Held to answer

Given the events of the past several days (with a lead-up from the last several years), it’s time to retire that empty phrase, “The American Dream.”

It only encourages people to get their hopes up for something that is not going to happen. And when they realize it isn’t going to happen, they turn to groups like the Tea Party.

The debt-ceiling “crisis,” which was never a crisis in previous administrations, became one because President Obama’s opponents detect weakness in him. Remember his self-abasement after the Democrats lost the House in the mid-term elections? A “shellacking” he called it, ignoring that his party still had a Senate majority. If losing one chamber was a “shellacking,” what would he have called losing both?

We barely have a two-party system in America. It’s more like one and a half parties. The Democrats are so befuddled they count as one-half. Perhaps that’s to be expected from a political party that, since the last half of the 20th Century, has catered to the sex-drugs-rock-n-roll, if-it-feels-good-do-it crowd. A political party that demands tolerance, thus depriving citizens of the right to say no. A political party that promotes a world where brown, black, yellow and red are colors, but beige is not. A world where illegal immigrants are referred to as “undocumented,” and a DREAM Act is written just for them.

In the new age of austerity, any reference to the American Dream will only breed animosity. Philip Johnson-style animosity. Not Philip Johnson, the architect but Philip Johnson, the armored car courier who made off with $18.8 million in 1997.

Johnson’s job required him to protect millions of dollars, but he made $7 an hour with no medical benefits and no pension plan. Johnson once told a friend that he would never get married “because no woman would want him.”

When investigators visited Johnson’s home following the heist, they found scrawled in spray paint on one of his walls “House of Pain.”

Loomis-Fargo, Johnson’s employer, offered a $500,000 reward leading to his arrest. (I’ve never heard of an armored car company offering a reward that high in the killing of an employee.)

Johnson was caught five months after the robbery and was sentenced to prison for 25 years.

These days Republicans would tell a disgruntled armored car courier that he was lucky to have a job, while Republicans and Democrats  let bankers and hedge fund managers pocket bonuses that, in some cases, dwarf  Johnson’s stolen loot.

It’s not that Democrats don’t care about lowly paid armored car couriers; it’s that there are so many other special-needs groups on the Democrats’ agenda: gays, bisexuals, transgendered, blacks, Hispanics, prison inmates (especially Death Row), feminists, substance abusers, ex-felons, Muslims, environmentalists, the mentally ill.

Here in Portland, one of the bluest of blue cities, we have a mayor whose claim to fame is that he is the first openly gay mayor in a major city. That has not translated into competency. It wasn’t that long ago that Portland Democrats were excited about having Oregon’s first Asian-American in Congress. That, too, didn’t translate into competency. This week Rep. David Wu resigned in disgrace.

Democrats look flaky and weak and outmatched in a tough fight. One of my neighbors in Southeast Portland, a retired postal carrier and a Republican, was as disappointed in the Democrats this week as some of the liberal commentators.

My neighbor’s comfortable retirement has been marred by worries that his grandkids and great grandchild will not have what he had — a steady job. His grandson served a tour of duty in Iraq and now, out of the service, can only find work as a car salesman and has been laid off once already.

The young man read that the forest service is going to lose thousands of foresters to retirement so he’s thinking about going back to school and study forestry.

He is the third young man I know who is looking into a forestry career. A salesman at Verizon and a clerk at Office Depot have each heard the same rumors and are going to study forestry. But will those government jobs be there? Will the foresters who retire simply not be replaced?

These young men have no illusions about an American Dream. They would like to feel, though, that someone is in their corner.

In case it matters, all three of them are American, of varying skin tone.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons