The US has lost faith in the American dream. Is this the end of the country as we know it?

Donald Trump called Mexicans rapists and criminals in announcing his first campaign for president in 2015 .

He demeaned a female TV moderator, Megyn Kelly , at his first Republican candidates’ debate, saying she had “blood coming out of her wherever” and later implied she was a “bimbo” He also called for migrants to be deported en masse and for Muslims to be banned from entering the US .

The US has never been quite the shining beacon of its own imagination.

But it has also been the standard-bearer of a certain lofty vision.

People across the country have lost all faith in the American dream, writes Simon Tisdall .

They have lost their faith because the dream simply does not correspond to their lived experience, he says.

Democrats ' promise of consensus leadership rings largely hollow, he writes.

The Republican party was as powerless to stop Trump ’s hostile takeover in 2016 as Democrats were to hold on to their bedrock of support in blue wall’ states in the upper midwest .

Two generations ago , the avatars of the civil rights movement were under no illusions about the brutal nature of the forces driving US society.

The hope then was that the oppressed could push back against their oppressors and create a fairer, more just world.