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This piece lamenting that the American Dream ended last night in Ohio has been circulating online since November 2012, the last night in Ohio line referring to President Barack Obama's having won the electoral vote of that state in the previous night's presidential election and thus clinched his re-election bid. (Later versions of the piece replaced the phrase last night with on November 6th, 2012 for clarity): Although many readers have forwarded this piece to us for evaluation, from our standpoint there's nothing much to analyze. This item is an opinion piece, someone's subjective expression of political vitriol; it's not an item containing information that could be examined for its truth value. The only factual element to this item is its attribution, which is incorrect: These words were not delivered at the Jacksonville Pastors' Conference in January 2015 by Franklin Graham, the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. This item had already been circulating anonymously for more than two years prior to that event, attributed to no particular individual or publication. (From what we can tell, someone later added the salutation Semper Fi to the text, which prompted someone else to include a header stating that the piece was written by a USMC Vet.) One thing we can say is that it has been a common phenomenon, across many eras, for people to view the world as it was during their childhoods and formative years as a Golden Age when most everything right and good, and to consider subsequent political and social changes as harbingers of the irreversible corruption and ruination of that Golden Age. In early 2021, the piece gained a new lease of life when internet users once again falsely attributed it to Graham, this time positioning its pronouncements in the context of the presidency of Joe Biden: -->
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