This past Sunday the New York Times Book Review featured Evil Geniuses by Kurt Andersen. It sounded good so I ordered the e-book (I use a Kobo so I can buy through my local bookstore. I avoid Amazon as much as I can) and I’ve been reading it over the last couple of days. I highly recommend it.
The book documents the growth of the vast right wing conspiracy to which Hillary so famously referred. It really does exist, though it’s pretty much out in the open, as Andersen documents.
There’s a reason why inequality has increased in America since the 1970s. It didn’t just happen and it isn’t a natural outgrowth of economic laws over which we have no control. It was a matter of policy on a large number of fronts, including legislative enactments, regulatory changes, legal rulings, and the wholesale takeover of the Republican Party, which actually once had honorable people in its ranks. All brought to you by a movement funded by folks like the Koch Brothers following game plans by people like Lewis Powell. Speaking of Amazon, which I mentioned above, it is only because our anti-trust laws are no longer enforced that it has become the worker exploiting virtual monopoly it has become.
I’ve mentioned on this blog before that the right plays the long game, and Andersen documents it rather completely in his book. When I read the Times review I hesitated to buy the book, as it sounded like it was merely a litany of all the things I already knew, and that’s partly true. None of it surprises me, but it’s valuable to have it all in one place and there are a host of little factoids of which I wasn’t aware, though none of them are surprising. If you were paying attention and alive from 1970 to the present, you had to be at least vaguely aware that there were forces out there that were changing our society and skewing things toward the rich, though of course, they were not covered well by our media. Just as one small example, the role of the Federalist Society in warping our judiciary is hardly noticed even today, and it is rare that the financial backers of said Society are mentioned when this right wing horror show is mentioned.
This book should be required reading for young people born after the right achieved so many of the subtle and under the radar victories that brought us to where we are today. They need to know that this country once had a fairly egalitarian society; how it came to be so unequal; and who is responsible. It should also be required reading for Democratic politicians, as, should they take control, a lot could be achieved by simply reversing the legislative and regulatory changes Andersen documents. Remaking the judiciary is another matter of course.
I don’t necessarily agree with all of Andersen’s conclusions about why the country was ready to accept the changes these people brought about. I think he overemphasizes the nostalgic yearning for days of yore that he says arose in the 1970s, but he’s got a point worth pondering.
The one chink in the right’s armor, from my point of view (I haven’t gotten to Andersen’s conclusion on this score) is that in order to maintain control and implement their agenda, they still have to win elections, which means they have to get a substantial number of people to vote against their own interests. They no doubt believed that they could manipulate their base voters forever, appealing to their racism and anxieties, while controlling the process sufficiently so that they could nominate people who would appeal to a broader spectrum of voters, often referred to as the low information voters. Just as a for instance, they surely figured that they could appeal to racists forever with deniable dog whistles, but they failed to see that the base would demand the real thing. In other words, they never expected the loonies to actually take charge, but that may be what’s happening. They certainly never expected to end up with someone like Trump, since they definitely prefer reliable alleged moderate Republicans like Mitt Romney.
Anyway, consider picking up the book. It’s well worth a read.