The following is an ambient rant, so forgive me if my thoughts stray:

As time goes on, it becomes evident that the "american dream" is the biggest bullshit ever,
bigger than even most crazed anarchists or quiet poets prattle on about.

Ignore for a second the obvious flaws. Ignore for a second the fact that success in a capitalist environment means that you must dominate another person. Ignore that there cannot be an upper class without a much larger lower class, and ignore that almost 100% of the money, goods, and food products in our glorious country are in some way tainted by the blood or sweat of the less fortunate. An essential cornerstone of the "american dream" is that anybody who works hard enough can achieve riches. An essential cornerstone of achieving riches is ensuring that hundreds of other people do not, so that they may be exploited for your gain. Ignore even that hypocrisy.

Regardless of how they got there, these lucky few who inhabit the upper class of this great society live fairly amazing lives. There loneliness and depression, suicide and taxes, divorce and disease-ridden whores but at the end of the day most of them are pretty content.

Not counting their children. Upon deep probing of the people around me, I've found that nearly a quarter of the teenage kids I know are suffering under some household abuse that is simply terrible. These abuses range, of course but they simply aren't acceptable.

Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about. Note that I personally know each of the kids depicted here:
-After fighting about a few trifling errors on a College Application, one parent sat in her child's room at 4 AM and refused to let him sleep. She sat there, and watched him to make sure that he didn't. This kid didn't say anything provocative, had already conceded the argument to her several hours ago, and had already apologized. This is outrageous; you can't deny somebody the right to sleep.
-One poor lad was caught by his mother while smoking weed. Instead of grounding him, shaving his head, sending him to rehab or any other semi-reasonable response she called the police on him. Yes, she had her own child arrested. He was only recently released from juvenile hall.
-After a fight of unknown magnitude, this one poor kid was kicked out of his house to sleep on the street for the night. It was snowing during this night, and the parents were very well aware of this fact.
-This one girl's father sexually abused her when she was a child. He never raped her, but he did feel her up on several occasions. When her mother found out, she freaked out and started screaming at the father. The father responded by beating the living daylights out of her. This isn't ok.
-Another young girl often ends up in physical fights with her parents. This has been going on since she was a little girl, where she was pitted against her large and powerful father in a fully fledged scrap. After she learned a few defensive moves to protect herself from the sometimes bloody beatings, her parents resorted to using a tranquilizer on her. I can't even comment.
-Yet another unfortunate motherfucker also often gets in physical fights with his parents. Since he is male and better able to defend himself, his mother decided to take a steel broom against him. His father joined into this mess by starting to choke him. Left with little choice to protect himself, the kid had to punch his dad in the face in order to wrestle himself free. He hasn't been back home since.
-Various other people have told me about issues of manipulation, beatings, burnings, being thrown down stair cases, alcoholism and other such issues. Since these things were told to me in confidentiality, I do not feel like I should share those stories but know that they are out there.

Right. Well, my question is this. Where the hell does the above fit into the american dream? If I remember correctly, this dream isn't "work hard, go to college, get married, get rich, buy a house with two cars, have 2 kids, beat the shit out of them." How can this be happening? Its not contained to limited incidents, it happens to an alarming percentage of teenagers. Worse yet, these acts are perpetrated by the supposed "elite" of our society on their own children. What does this say about what unspeakable horrors we unleash on those who aren't our own kin?