Blinded Aristotle once said, “Poverty is the parent to revolution and crime”. Throughout time, poverty has always played its part in America’s history. For some people, they were never offered as many opportunities as the average person. This caused them to look at life in a much different way, because they had to fight for many things that a vast majority of people never had to fight for. For some of these people, being a criminal was the ultimate American Dream. It was not that they were bad people, but they knew that living the life of a felon would give them everything they had ever dreamt of. This gave these criminals the motivation to chase their dream, achieve their dream, and eventually be blinded by the dream itself. In America, there have always been classes among the people who live in it regardless of what time and age in history. When it comes to the American Dream, not everyone thinks of it in the same way. This is due to the fact that not everybody grows up in the same way at all. The life of an upper-class individual is commonly going to be much different than the life of a lower-class individual. This means that these people will usually have much different views on life. In the case of a lower-class individual, they usually grow up in a much more poor background. For the modern era, we could refer to this place as the “projects”. For people growing up in these areas, they will mostly likely always have it harder than others. In an essence, it is really clear why most criminals come out of these areas. It is simply because they are not given the opportunities of an average person. For many people living in this background, there was never a time when others would go out of their way to make it easier for them. Everything that they ever achieved was never handed to them which means there was never any breaks. Therefore for the people who had to work for everything they ever got, their lives did do them one favor. Their life motivated them to push for success much harder than most people because there was simply no other way of achieving it. In addition, the mindset of a criminal is not much different. With so much motivation and ambition to achieve their dreams, they simply developed a mindset early on that they could not let anything get in the way of their success and that they should do anything it takes to achieve their dream. Once the motivation was there, there is nowhere to go but move forward. Many criminals do not even do the same things to accomplish their dreams. For a vast majority of the felons, they usually resort to selling drugs or alcohol. Most of this started in the 1920’s when the prohibition of alcohol had started. Immediately, many people realized their opportunities to achieve their dreams when it came to illegally selling and distributing alcohol. These people were known as bootleggers and made huge amounts of money up until the prohibition ended in the 1933. Furthermore, bootlegging was responsible for tremendously helping to start organized crime in America. During this time, the mafia had started from Italian bootleggers and gangsters in the New York City area. This was the first major gang that worked together in a monopoly manner to achieve their dreams. As time passed, many people saw what the mafia had done and realized that they had a chance to make their mark as well. With this in mind, not all criminals are a part of the drug game. As time went on, many criminals saw their opportunities to achieve their dreams in other ways such as fraud. In the late 80’s and 90’s, there were many major cases of stock brokers who took advantage of their clients and made huge amounts of money on commission without regards to caring whether their client’s investments worked out or not. In a sense, not all criminals work in the same way but they do have one thing in common. All criminals know what they are doing is wrong, but it was all worth it to them when they achieved their dream. Unfortunately, many criminals live a life that catches up to them in the end. When growing up, they were lucky enough to be blessed with pure motivation to go places in life that most people could have never imagined, but having the intelligence to quit when the time was right was a virtue that many criminals went without. Once the franchise or gang is flourishing, the feelings from it are addicting. These criminals flat out get addicted to the money, power, and respect. This happens simply because the feeling is thrilling to all of them. This thrilling feeling is something that most of them never experienced going through life. Once they had it, it was like a death trap; once they started, there was no going back. This addictive feeling serves as a huge symbol for everyone to see. It symbolizes how easily you can be blinded by the dream itself. This can refer to all people when it comes to chasing the ultimate dream of their lives. It shows how some people work so extremely hard on achieving their dreams that sometimes they forget what they are sacrificing in return. For most people, they dream of being rich and living a luxurious life. Sadly, sometimes money becomes the dream entirely. In a criminal’s state of mind, they lose sight of who they truly are as a person as they become more and more narrow-minded. As time goes on, many criminals get the thought stuck in their head that they were born to do what they do almost as if it was in their blood. Dolefully, it is usually too late when they realize they could have been amazing at anything. The mindset of a criminal is something that cannot be taught to anybody. It is simply something that the person possesses for some reason. The extraordinary thing about them is their motivation and will to never back down. They never let anything come in between them and their dream. The scary part is that the extraordinary motivation that they have is the same thing that comes back to bite them in the end. With so much pure motivation and ambition to chase their dream and never take failure as an option, they can easily become so blinded by the dream itself. In the end, everybody including criminals will have to make a major decision in their lives. They will have to decide whether or not the things they know they will have to do in order to achieve their dream will be worth it in the end. It is not about how you feel now; it is about how you think you will feel in the future when you look back.