We've Been at the Mercy of Evil Geniuses

It's not a fun read, but it's compelling; Kurt Andersen's new book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America is a comprehensive history of all that went wrong since America took a sharp right turn in 1980-- and while we all know Ronald Reagan was famously at the wheel when the country steered away from progress, the ramp-up to this new path was the dynamic and radical change happening in America in the late 60s and early 70s . . . Vietnam and Civil Rights and the Weathermen and acid rock and mini-skirts and women in the workplace and the oil crisis was too much change all at once and so while culture lapsed into nostalgia, the conservatives launched a concerted and organized attack on all the "progress" that was made; greed became good and the bottom line was God; Milton Friedman was a prophet; unions were attacked and dismantled; laws were written in favor of large corporations; regulations were eased (which reminds me of this repugnant Reagan deregulation . . . what a douche); dark money proliferated; conservative think tanks and advisory boards gained power; conservatives made inroads on talk radio and economic departments; the country became finacialized; Wall Street and banking went from boring to a casino; stocks became sexy; we had various economic meltdowns because of these right-wing deregulation experiments; the liberals became neo-liberals and shifted rightward; income inequality grew and grew . . . and while Scandinavian countries figured out a kinder version of capitalism, with a social safety net, but often made slight conservative alterations to their course-- we went whole hog, convinced by the right-wing pundits that this was the only way to make America great again-- that the free market was sanctity and anything that impeded it-- from pollution to income inequality to lackof social programs to a pandemic-- was an obstacle to raze over or ignore; so we erased the progress that happened after WWII and retreat into the robber baron age from before WWI . . . the conservatives had their forty-years in the wilderness from 1940 to 1980 and they've had their time in the sun, and it's been disastrous, and now-- perhaps because of Trump (who received no more votes from white people than any other Republican president) and the pandemic, progressives will have a chance to change things, and to help usher in this weird new age . . . the book is a monster and this sentence hardly does it justice, but it does end with some hope and a call to the future-- so let's go already.