What has happened to the American dream?

As I drove to the dentist today, I passed a Hardee's. A poster in the window advertised the recent Little Thick Burger. I find the existence of this Little Thick Burger to be a very poor statement on the health of American society. America is based on everything being huge, and nowhere is this trend more present than in our fast food industry. That's why every college student orders two double cheeseburgers from McDonald's (I order three sometimes and eat the extra one for dessert) because they are twice as big as regular cheeseburgers. Joe Theissman's restaurant outside the District of Columbia serves a one pound burger called the Fullback because Americans want a giant portion of an animal carcass served to them with at least cheese and two slices of bread.

For awhile, fast food chains were in competition with each other to see who could make the most ridiculous sandwich by piling as many slabs of ground beef onto a sandwich as possible.

- McDonald's offered the aforementioned ultra-cheap double cheeseburger, as well as the American classic Double Quarter Pounder (Why didn't they just call it a half-pounder?). After a while, they even created the Double Filet-O-Fish Sandwich to accomodate gluttonous fake vegetarians.

- Arby's released three different sizes of roast beef sandwiches.

- Hardee's used boring and annoying advertisement to get the American public excited about the Monster Burger and later the Thick Burger.

- Burger King went absolutely insane with their choices. The Double Whopper begat the Triple Whopper. Later, they created the Double Stacker, Triple Stacker, and the legendary Quad Stacker so that the customer could not only have lots of beef, but a colon-clogging excess of cheese and bacon. Depending on the franchise one visited, the employees might even charge you for two Quad Stackers and give you the mythical Oct Stacker.

- Wendy's did not go as far as Burger King did with their Stackers, but they did add an amazing noun to the English language in the form of The Baconator.

But what happened to this trend? Sure, Burger King is still creating burgers such as the Angry Whopper, but it's not a monumental burger by any means. It's a regular burger with a little spice.

Hardee's too has let me down. Rather than offer the Triple Thick Burger That Ate A Monster Burger, what do they give us? The Little Thick Burger. The day Hardee's downsized their next product and offered this burger for the first time, a little piece of me died.

A little piece of America died.