Mickey and Me: Two Mice Wishing For More
Every day when I listen to the news or engage in social media, the same repetitive questions come up for me. For the entire day those questions permeate everything: how did a country with a potential for equity, justice and a democratic desire to do good evolve into a group of mangled and fractured dis-united states ruined by old men and women holding onto power? How is it now owned and operated by young and old unelected billionaires? How has it been taken advantage of by so many energetic, intelligent entrepeneurs (some of whom are clearly sociopaths)?
Why did we all just go along with it?
I always end up with the same answer: we were set up from the very beginning to be a dutiful slave to a system that could only have ended exactly where it did. So why didn’t the majority of us see it coming? If we knew where we were headed, why didn’t we reject it outright? Why did we all contribute to our own demise?
Is it too late now to correct our mistakes?
And that’s where memory enters. How far back in time can each of us travel? I can’t know anyone else’s past but I do know my own so I’ll start there….in 1955 …when I was 5 years old. (Chances are if you were born anywhere in the US any time in the last 70 years, you’ll have memories that could lead you to the exact same realization as me. Let’s find out.)
It’s the middle of the 20th century and I am a child in a small working class town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. The arrival of our 1954 RCA Victor 21 inch black and white television will introduce me to a world whose effect on me was in hindsight as deeply influential as nothing (not even the internet) that has come after it:
and the reason it was such a powerful and insidious influencer to a five year old child with a vivid imagination was because of one show:
and the Mickey Mouse ears I whined and cried and DEMANDED my mother and father BUY me (which they could not really afford) and yet they gave in anyway.
I suggest that the introduction of television, the programming to children, the clever and often brilliant advertising and the DESIRE…oh the desire, the want, are perhaps some important reasons our country is in collapse today. Ask yourself, is addiction to capitalism and its trinkets perhaps why we are in such deep trouble now? Is the loss of actual community and connection to each other killing us? Is the commodification of the natural world destroying everything that matters? If the answer to any of these questions is “probably” or even “maybe” then why are we letting it happen?
After a thirty year career of teaching critical thinking and analysis through films, literature, creative and analytical writing, I’m not blaming it on the public school system. It’s too obvious and too easy a target. And while this is not a simple question to answer, I would suggest it might have a lot to do with the American Dream itself that has been pushed down our throats to make us desire above all else OBJECTS so we will think and feel that only that one beautiful rose in a garden rich with other flowers - some wild and needing nothing but sun and rain and the earth itself, the one flower we most desire because it is singular and like no other in all the world…that distinctly American dream of getting shelter from the inevitable storms of life……the dream of home ownership and its resultant obsession for things to fill it with is a good thing, an American goalpost.
Most of our American lives from that point on are activities to fill a large or small box that belongs to a bank where your hard work is earning money for the banks who “loaned” you the money to purchase your dream of home. And although many of us have taken this on and see it as a good thing because it turns us into industrious workers for those who “lend” us the money, is it really? Are there no other choices possible for a society without being made to feel like a failure to yourself, your country and most importantly your family?
If you look at the image above of this Craftsman style house with a porch and big surrounding yard, how does it make you feel? These images are powerful and hypnotic and trigger desire exactly as those Mickey Mouse ears did in me as a 7 year old. They are created specifically to do that. Most of the time when you are actually inside this house with a hefty mortgage you feel burdened by it. And your kids feel that burden and take it on as well at some point and in 2023 run to the computer and escape in a virtual world where there are millions of houses of all kinds to become lost in.
Returning to my first consumer manipulation experience, the Mickey Mouse ears, there’s a bit more to the story. My brother who is 7 years older than me and in 1957 a teenager approached me one day as I was sitting on the couch watching the final few moments of the Mickey Mouse Club. I had removed my sacred Mickey Mouse ears and placed them next to me on the sofa where his butt now was. I remember my reaction to that moment 63 years later as if it were last week. I was devastated as only a young child can be when she realizes how easily all she holds precious and unique and everything those ears represented to her could be crushed by one thoughtless move. Imagine how people are feeling when they see through the American consumer mythology to the banking scam pulled on millions generation after generation to serve the masters in their mansions. And when their home is sold to BlackRock who owns working class homes all over the US and rents them out at exorbitant prices?
As people lose their homes and livelihoods in the aftermath of Covid and the possible collapse of the US dollar as the world’s currency, I think we are realizing we have been carefully manipulated for a very long time to pay the ultimate price for a box filled with stuff we never actually needed. Desire is a powerful force and it’s only the equal desire for a sane, economically and socially balanced society that can steer our sinking ship back to a safe harbor. For everyone.
What would you be willing to sacrifice to have that again? There are countries and societies throughout civilization, smaller than ours and less diverse, who have at times been successful without being greedy and bloated. And when they have failed, they have failed for the exact same reasons we will: wars and greed. Do you think it is time we come together as a country, put aside our differences and demand a United States of America again? Or do you think it is too late? I don’t think it is too late. But I watched the Mickey Mouse Club when I was young. What did you watch and how did it shape you?
I started this essay by saying “Chances are if you were born anywhere in the US any time in the last 70 years, you’ll have memories that could lead you to the exact same realization as me.” Do you? What are they? Think back to what and who hooked you and your family members into the American Dream. Share your stories.
(Incidentally Black Rock now owns quite a lot of real estate in the United States. Check out this article from SLATE explaining their strategy and greed for power. ….https://slate.com/business/2021/06/blackrock-invitation-houses-investment-firms-real-estate.html)
Peace.
from Wikipedia: The American Dream is the national ethos of the United States, a set of ideals including representative democracy, rights, liberty, and equality, in which freedom is interpreted as the opportunity for individual prosperity and success, as well as upward social mobility for oneself and their children, achieved through hard work in a capitalist society with few barriers.
The term "American Dream" was coined by James Truslow Adams in 1931, saying that "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.[1]