It's kind of the "American dream" that if you're responsible and work hard, then anybody can achieve a reasonable level of success. There's an appeal to believi

It's kind of the "American dream" that if you're responsible and work hard, then anybody can achieve a reasonable level of success. There's an appeal to believing being wealthy is a choice, then you can believe the people at the "top tiers" of society earned their positions and deserve all that power and influence. If that's not true, then it implies that live in a class-based system. Wealthy people are the ones making the decisions at the national level, they own the media by just about any objective measurement, and even though the billionaires "earned" their billions, they were still born into wealthy, well-connected families who have direct control over the systems in which they "earned" their billions. 99.9% of the population has no chance of every achieving the level of success that a small portion of the population was born into. We live in an aristocracy, and yet both the wealthy and the poor are in denial. You can believe the system is moral though the "choice mindset", then it's not a class-based society. Then there's still freedom, equality, a representative government and a healthy American dream. Especially with the conservatives, it's blasphemous and "un-American" to suggest otherwise, to say that we're ruled by aristocrats who were born into their positions and don't represent us. It odd, because I feel like I'm the one who's being the most American, the most patriotic, and yet I hate to brag about it because I think Nationalism is a kind of poison. I believe in American ideals though, let me remind you of them. You're entitled to a respect, dignity and success regardless of your social status, race, sex, the nationality you were born into, and your profession, chosen and otherwise. You're entitled to a government that represents you, and if it doesn't then it damn well better. It's up to "the people" to enforce a representative government (the opposite of an aristocracy) by any means necessary, including violent overthrow*. These are American ideals, ideals the country was founded upon. These are the beautiful American dreams, and we Americans call them dreams because we're still working towards them. They hide some truly ugly nightmares of things like slavery and how we got the land we live upon. *Disclaimer: I seemingly called for violence, but violence is an evil thing and a last resort, something I don't encourage. When "the people" truly reject their government, even the police and military are on the side of "the people" because they're people too. Easy way to distinguish terrorism for a truly populist movement.