The American Dream has failed, and nowhere else is this more clear than in the Midwest. While the coasts flourish with gilded spectacles of cities that bring in wealth which very few will ever obtain and the south remains in utter desolation from both economic and environmental disasters, the Midwest suffers from what may be the greatest indignation of them all: it is utterly forgotten. 

The Midwest deserves its name not only for its geographic location, but also for the fact that most states run directly in the middle of most lists, both good and bad. The Midwest isn’t as infamous for its drug and mental health issues, though there are still thousands of people who fail to get the help they need. The Midwest doesn’t have an economy which rivals entire nations, but cities such as Chicago and Minneapolis spare the region from the same economic woes as the south. Truly, the region is entirely middle of the road, neither great nor derelict. This, however, provides its own unique issues. The Midwest doesn’t have the legs to stand on its own, like the coasts do, though they are not in the dire straits of the south. This means they will not receive the same aid as the latter, the same revitalization projects in an effort to pump life into a stagnant economy. This, in turn, leads to infrastructure growing old until it crumbles, and yet there is very little effort to renew the region. 

The Midwest will neither grow worse or better because of this. Yes, there have been some economic disasters which capture the nation’s attention, such as the failure of the auto industry in Detroit, but this in turn was caused by a lack of attention on the region as millions of jobs were exported for cheaper labor. But when presidential candidates visit, they always center on the agricultural base of the region, never the industrial. There are no (genuine) promises to renew the auto industry as there are to protect coal industries in the Appalachians. The Midwest remains an agrarian culture, and– as with all agrarian cultures– this will lead the region into irrelevancy.

The American political system is beginning to shatter and fail across the board. Soon, we will be overlapped by other economies that exploit the flaws in our social and financial structures. But as the south rots and the coasts (metaphorically) pull further away from the republic in favor of political and economic independence, the Midwest will do as it always does: sleepwalk into oblivion.