Stanley
B. Greenberg, America
Ascendant: A Revolutionary Nation’s Path to Addressing Its Deepest Problems and
leading the 21st Century
New York: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press,
2015
406 pages
Doubtless
you’ve been wondering what’s going on in American politics, our Congress, our
state governments and the Republican Party. Greenberg offers many answers in America Ascendant.
He expects we
are witnessing the slow unraveling of what ails our body politic: civil
dysfunction, the concentration of greed/power/wealth, the conspicuously
parochial Republican/conservative/rightwing points of view, and the blatant
bigotry that too often masks itself with dissembling, righteous talk of
“traditional” American “values” like self-reliance, commitment to family,
Jeffersonian “small government” and religious faith. Greenberg expects that
better days are coming, but he cautions that the process will be achingly and
devastatingly slow.
His essential
message is that America is inexorably becoming a less white and more diverse
nation—most abundantly, a nation of immigrants, and a nation undeniably
represented by young generations of folks who are tolerant and happy to live
their lives with culturally and racially and sexually diverse friends, lovers,
marriage partners, neighbors and coworkers—the folks who consciously wish to
live their lives unfettered by the domination of a select few with great wealth
and great power.
To those of
us who have struggled to understand the motivations and fears and dreams of the
folks who support the divisive and hurtful and dangerous and self-interested
antics of so many politicians, America
Ascendant offers much more understanding than I have encountered from any
other source.
What Greenberg says is not pretty. His book suggests that a good outcome is possible.
I want to
believe his message.
Copyright
© Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.
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