William Greider,
Come Home, America (2009)
14 chapters
1 Fair Warning deeper trouble: “beyond recession and financial crisis.”
2 The Other America
3 The Walls closing In
4 The ‘Winner’s Complex’
5 The Politics of “Hard Money.”
6 Blinded by Faith
7 Second Thoughts
8 The Next War
9 Why not victory?
10 The End of the Conservative Era
11 America the Possible
12 Machine Politics
13 The Reckoning
14 The Underground River
1.
“We live in a country where telling the hard truth with clarity has become
a taboo.”
p. 1.
2.
“. . . a reflexive faith in a bright future. . . .“ contrasted with
The Other America
p. 10.
3.
”The mass culture…marinates Americans in self-congratulation and triumphalism.
We hear the same message from everywhere around us—politics, movies, talk
radio, commercial advertising.”
p. 15.
4.
“remain true to the idea of an invincible America.”
p. 25.
5.
“The panicky crisis that enveloped the US financial system in the early
months of 2008 put the country on the brink of a historic catastrophe.”
p. 37.
Key provision “the explosive inflation of financial wealth.” Federal
Reserve policy
p.43
6.
“The USA is ensnared in a perverse symbiosis with China.” richest
relies on poor
p. 62.
Debtor nation”
p. 65.
7.
“Roughly speaking, previous eras of industrial revolution have ended in
one or more of these ways.” Economic breakdowns, social unrest, popular
rebellions.
p. 93.
“From being a vigilant defender to being an adventurous aggressor in search
of enemies.”
p. 117.
Greider Come Home America,
Chapter 8, The Next War.
“Ignorance has been a hallmark of modern American war making for decades.
p. 150.
Greider Come Home America,
Chapter 9, Why Not Victory?
“. . . arrived at a critical political juncture that seems confusing and
threatening, but also hints of promising changes to come. The conservative economic
doctrine that has governed the country for a generation and reshaped society…is
collapsing.”
p. 173.
Greider Come Home America,
Chapter 10, The End….
“America is in much deeper trouble than is generally realized and that
restoring national well-being will require profound change—a historic transformation
in how we live and work, as well as in how we are governed.”
p. 197.
Greider Come Home America,
Chapter 11, America the Possible.
“an agenda of deep reform.” Blocked by corporate and urban machines.
p. 219.
Greider Come Home America,
Chapter 12, Machine Politics.
“what the US faces today is roughly the economic equivalent of WW II.”
p. 248.
“the good times are gone.”
p 265.
Greider Come Home America,
Chapter 13, The Reckoning.
“Democracy begins in human conversation. The simplest, least threatening
investment any citizen may make in democratic renewal is to begin talking to
other people.”
p. 270.
Greider Come Home America,
Chapter 14, The Underground River.
“Official America is like a family member who is suffering from debilitating
addictions. Our democracy is desperately in need of dramatic intervention by
its sovereign citizens.”
p. 299.
The Politics of hard
money
Commercial banks, hybrid megabanks, investment houses, related financial firms
(brokerages), unregulated hedge funds
58-59
“Our immaturity as a nation–is reflected in the Federal Reserves peculiar
status and expressed bluntly by the central bank’s growing domination of
elected representatives. The unaccountable Federal Reserve governs our lives
as assuredly as the politicians in Congress or the White House do, but without
the inconvenience of facing elections.”
p. 59.
“citizens are treated
like children who are not to be trusted.”
Fed- “wants to act as father figure in this family.”
59.
“The sweep of events
over the last thirty years ought to make it clear that this is not true.”
60
Chapter 7
Second Thoughts
US affluent teenagers dependent on exploited foreign teenage workers
112-113
“International labor
rights are central to reforming the global system.”
113
“Cheaper prices
can destroy innocent lives, quite literally.”
114
“. . . reforms to
defend justice in the global system.”“If the wage incomes keep sloping
downward, thanks to the race to the bottom, who in the world will have the wherewithal
to buy all this stuff?”
115
“a more patient
version of progress.”
“building a global floor for wage levels.”
following the policies EU pursued with respect to poorer EU nations to close
the gap.
‘to promote the convergence of Eurpes rich and poor economies.”
115
Chapter 8
The Next War
“This newly aggressive U.S.” the QDR “the Long War” Pentagon
plan“
117-18
military
“encirclement of Russia,”
and China
119
“The
pentagon is a machine running out of control without a reliable brake—no
one will say no to its expansive plans.”
125
“Given
the nation’s weakened financial condition, the Pentagon is headed for an
ugly collision with citizens over its relentless calls for larger military budgets.”
125-126
“accepted
wisdom that does not make any sense.”
“people would rather have someone who is strong and wrong, than someone
who is weak and right.” Quotes Clinton on Bush’s Iraq war 2002-2008
125
”They
do not sign up to waste their lives for mindless militarism.”
126.
he served
in the military
before Viet Nam and of the Viet Nam War he learned
“The government sometimes lies to the people.” “I was shocked
to know this.”
129.
“Generals . . .fight the last war, because that is what they know.”
p. 134.
Pentagon’s plan for the Long War reveals that very weakness.
“Confusion over China is a breathtaking example.”
134.
“by 2009 US military spending will exceed the Cold War average by 23 percent.”
p. 143.
China’s military spending is 1/10 the amount the US spends,
145.
Greenspan’s memoirs acknowledging that the “Iraq War was largely about
oil.”
Bush speech in September 2007
“Did ‘everyone’ know that oil was the real cause of the War?”
148.
Blood for Oil creates a diabolical set of consequences for the nation. thus
“the United state must undertake a profound industrial transition.”
p. 148.
William Greider. Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall of Our Country. (2009)