The Ghost of Middle Class: Our Fargo
Some developmentally dull or rather cunning people still talk about the middle class and centric politics. In reality, these concepts have become obsolete, remnants of a socio-economic past that no longer reflects our present condition.
A Light in the Streaming Darkness
In the vast shallowness of TV series, a light shines through, revealing what is coming, almost always in the form of a dystopia. Dark stories get past the studio filters and become great, or at least minor, hits in the cataclysm of streaming platforms. Such as on Netflix.
A Portrait of Decline in Dark Series
I am specifically referring to dark series like Ozark, Better Call Saul and its sibling series Breaking Bad, and the layered narrative of Fargo. The way I see it, all of these series depict the destruction of the middle class and the collapse of society as we know it after World War II. They do not only record the end of the middle-class dream, the American or the Greek dream, but also the disappearance of humanity during the Thirty Glorious Years.
The New Class Divide
The American scriptwriters describe a world in which it is impossible for anyone to live in if they are middle class. The world is divided into the ultra-rich and rich, on one hand, and poor and extremely poor, on the other. There is no middle class anymore; it is long gone. And of course, the monstrous economic inequality brings other value systems and a different definition of good and evil: the common thread between the series is that an ordinary, everyday, simple person turns into a monster. Only a few manage to exist as functionally good, fair individuals. The state system is fundamentally corrupt. For those at the bottom—the non-rich, the desperate—crime becomes the only way out.
Crime as a Means of Survival
In Breaking Bad, the high school chemistry teacher, a poverty-stricken cancer patient, sets up a meth lab in the desert of New Mexico. The hopeless middle-class man transforms into a drug lord. Even more strikingly, in the same postmodern desert, with the few rich whites and the countless poor Mexicans, the con artist Jimmy uses his talent for fraud to transform from a loser into Saul, the greedy lawyer representing the unfortunate and the drug dealers. Until the great fall. In the social elevator of crime, the descent is easier than the difficult ascent. And in the social neo-noir, there is no happy ending.
Reality Overtakes Fiction
Is this the reality of today’s USA? The themes of these narratives do not surpass, in terms of boldness and darkness, the news and the statistics of Trump’s America — who, in many ways, is featured prominently in the fifth season of Fargo, centered on the hyper-masculine, religious nationalists of the Midwestern states. America is Minnesota, North Dakota, Missouri, Kansas City, and New Mexico—not Woody Allen’s New York, not the Beat generation’s San Francisco, not Boston’s academic elite. And all of these stories are “based on real events,” as the Coen brothers sarcastically noted for the movie Fargo, meaning that everything that could possibly happen has already happened.
Greece’s Own Ghosts
In Greece, which is half the size of Minnesota, for a decade and a half, we have been living the real-life events of our own Fargo, our own middle-class fiction filled with ghosts. We have changed deeply and are still changing. Yet we neither recognize nor accept it. Ghosts are the last to die—or they do not die at all. We still imagine ourselves as middle-class, with aspirations of social ascent. The bankrupt cannot maintain a twenty-year-old Nissan yet deludes himself into believing he can afford Harvard tuition.
The Invisible Cost of Social Collapse
In both the United States and Greece, the collapse of the middle class is not just an economic event—it is a profound psychological and cultural shift. A generation raised to expect a linear upward trajectory now faces a stark reality of downward mobility. The dreams once held tightly—home ownership, higher education, secure pensions—are now relics of a bygone era.
Culturally, the loss manifests as a growing cynicism. Trust in institutions erodes, belief in meritocracy fades, and a creeping nihilism takes root. In popular culture, dystopian and dark narratives dominate because they resonate deeply with lived experience. They affirm a reality where success is the exception, not the rule.
On a personal level, the impact is devastating. People are working longer hours for less pay, burdened by debts they cannot repay, in an economic system rigged against them. Mental health crises surge, community bonds weaken, and a sense of belonging fades.
In the face of these transformations, one might expect political upheaval or radical collective action. Instead, the response has often been atomized despair—each individual grappling with their own private downfall, isolated from a broader sense of solidarity. The shared story of the middle class—the narrative of striving, working hard, and achieving stability—is now replaced by fragmented tales of survival.
Thus, the true tragedy is not only the economic decline but also the erosion of a shared identity. Once, being “middle class” was a source of pride and a badge of commonality. Today, it is a ghostly ideal, haunting societies that no longer nurture it. Whether in the deserts of New Mexico or the urban landscapes of Greece, the ghosts walk among us, unseen but ever-present, whispering stories of what might have been.