Everyone is angry in America

Dear Editor,    September 8, 2026

Everyone is angry in America. We hate our job, not finding our dream job, our 3rd marriage and not having everything!

Why? Because at heart, we feel entitled to the American Dream, and either it was denied us or it arrived in a dented box labeled “Some Assembly Required,” and missing the instruction manual. “THEY” lied to us. Since we are ENTITLED, everyone around us OWES it to us.

However, we forget history. In the 1940s, Americans had to kill and die by the thousands to help create the American Dream. World War II wrecked much of the industrialized world while leaving American factories intact and eager to rebuild the world.  We became the only hot-dog stand still open after the apocalypse, ready to sell steel, cars, refrigerators, and optimism by the crate.

And help rebuild the world we did. We rebuilt our former worst enemy, Japan, into a global economic superpower, because apparently our foreign policy sometimes includes creating future competitors as a surprise sequel.

During the 1950s and 1960s, manufacturing boomed in America. We flooded the world with American goods.  Good-paying factory jobs were everywhere. A person could get a solid job, buy a house, raise a family, and still afford a couch the size of a battleship. Then the 1970s kicked in the door: Japan built cars better and cheaper than we could. It was like discovering your little brother beat you at your favorite video game and also wrote a better instruction manual.

Fast forward to now. China and other countries dominate manufacturing. They pay their workers far less, so American companies struggle to compete. Manufacturing moved overseas and now sends us postcards in the form of instruction manuals written by someone who speaks English as a fourth language.

But before anyone declares their generation uniquely doomed, consider:

Your great-grandfather may have fought and died in World War I (circa 1917). The 1918 Great Influenza pandemic killed 675,000 Americans. The Great Depression (1929 -1941) created 25% unemployment, which makes “my streaming service raised prices again” sound slightly less like civilization collapsing.

Then Japan bombed America in 1941 and we joined WWII, losing 417,000 American lives. That is a stronger inconvenience than waiting nine minutes for food delivery.

The difference now is that America is in serious decline. Our government spends more than it takes in, EVERY year since 2001 and soon other countries will view us as the deadbeat brother-in-law who keeps asking for “temporary loans” while holding a brand-new television.

China is our biggest rival, yet we feed its power by buying mountains of cheap goods from it, to prop up the American Dream façade.

The bottom line is that SACRIFICE created the American Dream. Previous generations did not assume that they were entitled. They died, suffered, endured. But they also loved, raised families, and built the greatest country ever. Maybe the Dream was never a gift card. Maybe it was a group project—and yes, unfortunately, that means we still must do our part.

Leighton Loo

Mililani, Oahu