How would a reasonable person evaluate recent American history The place to start is observing PATTERNS of intent, policies, and results. What was the general plan for America, for the American people, the society, the government, the economy? How would the benefits of living and working in America be shared? Would they be shared? Would recent America be a continuation of 1789 forward intent and trends? Would things improve for the ENTIRE population?
The general consensus is there have been two different, distinct recent American periods: 1933-1980 and 1980 to present [2021]. There were two different visions of America.
Below are listed 10 books to start your search. Each of these is excellent themselves. BUT – to open them is also to open a window on one thread of what has happened to America, 1980-2021. As one follows these trails of evidence, it will soon become obvious a much bigger story exists. And also, that many of these trails will be connected. That is NOT an accident. What has happened to America, 1980-2021 is also NOT an accident.
Some people did NOT like what happened – it was too democratic. Too many people shared in the success, and some of them were “undeserving.” The 1933-1980 America was “too good a deal for too many.” A correction needed to be done. The radical American “right” – political, economic, religious, social – decided they had the “answers.” Below are some of the stories of their destructive, cruel, and antidemocratic efforts.
1] Kurt Andersen – “Evil Geniuses” [2020]. Andersen talks about how he slowly began to see “real plots in plain sight.” Various incidents and people crossed his path. He connected dots. “..Evil Geniuses” chronicles the quite deliberate reengineering of our economy and society since the 1960s by a highly rational confederacy of the rich, the right, and big business.” “..an egregiously revised American social contract has been put in place..”
2] Adam Cohen – “Supreme Inequality” [2020] Cohen is the latest to offer negative critiques of the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts. One earlier analyst suggested “conservative” Republican appointees had more in common with the 1996 Republican platform than The Federalist. Cohen mentions how “one academic study that examined the Court’s decisions from 1938 to 2010 concluded that 2010 was the most conservative year.” A conservative law professor: “These decisions are not the work of a conservative court.” The prevailing “conservative” philosophy, “originalism,’ was debunked in advance by the Founders, including Chief Justice Marshall. Cohen’s value is that he gives you the results and “logic” of specific cases. The Roberts Court revealed by this is not a benefit for America.
3] John W. Dean – “Broken Government How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches” [2007] Little, if anything, has changed from 2007. Dean concludes with a quote from “an old friend from the Nixon White House – a “life-long Republican” who knew Bush and Cheney personally: “People should not vote for ANY Republican, because they’re dangerous, dishonest, and self-serving….another four years, and heaven forbid not eight years, under the Republicans, and our grandchildren will have to build a new government, because the one we have will be unrecognizable and unworkable.” Unfortunately, we know how this worked out.
4] Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett – “The Spirit Level Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger” [2009] The “Spirit Level” looks at the 22 “Rich” nations and the 50 American states. Graphs of the 9 metrics show comparative “quality of life” status of each government unit. America does not do well. The “likely suspects” among American states do not do well, especially one particular historical-geographic area. The authors state the 1950s and 1960s were a high point of of equality and social connectedness; since 1975 there has been a reversal. Every American should read this book.
5] Jane Mayer – “Dark Money The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right” [2016]. “…a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system.” Inside the front cover is a spider’s web of “THE NETWORK – Political and Issue Spending [501c4s & 501c6s” – many having innocent names [“Americans for Job Security”]. In 1980, conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. characterized their views as “Anarcho-Totalitarianism.” Little, if anything, has changed.
6] Pulitzer Prize winner Hedrick Smith – “Who Stole the American Dream?” [2012] A Bloomberg News review includes: “The top 0.1 percent – about 3l5,000 people out of 315 million Americans – garner roughly half of all capital gains in the U.S.” “The 400-plus pages of drab, personality-free prose on all the ways the rich have been sticking it to the middle class since the late 1970s read like a Times investigative report from hell.” The I.D. of the Dream Stealers is clear.
7] Kristin Kobbes Du Mez – “Jesus and John Wayne How White Evangelicals Corrupted A Faith and Fractured A nation” [2020]. Here is the BIG QUESTION: Should a church YOU don’t attend have any control over your life? If YOUR answer is no, then you have much to worry about. Du Mez is the latest to examine this issue. It is documented beyond any doubt that the American religious right’s goal is an American theocracy – run by them. Given the events of 2016-2021, it should be obvious there are few limits to this “holy war.”
8] Allen Frances – “twilight of american sanity A Psychiatrist Analyzes The Age Of Trump” [2017] It is comforting to see President Donald Trump as a crazy man, a one-off, an exception – not a reflection on us or our democracy. But in ways I never anticipated, his rise was absolutely predictable and a mirror on our soul…What does it say about us, that we’ve elected someone so manifestly unfit and unprepared to determine America’s future? Trump is a symptom of a world in distress, not its sole cause. Blaming him for all our troubles misses the deeper, underlying societal sickness that made possible his unlikely ascent. Calling Trump crazy allows us to avoid confronting the craziness of our society – if we want to get sane, we must first gain insight about ourselves. Simply put: Trump isn’t crazy, but our society is.”
9] Michiko Kakutani – “The Death of Truth” [2018] Quoting Hannah Arendt: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction [i.e., the reality of experience] and the distinction between true and false [i.e., the standards of thought] no longer exist.” We are victims of “truth decay.” Former acting attorney general Sally Yates: truth is one of the things that separates us from an autocracy. If we don’t hold people in public life, government or media, accountable for the truth, than WE, US, normalize indifference to the truth. According to Jefferson, America was predicated on reason and truth.
10] David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havt – “The Fox Effect How Roger Ailes Turned a Network Into A Propaganda Machine” [2012] The authors relate how Fox “News” became “an active and unapologetic Republican Party mouthpiece.” They say: Fox isn’t a news organization. Numerous studies and polls show Fox viewers “among the most ignorant on a variety of issues.” The problem, of course, is that Fox viewers BELIEVE they are hearing TRUTH and FACTS. Because their trusted broadcasters said it was. The listeners to the “Fox News echo chamber” live in a 24/7 feedback loop of constant reinforcement. This gets us back to “The Death of Truth.” We are polarized largely because significant numbers are living in a different reality – and defiantly refuse to accept they aren’t.
This is only the beginning. Do YOU have the courage, the curiosity, to question? Not only analysis, but numerical documentation is available. To start your journey on the reasons behind the different America that has been deliberately created – start simple. Get unpsun I.R.S. data on America income distributions, say 1947-1979, then l980-2020. This has already been done for you. Check work done by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Jacob Hacker, Paul Pierson. Or – find the March/April, 2011 issue of “Mother Jones” magazine. Find out how much money YOU are being cheated out of each year!!!
And just as important – discover for yourself – how much damage has been done to America society, because of greed, because of religious zealotry. None of it was an accident.
With Justice For All 