The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. — James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America

If Americans want to live the American Dream, they should go to Denmark. — Richard Wilkinson

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up. — Abraham Lincoln

Americans have been diced and sliced by a self-wielded social Veg-O-Matic until every citizen is a demographic Group of One, each with our own personal presidential candidate who promises to Bring Us All Together while blaming every other group for our divisions.

I’m naive enough to believe that many of our divides can be healed, accepted, and even embraced. But the partition with the potential to cause the greatest upheaval is the separation of those who still cling to the American Dream from those who believe that the American Dream is a massive long con meant to keep them one paycheck above homelessness, not starving but never able to keep their tent fully staked to the ground.

Their tents must be seriously flapping in the storm for them to believe that the Federal government, that bloated body that has benignly overseen their demise, will provide their sudden salvation. And as our candidates point fingers in the inevitable Who’s Going to Pay for It debate, a teeming mass desperately digs their fingernails into the muddy Middle Class shore, fearful that any increase in their taxes will dislodge their grip and send them spinning from the side of Helpers into the scrum of Those Who Need Help.

American Television’s ‘Great Divide’ is the voice of a citizen who is prepared to shitcan The Dream and try something else. And why not? It isn’t working for them and shows no signs of pending improvement. Better to sample the Succubus of Socialism than to pleasantly plod to your own destruction holding hands with the Chimera of Capitalism. The song is not a complaint but a simple statement of observed facts.

I’m drained on the American dream
Even though we’re taught it’s equal
That’s not the way it seems…

She’s sick in a hospital bed
She had to pay the bus fare
So she stopped her medicine…

‘Great Divide’ is melodic punk leavened by a ladle of musical and lyrical maturity, the snot noses blown clear years earlier and the instruments mastered rather than thrashed. There is an anthemic feel to ‘Great Divide,’ as if American Television had to create this song, for this time and place.

Based in Washington DC – where they have been able to observe first-hand the machinations that got us into this mess – American Television is Steve Rovery (vocals, guitar), Jerred Lazar (guitar, vocals), Bryan Flowers (drums), and Edwin Wikfors (bass). ‘Great Divide’ appears on their soon-to-be released album, Watch It Burn, available from Wiretap Records as a twelve-inch LP pressed onto orange vinyl. Today’s track is American Television’s second song of the day: we previously featured their single ‘Death Defier,’ a song that rocks hard without leaving a hangover.

The music of American Television is available on Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music. And be sure to follow American Television on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.