Our Sprawling Supersize Utopia Analysis

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The American Dream is “the notion that the American social, economic, and political system makes success possible for every individual,” according to dictionary.com. It also is “a life of personal happiness and material comfort as traditionally sought by individuals in the U.S.” “Our Sprawling Supersize Utopia” by David Brooks discusses the problems of suburbs and how Americans are never satisfied. “America” by Tony Hoagland is a poem about what America has become. By looking at the themes in “America” and “Our Sprawling Supersize Utopia,” we can see how the American Dream has become more about consumerism and greed and less about working hard in order to be successful and happy. This is important because it compares what it used to mean to…show more content…
Globalization is “worldwide integration and development,” according to dictionary.com. In “Our Sprawling Supersize Utopia” David Brooks discusses how we keep building and everything just keeps getting bigger and bigger. “These new spaces are huge and hugely attractive to millions of people. Mesa, Ariz., a suburb of Phoenix, now has a larger population than Minneapolis, St. Louis, or Cincinnati. It’s as if Zeus came down and started plopping vast developments in the middle of farmland and the desert overnight” (Brooks). There is just so much development and everything keeps expanding. Abraham Lincoln wrote, “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” As the global economy has grown and the economic gap between the poor nations and the rich nations has become enormous, Lincoln’s nightmare is coming true. As Judith Simmer-Brown says, “What do we mean by globalization? The president of Nabisco once defined it as "a world of homogeneous consumption." It is a world in which everyone, no matter what latitude or longitude, eats the same food, wears the same clothing, and derives pleasure from the same entertainment. It is the world of McDonald's, Holiday Inn, James Bond movies, Nike shoes, and Coca-Cola. Noam Chomsky, in a lecture at Boston College, described globalization as the "new face of capitalism." It is a network of power centered in corporate interests and financial institutions that controls the flow of capital in order to promote the financial

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