In a recent poll, 70% of Americans said the country was going in the Wrong Direction. And why are we going in the Wrong Direction? According to Kurt Andersen, it’s because of Evil Geniuses like Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, the Koch brothers, and more recently, Moscow Mitch and Trump.
Kurt Andersen isn’t afraid to go into the political weeds to identify significant but low-profile Evil Geniuses. Take Grover Norquist as an example. Norquist invented “The Pledge” which forces almost all Republicans who take it NEVER to vote for tax increases. So, when the Economy was humming along and small tax increases could have paid for much needed infrastructure projects, more medical research, and preparing for a pandemic, Norquist’s iron hold over Republicans prevented that from happening. Now, we have to live with more trillions in National Debt as a result.
Kurt Andersen also provides revealing looks at some of the minions of the Evil Geniuses: “[David] Stockman’s chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget–who left in 1983 to earn a fortune on Wall Street, then became a cocaine addict and TV pundit… That was thirty-six-year-old Larry Kudlow, defining political economist to mean not an expert on political economics, but an economist willing and eager to disassemble and lie to suit his political masters… (p. 109)
Evil Geniuses is filled with nuggets like this. Very informative and insightful. Highly recommended! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction xiii
Part 1 A Brief History of America
1 Land of the New: America from 1600 to 1865 3
2 Land of the New: An Economic History from the 1770s to the 1970s 11
3 Approaching Peak New: The 1960s 21
Part 2 Turning Point
4 The 1970s: An Equal and Opposite Reaction 33
5 The 1970s: Liberalism Peaks and the Counterrevolution Begins 48
6 The 1970s: Building the Counter-Establishment 61
7 The 1970s: From a Bicentennial Pageant to a Presidency 73
8 The 1970s: Neoliberal Useful Idiots 86
Part 3 Wrong Turn
9 The Reagan Revolution 103
10 Raw Deal What Happened in the 1980s Didn’t Stay in the 1980s 115
11 The Rule of Law 123
12 The Deregulation Generation 136
13 The Culture of Greed Is Good 145
14 How Wall Street Ate America 154
15 Workers of the New World, You Lose 186
16 Insecurity Is a Feature, Not a Bug 203
17 Socially Liberal, Fiscally Conservative, Generally Complacent 214
18 The Permanent Reagan Revolution 220
19 The 1990s: Restrained and Reckless 231
Part 4 Same Old Same Old
20 Rewind, Pause, Stop: The End of the New 245
21 The Politics of Nostalgia and Stagnation Since the 1990s 259
22 Ruthless Beats Reasonable 271
23 Winners and Losers in the Class War 286
24 American Exceptionalism 303
Part 5 Make America New Again
25 Winners and Losers (So Far) in the Digital Revolution 313
26 How the Future Will Work 323
27 This Strategic Inflection Point 340
28 What Is to Be Done? 347
29 The Plague Year and Beyond 367
Acknowledgments 389
Bibliography 391
Index 407