Craftsmen of the American Dream are hell-bent set on building their own luxurious kingdom uplifted by the work and activities of others while quietly depositing legal profits into their pockets with very little if any lifting of their own fingers.

With a warm smile and a handshake, the invitation to join the working army is extended. All they need is your signature to get started and a wink over of your trust allowing them to fill in the blanks of the contract as they go along. It won’t be long now and you’ll be on the front page recognized for your ladder climbing prowess. Unfortunately, the climb you’ve signed for is truly a frantic racing descent and the promised cover picture more of a mug shot. But, today anyways, the craftsmen have sold the promise that we were certainly seeking.

Besides, we tell ourselves, it takes money to make money. The human resources they’re offering are good, the relationships and partner opportunities good too, but the best thing is they have deep pockets. Deep enough pockets that we’ll be able to buy a sandwich tomorrow which is great because we’re oddly sensing that we’re about to starve. It is quite weird this fear we have that we’ll go broke all the while undertaking activities that are aligned to accomplish our fear.

After a couple of weeks or years, we one day wake up and question, “Why isn’t the operation growing?” In fact, it seems to be contracting. In fact, it seems to be running in the red. Obviously, the craftsmen aren’t holding up their end of the bargain. It can’t be our fault.

Passively aggressive, we seek answers. The promise of “what’s in it for me” isn’t being delivered. The comeback answer is usually that we’re just not working hard enough. This answer is sufficient for at least four or five or even infinite spins around the wheel trying to resolve why it isn’t working.

It is almost as if the craftsmen don’t really want human resources or partners or relationships. They want full control and they want us to pay for them to have it. They want us to pay for the privilege of working for them. They want us to invest our talents and our savings in their venture and they promise to pay us back after they have enough…but they never have enough…so we never get paid back.

But, of course, they’ll never actually tell us all of this. If they did, we would probably choose to go work somewhere else…or heaven forbid for ourselves in competition with them. This cannot be allowed. So, they’ll have to spin this vision wheel a little. It’s not really a lie, because they don’t really see this clearly either.

And it’s not all that hard to sell really, so many of us are ready to relinquish the responsibility of seeking the truth for ourselves. Our dreamy, luxurious kingdom is slanted the same as theirs. Perhaps, we’re even craftier. We’re crafty in the way that we’ll let you lead the pack of liars unknowing full well that we are intent to feed on you all along the way.

The strange realization comes when you begin recognize that we’re all cut from the same cloth as these other evil craftsmen. They are us and we are them. How can this be? We execute well the craftsmanship of the American Dream. Execution is the rewarding wage for having well executed this rebellious dream. Upon display, we find a revelation of crafty craftsmen being out crafted of their empty craft by the Truth. As we noted before, the American Dream is a good dream. It is a good dream for proving that we’re not very good dreamers.