I wouldn’t say it’s an American thing to want a home of one’s own and children, Remington. The late-lamented American dream was more about freedom to make your own choices: where to live, what to do for a living, permission to fail and reinvent. Coming from places like my grandparents did, it was worth risking everything to get to America because the alternative was starvation, imprisonment, or death.

It’s ugly stepchild has morphed into the desire become filthy rich, acquire whatever strikes one’s fancy, and form our own little kingdoms of the mind where we’re always right and everyone outside our bubble is either a crook or an idiot. It’s not the dream that’s gone sour so much as the dreamers.