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My Four-Star Books in 2016
Dec 31, 2016
I rate the books I read (I finished 60 in 2016, a bit below my average). Three stars is Recommended; four stars is Highly Recommended. Here are my 30 Four-Star (and one rare Five-Star) books from 2016. The ones in boldface were particularly memorable.
The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
Another life, Michael Korda
The book of Aron, Jim Shepard
Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass
The ginger man, J.P. Donleavy
Fourth of July creek, Smith Henderson
The Blackhouse, Peter May
Dumbing us down, John Taylor Gatto
The white boy shuffle, Paul Beatty
The 6:41 to Paris, Jean-Philippe Blondel
Someone, Alice McDermott
Madison’s gift, David O. Stewart
The catcher in the rye, J.D. Salinger (five stars, simply masterful)
Nine stories, J.D. Salinger
All the light we cannot see, Anthony Doerr
The smartest kids in the world, Amanda Ripley
One of us, Asne Seierstad
The dog, Joseph O’Neill
The UnAmericans, Molly Antopol
The Federalist papers, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay
That night, Alice McDermott
An unnecessary woman, Rabih Almeddine
The sellout, Paul Beatty
Submergence, J.M. Ledgard
Tenth of December, George Saunders
The son, Philipp Meyer
The souls of black folk, W.E.B. Dubois
Men we reaped, Jesmyn West
The adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Play it as it lays, Joan Didion
After this, Alice McDermott
Let Me Ask You
Dec 24, 2016
Let me ask you a couple of questions:
Do you think an adult living legally in the United States of America, between the ages of 18 and 65, who is ready, willing, and able to work should be able to get a job?
Do you think an adult living legally in the United States of America who is working full time should earn enough to live on?
If you answered “Yes” to either or both of these questions, then you need to be made aware of the extent to which you are living in a country where this is decidedly not the case, and then you need to answer a third question: What are you going to do about it?
The lack—not the love—of money is the root of all evil, and that evil displayed itself in spades on November 8.
Our actual unemployment rate is not four point something, it is 37.4%. That is the percentage of the labor force—Americans 16 years and over—that wasn’t employed in November 2016. In 1998, that number was 32.8%, and it has gone up in 16 of the 18 years since. You can look it up at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (data.bls.gov). In numbers, that is 119.2 million Americans who don’t work.
Of those who do work, more than half earn less than enough to live on. More than half! Read earlier blog entries here for citations you can look up to verify these numbers.
I don’t object to the rich. God love them, they’ll always be with us. But I do object to the poor. There is no excuse for poverty in the richest nation in history, never mind that that poverty has been increasing frighteningly since the Great Recession, as more and more multi-billionaires find more ways to squeeze the American workers—or do without them altogether—to enrich themselves beyond even their own wildest dreams.
And speaking of dreams. The American Dream must not be allowed to die. It will take the world with it, if it does. The next four years may not be dispositive of that question, but if we are not working from now until then to assure its survival, I am not at all sure it will survive.
Our traditional political parties are bankrupt of ideas. The Republican party has given itself over wholeheartedly to a reactionary and mean-spirited plutocracy. The Democratic party has self-destructed on the bifurcating influence of a misguided neoliberalism. Money dominates all.
Only a new, third party can save us. And it can happen. If Donald Trump can be elected president, anything can happen. But it will take a party that represents the beliefs of a large majority of Americans. To my mind, those beliefs include equity, opportunity, self-reliance, and independence. And none of those ideals is possible without assuring every American a job that pays enough to live on.
That is the first, non-negotiable, plank of the American Dream Party platform. More on the other planks next time.
The Gathering Storm
Dec 15, 2016
We’ve heard it all our lives. We never really believed it. But now we find out it’s true: Anyone born in the United States can grow up to be president. Absolutely anyone at all.
I don’t know what will happen over the next four years. It is easy to imagine a worst-case scenario bringing about the end of civilization. Climate change or nuclear proliferation could spell our doom, and both are in “full vigor” to quote Ebenezer Scrooge.
Meanwhile, cities and states vow to become “sanctuaries” for Muslims and/or undocumented immigrants.
Mayor DiBlasio says NYC police won’t be pressured into increasing the use of stop-and-frisk.
Women’s rights advocates plan a “Million-Woman March” on Washington to exacerbate Trump’s hangover on the day after his inauguration.
It’s not enough.
It’s not enough to organize to stop the wave of unwelcome change that is coming our way. It’s not enough to support the status quo that was soundly rejected on November 8.
Sixty million Americans voted for someone they had ample reason to know was morally reprehensible, intellectually lazy, and utterly without the mindset or inclination for public service. Many of them voted against Hillary Clinton. All of them voted against the status quo. And forty-two percent of us didn’t vote at all.
And although we are about to be served up with “business as usual” on steroids for the next four years, further affecting our incomes and entitlements, especially for those who voted for Trump, business as usual will not do any longer.
Something in the social construct of America has to change. I believe that that change must happen in the areas of employment and compensation. All working-age Americans need to be able to obtain employment at a wage that affords them a decent living. Right now, we are so very far from that, and the number of people in the labor force who are working continues its 20-year decline.
The Tasmanian devil of unrestrained capitalism is about to have its way with America. Most of the social issues—abortion, immigration, gay marriage—are just smoke and mirrors for the real agenda, which is to concentrate as much wealth into as small a fraction of fabulously wealthy Americans as possible.
And we have just the president, congress and, soon, supreme court to do it.
Copyright © 2008 All Together Now.