Alexander Parris

10/9/16

A Fading Dream

War breaks, crime pillages from the people, leaving behind the scared remains of their
homes. The memories, the time spent there, the generations who grew and died, all that means
nothing now, the only thing they can worry about is their lives now. So they leave, seeking what
they no longer see in their land. Packing what little they have left, they make haste while they
can, seeking a new land. Coming only to find that any hope they had of a stability faded away in
a country laboring on its last leg. In turn theres resentment, as fear thrives within the nations
veins. The refugee crisis is just that, a crisis, no different from that we ve faced before. One
which we seek to solve. But instead of being able to unify upon a means to a resolution, weve
left to stagnate, as we continue confronting each other. In our time spent doing so weve let the
problem grow with no sound solution and as it does we seek to blame others for the problems
around us. The end result is a cycle whos stagnating state has led to the current stigma
surrounding immigrants seen in multiple countries. The source of it being the desperate state in
which people across the globe find themselves in now, from causes ranging from war to crime. In
which they labor to find a resolution too, in many cases only finding that they have to leave with
their lives while they still can, only to be met by the reality of the dream they seek fading away
with the state of the land theyve come to as trepidation spreads within its inhabitants who have
come to believe that the fault lies with them.

Our willingness to caste our resentment upon others is fueled by the thriving concerns of
people as they find the dream they were raised on seemingly vanished before their eyes.
Leading the propagation of stagnation which has led to the state we stand in. But the precipice
we find ourselves on is not so different from one we have endured already in our country. During
WW2, as Germany spread its territory across Europe, a mass amount immigration occurred in
the same countrys which now face the same modern day crisis. Just as today people fled,
seeking both safety and the possibility of prosperity in our and other nations. But despite the
mass amount of immigration, the sentiment towards immigrants we see today didnt reside in as
many people then. The only differences between then and now being the political and economic
climate. During WW2, our country was an economic force rivaled by no one, there was nearly no
unemployment, and anything you needed you could afford. We were led by a president so highly
regarded he served four terms as our president until his passing. In contrast, we are currently in
an economic down turn, less and less jobs appear for people, even with college degrees, and
some have simply stopped seeking. During this time, we are being led by a president who has
become a focal point of division amongst Americans. These men dont even come from different
political parties, yet, the individual actions they took and the economic situations they served in
led to two different Americas. Thus we seek to means explain, a reason which shows us clearly
why we are struggling in our endeavors, but in our desperate search we only find rage within
ourselves. We seek to relieve it by blaming others around us for our misfortune. In doing so we
blame those who disagree with us and those vulnerable to our trepidation. Those who come, not
knowing the detriment of our situation only seeking to relieve the detriment of theirs. Only to
find a new war raging on. Not with guns, but with words.

So we plummet down the rabbit hole weve dug ourselves, from the hate we glare at each
other for their different beliefs. In the end we land where we began, in a state of decay with two
options, rebuild our dream piece by piece, or let the shattered pieces lay around us, only for a
radicalized group to come and proclaim a means to an end of this desperation, through their
legitimization and leadership. Speaking to the peoples needs and preying upon them to only use
them in the end. As it stands we still seek to rebuild our dream, even if only piece by piece, but in
our hesitation we have proved the proverb, that by not learning from history we have doomed
ourselves to repeat it. As an election looms in our war torn nation, I know that despite the
outcome, change will only be made when we seek to find within ourselves what it means to be
American. Maybe then the 'dream' wont be just a vision, but a reality once again.