From Patriot to Sucker: Is the American Dream Dying Under the Weight of Government Waste and Widespread Fraud?

I grew up in a military family and lived on military bases most of my early life, five years of which were spent on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.  Honestly, it was the most Americana place I’ve ever lived.  Think Mayberry surrounded by minefields.  Thankfully we didn’t often encounter the minefields, but we knew they were there. 

Fourth of July was always the biggest day of the year.  We had parades with tanks and marching bands and floats and classic convertibles with pretty girls waving from the back. The rest of the day would be filled with motocross races and boxing matches, track and field events and midway games and endless food. And everything was topped off with a concert and fireworks once the sun set. 

Never a great student, I went from one grade to the next holding on by my fingertips, except for history and social studies.  I was fascinated about history and loved reading about the Greeks and Romans and Egyptians, but mostly about America and WW II, which at that time had only been over for about 30 years. We of course studied the Constitution and what led to the Revolution, but we also read about slavery and the Trail of Tears and watched Roots. America was great, even if it was imperfect.

My joining the military after school was never a question. My parents never pushed me, but it was just what you did. And so after college I spent two years in the Army, stationed in what was then West Germany. One of the most interesting things I encountered while there was an old west town the local Germans had built. It looked like something straight out of Bonanza.  Inside each of the buildings was a wide collection of Americana, most of which was oddly anachronistic, like Mickey Mouse clocks and old pinball machines and lava lamps. The interesting thing was, these people loved everything American. Despite the war that was only a generation away, America was a place of dreams, a place of adventure, a place where anything was possible. 

That didn’t surprise me because my entire life I’d known that America was great.  It was imperfect, but I knew that it was fundamentally good, and that most Americans were fundamentally good.

After leaving the Army I went to grad school and earned my MBA and began my life as an entrepreneur, which I’ve done for the last 30 years.  In all honesty, I’m a terrible entrepreneur.  I’ve had some great ideas, but most came to naught. Aside from one minor success early on – a company teaching kids about investing and entrepreneurship, where I interviewed a young Elon Musk – every one of my entrepreneurial endeavors has been a bust.

But here’s the thing, I’ve always known that my life is better because of entrepreneurs and patriots who have come before me.  Our founding fathers gave us a constitution that created the foundation for the freest nation in human history, which in turn created unprecedented opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators to risk doing great things and then earn a reward for success.  For me, America was the land of opportunity, the place where anyone with a good idea and willing to put in the sweat and take some risks could find success. 

But sadly, I’ve started to question that… but not because of my own failings. Those I own. I was either in the wrong place at the wrong time or just didn’t do a good job selling my idea. No, it’s not my failures that have me questioning what America has become… It’s watching the millions and billions and trillions of dollars that get sent to grifters and thieves.    

I’m talking about the billions being funneled through fake or leftist NGOs that DOGE exposed.  I’m talking about the people who took PPP money during Covid and used it to live like rapper kings. I’m talking about the daycare fraud in Minnesota and the homeless grift in California and the home health fraud in Maine and elsewhere.  Not to mention the trillions wasted on countless green energy scams and the billions that go to support people who are here illegally. 

I’m talking about the people we see using EBT cards to buy lobster and steak while working people are living on Ramen noodles and hot dogs.  I’m talking about families who have been in Section 8 housing and on welfare for generations while working people are living like college students, sharing rooms and couch surfing among friends. I’m talking about colleges and companies dropping standards and accepting people not because of their hard work and merit, but because of a diversity thumb stuck on the scale.

The point of all of this is that over the last couple of years I’ve started to ask myself if I’m a sucker… and that maybe I have a lot of company.  I’ve worked hard my whole life and paid my taxes and aside from a college loan (non-forgiven) and a small PPP loan (forgiven) when Covid lockdowns hammered our business, I’ve never taken a penny from the government. Actually, my goal was always the opposite, to become sufficiently successful that I’d actually have to hire accountants to do my taxes.  And I wanted to do that by helping make other people’s lives easier or better.  That’s how fortunes have traditionally been made in America. Whether it was inventing the elevator or flash frozen food or selling Beanie Babies, you create a product or service that others are willing to voluntarily exchange their money for.  That’s America’s magic, a win-win exchange where everyone gets what they value most. 

But today I look around and I see companies laying off Americans while simultaneously bringing in millions of H1B visa workers.  I see grifting NGOs lining their pockets and using taxpayer dollars to keep Democrats in power – who then attack America at every turn.  I look at the fact that more than 50% of the money government spends is redistribution and half the country doesn’t pay income taxes.

And I wonder, why would anyone choose to follow the rules when it would be easier to simply run a scam or suckle at the government teat?  I understand that working hard and being honest is a part of one’s character, but at what point do conscientious people say “I’m done working my ass off just so everyone else can live like kings off my sweat”?

I love America and I always will, and I’m not giving up, but I have to wonder about the future. When someone like me who bleeds red, white & blue starts to question if it makes sense to do the right thing, I can’t imagine what the young people educated in the anti-American forges we call schools think.

From Athens and Rome to the Abbasid Caliphate and Song China, most of history’s greatest empires collapsed because they betrayed the very things that made them great in the first place.  For America that’s freedom and opportunity.  To the degree that grift, government corruption and “largesse” have replaced hard work, risk and merit as the primary avenues for “success” the Republic’s days are numbered. Sadly, I don’t see any signs in Washington that many of the people in charge of the system are much interested in fixing it.

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson misses the target and gets lost in the race space...

I recently saw a clip of Cosmos host and all round brilliant Neil Degrasse Tyson answering a question posed during a panel discussion. The question, which wasn’t really a question at all, had to do with former Harvard President Lawrence Summers’ comments on the disproportionate representation of women in science and math fields and his wondering if innate differences in sex might partially explain it.

The heavily mustached Tyson, seeking to ensure clarity in the event that there was any confusion, stated emphatically “I’ve never been a female.” He quickly followed with “But I have been black my whole life”. He went on to suggest that he might be able to tangentially address the issue. “So let me perhaps offer some insight from that perspective because there are many similar social issues related to access to opportunity that we find in the black community as well as the community of women in a male dominated, white male dominated society."

He goes on to talk about the roadblocks, he faced beginning as a 9 year old who had decided that he wanted to study astrophysics. Teachers would ask if he wouldn’t rather be an athlete. Later, security guards would follow him in stores thinking he might be a thief. He states that the decision to become an astrophysicist was for him “The path of most resistance through the forces of nature in society, the forces of society.” He then follows with this: “And fortunately my depth of interest in the universe was so deep and so fuel enriched, that every one of these curveballs I was thrown and fences that were built in front of me and hills I had to climb… I just reached for more fuel and kept going.”

He then wonders why there are so few others (blacks or women) where he is: “Where are the others who might have been this? They’re not there. And I wonder how, who, what is the blood on the tracks that I happened to survive that others did not, simply because of the forces of society that prevented, at every turn, at every turn…”

Finally, wrapping up he says: “My life experience tells me that when you don’t find blacks in the sciences, you don’t find women in the sciences, I know these forces are real and I had to survive them in order to get where I am today. So before we start talking about genetic differences, you’ve got to come up with a system where there’s equal opportunity, then we can have that conversation.”

Just as Tyson has never been a woman, I’ve never been a black person. But as a sentient person I recognize that discrimination exists. It always has and until we’re all either clones or robots, it always will. Discrimination is about making choices and making choices is part of life, and people make them for all different reasons. Whether it’s hiring a cousin over a more qualified stranger, a man choosing the younger more attractive secretary over the older more experienced applicant, a woman choosing the 6’ ft brooding Adonis over the 5’4” nice guy, or a white family choosing to attend the mostly white church 4 blocks from their house rather than the mostly black church a block and a half away… discrimination of all sorts exists and takes place every single day.  It exists everywhere... and for lots of different reasons, some of which society can seek to minimize and some of which it can't. Think about it, when was the last time you chose to hit on someone you found unattractive? At the end of the day, life is not fair because we’re all different, with different characteristics, abilities, skills, personalities, likes, dislikes, prejudices and as Tyson pointed out, drives.

And that’s where Dr. Tyson misses the mark. He said it himself when he talked about his desire being so deep that it fueled him to overcome all obstacles to his success. Despite what he calls the “forces of nature” set against his success, he succeeded to a level he would likely never have imagined. His success was not due to some phantom “system where there’s equal opportunity” but rather his success was due to his desire to succeed and his willingness to work for it. Just as it was for Clarence Thomas, Jackie Robinson, Oprah Winfrey, Robert Reich, John Stossel and millions of other Americans. Is Tyson suggesting that he is superman and that other blacks and women don’t have what it takes to succeed in life as he did, and therefore they need some special advantages he did not have? I don’t think so. By his own words one could make the argument that Tyson succeeded because of the challenges he faced, not in spite of them. After all he used the roadblocks to fuel his passion to achieve, which led him to become one of the best known scientists in the country.

The problem with Tyson’s comments is that he puts the focus in the wrong place. He suggests that we don’t currently have “a system where there’s equal opportunity” and implies that it is possible to create one. The United States may not be perfect, but for those who are willing to work, for those who have the drive, for those who have the passion to pursue their goals, the United States offers more opportunity than any nation in history. Tyson and tens of millions of others prove that point. But by focusing on a mythical, unachievable, discrimination-free society or system, he undermines the single most powerful factor in someone’s success… their own willingness to overcome obstacles in order to achieve their goals.

There are indeed challenges that blacks face in the United States. And likely they are greater and different than those faced by whites. But the question is, what is keeping more blacks from achieving success? Is it white racism in a world where even the hint of racism can cost a company millions of dollars or open an individual’s life up to social and online scorn and ostracization? Or is it teachers’ unions that force mostly minority students to stay in failing schools? Is it minimum wage laws that keep black youth unemployment near or above 50% and remove opportunities for work experience? Is it government welfare programs that make it feasible for 77% of black babies to be born to unwed mothers?

What has a better chance of unleashing the potential power of success for blacks who have yet to achieve it? Focusing on some impossible dream of a where equal opportunity is equated with equal outcomes or rather empowering everyone by focusing on equipping children with the tools and skills to pursue their passions and overcome all obstacles with the vigor Dr. Tyson did. My guess is the latter would.