Stakes is High: Life After the American Dream

Smith opens the essay by elaborating further on Donald Trump’s election, pointing out that many White liberals referred to Trump as “‘not my president,’ or as an insult to a conversation partner, ‘your president’” (21). Smith understands the reason people say this, mainly as a rhetorical move, but critiques the rationale behind the thinking here. For Smith, this mentality reveals the American tendency to overinflate the importance of the president.

Smith then explains that so much of what happens in America is based on the idea that “there must be an American monoculture to which we all belong, unsullied by the political divisions that upset the myth” (24). This idea makes it possible for all American icons and symbols, from Frank Sinatra to Oprah Winfrey to the Cowboys, to exist within one big melting pot. There is one America.

This idea of the “monoculture,” however, is a myth, according to Smith. Trump is not an outlier that exists outside of the American project, but a clear representation of America and its history. According to Smith, America has never actually been a real democracy, and insisting that it has is nothing but a delusion. This delusion also extends to the coopting of significant Black leaders from history, such as Frederick Douglass (who