, and indeed it is seen as whining to blame the system rather than ourselves for our lack of progress. The entire myth, the foundation of the American Dream, is that US-style capitalism will automatically enrich anyone who works hard, filling individuals with an illusory hope that seldom comes to fruition while encouraging them to blame themselves when they fail.
值得注意的是，宗教在传播这种欺诈行为方面起着重要的支持作用。美国版本的基督教过于简单，思想简单，对世界的看法具有二维性和高度道德性，鼓励人们相信美德最终会取得胜利，努力工作当然是美德的特征，成功是其实践的一个衡量标准。在这种背景下，在这种灌输下，一个人未能“成功”的责任应该归咎于自己的缺点是完全合理的，事实上，它被视为抱怨制度而不是我们自己缺乏进步。作为美国梦基础的整个神话是，美国式的资本主义会自动让任何努力工作的人变得富有，让个人充满一种很少实现的虚幻希望，同时鼓励他们在失败时自责。
One author wrote that, like most everything else in the US, the American Dream is a lie, but this myth is “so psychologically seductive to those who are ambitious and harbor hopes for a better future that the propaganda itself creates devoted followers even in the absence of all evidence”. This is truly one of the great tragedies of human life in America, that so many millions of people believe fervently in what is simply a fairy-tale, telling themselves that “there are always possibilities” when a clear-headed look around them should send most of them scurrying for the door. And it is always the most innocent and gullible, the ignorant and uninformed, the most vulnerable, who are the most susceptible to this vicious propaganda, as evidenced by companies like Amway.
一位作家写道，与美国的大多数其他事物一样，美国梦是一个谎言，但这个神话“对那些雄心勃勃、对美好未来怀有希望的人来说，在心理上是如此诱人，以至于宣传本身创造了忠实的追随者，即使没有所有证据”。这确实是美国人类生活中的一大悲剧，数百万人狂热地相信这只是一个童话故事，告诉自己“总有可能”，当他们清醒地环顾四周时，他们中的大多数人都会急匆匆地向门口跑去。安利等公司证明，最容易受到这种恶毒宣传的往往是最天真、最容易受骗、最无知、最脆弱的人。
It sometimes seems that half the content of US bookstores consists of what we call ‘self-help’ books, meant to give us ‘the real secret’ to success and riches. Of course, if one book ever did do that, there would be no need for a second. The secret contained in these books is mostly limited to some variation of “You have to believe”. And when you fail to strike gold, as you inevitably will, then your belief just wasn’t strong enough.
有时，美国书店的内容中似乎有一半是我们称之为“自助”的书籍，旨在为我们提供成功和财富的“真正秘密”。当然，如果有一本书能做到这一点，那就不需要第二本了。这些书中包含的秘密主要限于“你必须相信”的一些变体。当你没能找到金子时，你不可避免地会这样，那么你的信念就不够坚定了。
The reality is that opportunity and the path to riches exist today only for the well-connected, with few of the brilliant, industrious, and well-educated ever achieving either wealth or fame, yet most Americans are still deluded into believing these goals are actually attainable. It was once an axiom that a rising tide lifts all boats, but in the last 50 years only the luxury yachts have risen, with the top 1% aggregating most of the income and assets to itself while the middle class has consistently lost ground and been virtually gutted. With the increased financialisation and de-industrialisation of the US economy, with the FED repeatedly engineering booms and busts, each with its corresponding massive wealth transfer, the mountain to riches has become a very steep climb indeed for the average citizen. Many authors have noted that a distinguishing feature of American society is the increasingly greater social stratification, whereby those from the lower class have almost no chance to rise even into the middle class, much less aspire to riches or high society. Among all developed nations, the US has become the country in which economic and societal status are most likely to be inherited and that individual effort or even genius are unlikely to achieve anything remarkable.
现实是，机会和致富之路今天只存在于有良好人脉的人身上，聪明、勤奋、受过良好教育的人中很少有人能获得财富或名声，但大多数美国人仍然误以为这些目标是可以实现的。曾经有一句格言说，涨潮会把所有的船都抬高，但在过去50年中，只有豪华游艇上涨了，最高1%的人将大部分收入和资产都归自己所有，而中产阶级则一直在失利，几乎被掏空。随着美国经济的金融化和去工业化程度的提高，美联储不断地设计繁荣和萧条，每一次繁荣和萧条都伴随着相应的大规模财富转移，对于普通公民来说，致富之山确实是一个非常陡峭的攀登。许多作者指出，美国社会的一个显著特征是社会分层越来越大，来自下层阶级的人几乎没有机会升入中产阶级，更不用说追求财富或上流社会了。在所有发达国家中，美国已成为最有可能继承经济和社会地位的国家，个人努力甚至天才都不可能取得任何显著成就。
It must also be noted that peoples in all nations harbor hopes of progress, of improvement in their lives, of increasing prosperity, of freedom from want and need, Americans not being unique in this regard. And it must also be noted that opportunities for such progress have never by any means been limited to the US, and indeed the US has never been unique in this regard either. In fact, many nations have higher standards of living and much more compassionate societies than does the US, and it has always been as easy to ‘succeed’ in Canada or Germany or Italy as in America. American exceptionalism and jingoism notwithstanding, the path to success or the top has never been notably easier in the US than in many other nations.
还必须指出，所有国家的人民都怀有进步、改善生活、日益繁荣、免于匮乏和需要的希望，美国人在这方面并非独一无二。还必须指出的是，这种进步的机会从未以任何方式局限于美国，事实上，美国在这方面也从未是独一无二的。事实上，与美国相比，许多国家的生活水平更高，社会更富有同情心，在加拿大、德国或意大利，“成功”总是与美国一样容易。尽管有美国的例外论和沙文主义，但在美国，通往成功或顶峰的道路从来没有比许多其他国家容易得多。
And finally, of all nations in the world today, it is China that offers the most opportunity for progress and increasing prosperity and, most importantly, that provides this offer to virtually the nation’s entire population. While it may be true of China as of all nations, that only good connections and good breeding will get you an invitation to an embassy dinner party, it is also true that in China as in no other nation in the world today can such a high proportion of the people harbor hopes for the future with such a high probability of fruition. It is China, not America, that has created an environment for true and almost universal potential for progress for all. And, while many Americans will refuse to believe this, it is the quality of China’s leaders, the fact of China’s one-party government system, and China’s unique version of socialist capitalism that have made this possible. The very factors that Americans have credited with the presumed success of their nation are in reality the same elements that are destroying their American dream. The signs of both these statements are obvious wherever one cares to look, but by the time the Americans clear their minds of the clouds of propaganda it will be too late. I am not so much worried for the Americans, but it concerns me greatly that too many Chinese will also fail to clear their minds of the propaganda and false branding until it is too late.
最后，在当今世界所有国家中，是中国为进步和日益繁荣提供了最多的机会，最重要的是，它为几乎全国人民提供了这一机会。虽然中国和所有国家都是如此，只有良好的关系和良好的教养才能邀请你参加大使馆的晚宴，但在中国，正如当今世界上没有任何其他国家一样，如此高比例的人对未来抱有希望，并有如此高的成功概率。是中国而不是美国创造了一个环境，为所有人创造了真正的、几乎普遍的进步潜力。而且，尽管许多美国人会拒绝相信这一点，但正是中国领导人的素质、中国一党政府制度的事实以及中国独特的社会主义资本主义使这一点成为可能。美国人认为他们的国家取得了假定的成功，而实际上正是这些因素摧毁了他们的美国梦。这两种说法的迹象显而易见，无论你想看哪里，但当美国人清除他们心中的宣传乌云时，一切都为时已晚。我并不太担心美国人，但我非常担心的是，太多的中国人也无法清除他们的宣传和虚假品牌，直到为时已晚。
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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
罗曼诺夫先生的他的文章已被翻译成32种语言，并在30多个国家的150多个外语新闻和政治网站以及100多个英语平台上发表。拉里·罗曼诺夫是一位退休的管理顾问和商人。他曾在国际咨询公司担任高级管理职位，并拥有国际进出口业务。他曾是上海复旦大学的客座教授，向高级EMBA课程介绍国际事务案例研究。罗曼诺夫先生住在上海，目前正在写一系列十本书，通常与中国和西方有关。他是辛西娅·麦金尼的新集《当中国打喷嚏》的撰稿人之一。(第二章。2-对付恶魔).
His full archive can be seen at:
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