Is the American Dream nothing more than an antiquated fantasy?

A trip to the theatre to see hit-musical Hamilton has caused Holly Baxter to ponder whether it really pays to be young, scrappy and hungry for more in the land of opportunity

Ever one to reminisce, the US like to remember how they struck out on their own against the crown (Getty)

In Hamilton – the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical which jammed its toe in the door of history and brought some diversity to the Founding Fathers, the one which Mike Pence was booed at and which gave Barack Obama brief Billboard success with a remix – the eponymous Alexander raps that “just like my country, I’m young, scrappy and hungry”. It’s one of the most well-known phrases from the internationally successful play. You can even get your baby a onesie that has “Young, Scrappy And Hungry” emblazoned on it from the official Hamilton merchandise online store.

Little wonder that that phrase stood out to audiences, especially American audiences: the American Dream is all about being young, scrappy and hungry in a country which owes you nothing but can sell you everything. If you’re scrappy enough and hungry enough, you can get whatever you want: riches, renown, maybe even the presidency. Because this is the land of the free. It’s not an old European throwback with an unelected House of Lords and a parliamentary process that ends with the Queen. It threw tea in the ocean. It struck out on its own. It is the reason why Meghan Markle is helping Harry shake off his shackles while Will and Kate scratch out another year on the wall of their gilded cage.

It all sounds pretty great when you put it that way. But then you remember the pitfalls of being a young country and a lot of it falls down.

There are some things that separate America from the rest of the developed world: its healthcare system, which leaves thousands without adequate access; its banking system, which charges for accounts and still uses cheques; its extreme patriotism; its high proportion of hard-line evangelicals in government; its loudly celebrated “democracy” which is actually just a two-party system; and the fact that it retains the death penalty. All of these are symptomatic of a young country still in the process of development – one which is old enough to have brought in such traditions and systems in the first place, but hasn’t existed long enough to realise their obvious pitfalls.

Then there are the ways in which this lovable rogue of a country has deviated into some practices which are downright bizarre; for instance, giving out PBA cards.

PBA cards – or Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association cards – are little pieces of paper you can carry in your wallet and present to a police officer if you get pulled over or arrested on the street. I learnt about them during a conversation with friends, where two of them revealed they held the cards (one of them had a sibling who was a police officer, and the other, tenuously enough, had a college girlfriend whose father was a cop.) They were reminiscing about how, during their university years when they were based on rural campuses a long way from their homes, they would barrel down country lanes at immense, illegal speeds in order to get back to their apartments at all hours of the night. Every now and then, a cop car would emerge from the foliage, put on its siren and pull them over for a speeding violation. “But it was all fine,” they told me, as they finished the story. “I just pulled out my PBA card and I was good to go.”

If you were young, scrappy and hungry enough to want to be treated the same as the boyfriend of a daughter of a police officer, then you’d buck up and bid for one on eBay

Google PBA cards and you get a number of articles openly wondering whether PBA cards really work, whether they’re still given out and whether it’s true that they can get you out of minor misdemeanours. Anecdotal evidence suggests they are still very much part of the fabric of US society. I protested to my American friends that I couldn’t believe such a thing could exist in a country with a proper justice system.

“Of course they do,” they laughed. “Didn’t you ever use a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card in Monopoly?”

It’s worth pointing out that these cards are completely legal and seen as a benefit earned by the police officer named on the card for his or her service. If it sounds kind of like the police service operating more like a protection racket than a system of totally fair and equal justice for all, well, then I guess that’s just your bad luck. You’re probably jealous because you have points on your license. If you were young, scrappy and hungry enough to want to be treated the same as the boyfriend of a daughter of a police officer, then you’d buck up and bid for one on eBay.