Third World America?

BREAKING NEWS: The glamorous Huff not only reports news. She makes it big, as in AOL not only giving her 315 millions for something worth 20 such, but cops as well the lead editorship of the enhanced media complex. She’s always making news as well for her weathervainities. Now that she’s trimming centerwards, the Left is bellowing—the same way the Right bellyached when she veered Left. Take it from a daily reader of her erstwhile Hyperblog, whether she listens with her left or right ear, her nose for news remains central.

Arianna Huffington’s ”Third World America” (Crown, 2010) is a beguiling take on an impending catastrophe. Sexy, contentious Cassandra, she is an ideal referee of the political fisticuffs confounding the allegedly (by US) “greatest nation on Earth”! She talks about seeing a statue of Harry S. Truman on her way to school, and her country’s great gratitude that his Marshall Plan had soothed a befuddled Europe. At sixteen, she spent a year in York, PA and never lost her idealism about America. She returned for good in 1980 and has spent an increasingly indispensable career at reminding the complacent rich at how egregiously they are betraying their own country, destroying the middle class that has been the emblem of American aspiration for the entire world.

Most of the book is a chapter and verse indictment of the Americans who have been busy since Ronald Reagan’s blind reign of demeaning, yea, demolishing the very open middle class that used to be the Lighthouse of the world’s poor. How bitterly ironic that tele-stunned American was sold down the river by a B actor notorious for teleshilling General Electric’s dumb slogan that “Progress is our most important Product.” But the canny Greek mixes the dire statistics of loss and befuddlement with dozens of mini-CV’s that restore your faith in the ultimate restoration of the American Dream. A country full of such resilience in the face of so much personal and family hard luck can’t lose forever.

America was a “place that failed to keep up with history. A place not taken down by a foreign enemy, but by the avarice of our corporate elite and the neglect of our elected leaders.” (pp.3-4.)She cites Elizabeth Warren’s judgment as head of the Congressional Oversight panel monitoring TARP: One in five is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can’t make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than §5 trillion from pensions and savings.” (pp.5-6.) And 12 hedge fund brass pocketed billion dollar bonuses. Wall Street screws Main Street. And only the poor and colored go to jail.
Unemployment rate by income? $150 G’s and up: 3%; middle range: 9%; bottom 10%: 31%. “These are the kinds of jobless rates that push families already struggling on meager income into destitution,” wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. “And such gruesome gaps in the condition of groups at the top and bottom of the economic ladder are unmistakable signs of an impending societal instability. This is dangerous stuff.” (p.13.)And Huffington contrasts the positive reaction to Benjamin Disraeli’s novel “Sybil”(1845) about the miseries of a working class Brit with our TV series “Undercover Boss” where tragedy turns unconvincingly comical. The economically obscene: 1970: Top execs of S&P 500 5x’s their workers; 2010, 300x’s. (p.25.)

Toothless regulation, wall to wall lobbying, 40% of corporate profits goes to newly expanded financial sector! By 2020 federal expenses in five sectors (Medicare, Medicaid, social security, net interest, and defense spending) will amount to 77% of expenditures. She bemoans the wasteful, meaningless wars since Vietnam. Poor Ike had it right. But every congressional seat has its eye on earmarks for defense. She cites Rome and the Soviet Union as well as historian Arnold Toynbee for their warnings about turning imperial. The first four sections of the book describe succinctly and with great passion the fix we’re in.

Amazingly, the final section is a gloriously persuasive series of successful partial recoveries from our economic miseries. Pissed at the banking and credit card systems that are designed to entrap even the careful? JOIN A CREDIT UNION! And over two million have made that commonsense move. Out of work? Don’t give up. Go communal. Elevating stories of little people with generous souls who defeat despair by systematically helping others worse off than they themselves. Read the first parts just to keep the issues clearly in mind. But linger over the final section. It will restore your confidence in the sanity of American Dreamers.