Book Review: It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism by Bernie Sanders and John Nichols

Author: Bernie Sanders and John Nichols
Title: It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism
Narrator: Bernie Sanders
Publication Info:  Crown (2023)
Summary/Review:

The latest book from America’s beloved socialist grandpa has a provocative title.  So I was a little disappointed when a good chunk of the book was a memoir of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, helping to get Joe Biden elected, and a frustrating two years where the Democratic party failed to take advantage of their congressional majority to advance a progressive agenda.  Basically it’s a sequel to Our Revolution.  Mind you, I have great memories of attending a Sanders’ presidential rally on Boston Common, which was the last big crowd I stood in before the pandemic started.

But the title implied that this was going to be more of an analysis of what is going wrong in our country/world and how to fix it.  And it does get down to it eventually with a good synthesis on how the corporate and wealthy elites have created intense economic inequality.  The solutions, of course, are the many proposals that he and others have been putting forward, many based on what has worked in other nations as well as in the United States past.  It’s all very well-written, but also not anything particularly new to me, as I’m the choir to Bernie’s preacher.  I’m not sure if their is an audience who is not aware of these solutions already who would be receptive to hearing it from Senator Sanders (because believe it or not,  our beloved socialist grandpa is not loved by all).  But if there is, this would be a good primer for them!

Recommended books:

• Becoming a Citizen Activist: Stories, Strategies & Advice for Changing Our World by Nick Licata
• This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark Engler
• Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank
• Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston
• The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by  Naomi Klein

Rating: ***1/2

 

 

90 Movies in 90 Days: Requiem for the American Dream (2015)

I’m kicking off 2023 by trying to watch and review one movie every day for the first 90 days, all of which will be 90 minutes or less.

Title: Requiem for the American Dream
Release Date: April 18, 2015
Director: Peter D. Hutchison, Kelly Nyks,  and Jared P. Scott
Production Company: PF Pictures | Naked City Films
Summary/Review:

Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics at MIT, is better known for being one of the more outspoken intellectuals on the left.  This documentary is built on interviews with Chomsky where he discusses the great increase of income inequality in the United States since the early 1970s.  The film is based on Chomsky’s book of the same name and in it he breaks down “The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power.”  The interview sections are broken up with archival footage and animation based on the dollar bill. While I was already familiar with much of what Chomsky discusses in this film, I found his synthesis is well done and the movie serves as a good introduction to how we got to where we are now.

Rating: ****

Book Review: Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration by Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith

Author: Bryan Caplan
Title: Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration
Illustrator: Zach Weinersmith
Publication Info: First Second (2019)
Summary/Review:

Bryan Caplan is an economist (at George Mason University no less) who lays out an argument for lifting restrictions on immigration. And he does so in graphic novel form, illustrated by Zach Weinersmith of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal fame.  I’m naturally receptive to the idea of open borders as someone whose politics are informed by compassion for others and welcoming diversity.  But Caplan uses the economic consensus to make the case for how immigration benefits all people, even the natives of prosperous nations, in ways designed to appeal to the logic of conservative and libertarian mindsets.  Will it work?  Who knows, but I’m glad that someone is making the case and in such a fun, colorful medium!

Recommended books:

• The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson
• Maeve in America by Maeve Higgins

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen

Author: James W. Loewen
Title: Lies My Teacher Told Me
Narrator: L.J. Ganser
Publication Info: Recorded Books, Inc., 2019 [Originally published in 1994]
Other Books Read by the Same Author: Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong
Summary/Review:

This book is an expose on why high school students hate history and why Americans in general are ignorant of the historical facts of the United States.  With the teaching of American history once again being challenged as “woke” and more ridiculously as “critical race theory” I thought it was a good time to revisit this book.  Despite the title, this book is not an attack on teachers but on history textbooks which Lowen describes in detail as containing many inaccuracies and irrelevant details, as well as a boring writing style.

I have to note that when I was in middle school and high school, far from being bored, I was obsessed with history.  I was privileged to have teachers who somehow dodged many of the pitfalls of American history teaching as well as the proclivity to learn a lot on my own through reading, watching documentaries, and visiting historic sites. I read the first edition way back when it came out in the mid 90s and remember it being mostly debunking the false histories propagated in several prominent history textbooks.  On this reading I found it was less about debunking and more about why history isn’t taught in a way that allows for critical thinking.

The original edition evaluated a dozen textbooks, while the 2004 second edition revisited some of those books as well as 6 new textbooks.  This third and final edition was identical to the third edition but with a new introduction that pretty much noted that little progress had been made.  The problem with history teaching isn’t simple as one might imagine, and while fingers can be pointed at right wing politicians and parents for objecting to teaching warts and all history, they are just part of many complex and overlapping hindrances.  From publishers who appeal to the lowest denominator to sell the most books to the authors whose names are on the cover having little to nothing to do with the books (and the ghost writers who do write the book having very little knowledge of the history), there’s plenty of blame to go around.

As someone who loves history and thinks that kids should love studying as much as I did and gain the sense of perspective that critical thinking of history provides, I find this is an important book and highly recommend reading it.

Favorite Passages:

When confronting a claim about the distant past or a statement about what happened yesterday, students—indeed, all Americans—need to develop informed skepticism, not nihilistic cynicism.

Recommended books:

• A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
• The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz

Rating: ****1/2

 

 

 

 

Classic Movie Review: All the President’s Men (1976)

Title: All the President’s Men
Release Date: April 4, 1976
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Production Company: Wildwood Enterprises
Summary/Review:  This docudrama dramatizes the investigative journalism of Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) at The Washington Post to connect the burglary of the Democratic National Committee offices at Watergate to President Richard Nixon. It’s kind of fascinating to think of audiences watching this movie at the time of release when the events depicted had just happened but are already being shown with the sheen of historicity.

The acting is top notch with Redford and Hoffman joined by Jason Robards as the Post‘s editor Ben Bradlee and Hal Holbrook as “Deep Throat” among others. The movie does a great job of creating tension out of rather mundane tasks like making phone calls and taking notes so that it is very compelling to watch. The movie also incorporates actual tv and radio news footage from the time period which I think was something new for narrative films, although it would become more common. On the downside, there isn’t much characterization for the leads beyond that Bernstein is apparently the better writer and Woodward is more fastidious about getting the facts right.  I don’t feel that we get any sense of who Woodward and Bernstein were as people apart from being idealistic journalists.

While I won’t deny that this is an excellent film, it is a curious choice for the AFI’s 100 Years … 100 Films list.  I expect it is recognized for the film’s influence in dramatize recent political events as well as inspiring generations of idealistic journalists.  I also suspect it is considered an important film because it relates to an important event in American history.  More cynically, it could be that it’s about a significant event in the life of the Baby Boomer generation and thus deemed important because Baby Boomers remain the tastemakers of American culture.  All that aside, it’s an excellent film worth watching.

Rating: ****

Podcasts of the Week Ending April 17

Best of the Left :: Our Democracy is Filibusted, Time to Kill the Filibuster

The filibuster is a tool of white supremacy and it must be eliminated to allow the United States to pursue freedom and equality for all.

99% Invisible ::  Welcome to Jurassic Art Redux

The best way most people have to understand how extinct animals like the dinosaurs lived is through art.  Over the years, paleoart has transitioned from maintaining outdated ideas, to illustrating new understandings of dinosaurs, to entirely speculative art of different possibilities of how dinosaurs looked and acted.

Throughline :: The Real Black Panthers

If your understanding of the Black Panther Party is informed by depictions like Forrest Gump of a group of radical Blacks who hate white people, it’s worth listening to this podcast to learn what they actually understood.  In reality, the Black Panthers were seen as a threat by the FBI, and others, due to their radical vision of cross-racial activism.

The Story Collider :: Stories of COVID-19: Teachers

Teachers have dealt with a lot during the pandemic, from the brunt of redesigning education for remote learning on a moment’s notice to being the target of anger from parents and politicians.  Here are some of their stories.

Unf*cking the Republic :: AOC & the Lying Men Hydra

New York congressional representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the target of rage from Republicans, establishment Democrats, and Leftists alike.  This podcast explains what they have in common.

Running Tally of Podcast of the Week Awards for 2021

• Afropop Worldwide – 1
• AirSpace – 1
• Best of the Left – 2
• The Brattle Film Podcast – 1
• Code Switch – 2
• Consider This – 1
• Fresh Air – 1
• Futility Closet – 1
• Have You Heard? – 2
• Hub History – 2
• Judas and the Black Messiah – Entire series
• LeVar Burton Reads – 1
• Lost Massachusetts – 1
• The Moth – 1
• The Memory Palace – 1
• 99% Invisible – 3
• Politically Re-Active – 2
• Planet Money – 2
• Radio Boston – 2
• Radiolab – 2
• Reparations: The Big Payback – 1
• Scientific American – 1
• Seizing Freedom – 2
• Sidedoor – 1
• The Story Collider – 1
• Strong Songs – 1
• This American Life  – 2
• This Day in Esoteric Political History – 1
• Throughline – 6
• Twenty Thousand Hertz – 2
• Unf*cking the Republic – 2
• Up First – 1
• The War on Cars – 1
• What Next – 1

Podcasts of the Week Ending April 3

Fresh Air :: The High Stakes Of Amazon’s ‘One-Click America’

The vote to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama and what that means for labor in America.

Planet Money ::  Socialism 101

A primer on a widely misunderstood economic theory.

Radio Boston ::  New Study Supports Suffolk DA Rollins’ Focus More On Serious, Violent Crimes

Rachael Rollins ran for and was elected as Suffolk County District Attorney promising not to prosecute many nonviolent offenses and focus on more serious crimes.  Newly released data is proving her approach to be correct.

Radiolab :: What Up, Holmes?

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes originated a metaphor for free speech as “the marketplace of ideas,” but is there a better way to conceptualize freedom of speech?

This Day in Esoteric Political History :: Three Mile Meltdown

A partial nuclear meltdown at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania was apparently not as bad as it is always made out to be.

Throughline :: Our Own People

The story of a social justice activist I’ve never heard of before, Yuri Kochiyama. A Japanese-American woman who fought for Asian American equality, Kochiyama allied herself with numerous liberation movements. She was friends was Malcolm X and held him as he died.

What Next :: Can a Highway Be Racist?

There’s a long history in the United States of working class BIPOC communities being leveled to build and enlarge highways.  The freeway revolt against this practice continues in Houston.

Running Tally of Podcast of the Week Awards for 2021

• Afropop Worldwide – 1
• AirSpace – 1
• Best of the Left – 1
• The Brattle Film Podcast – 1
• Code Switch – 2
• Consider This – 1
• Fresh Air – 1
• Futility Closet – 1
• Have You Heard? – 2
• Hub History – 2
• Judas and the Black Messiah – Entire series
• LeVar Burton Reads – 1
• Lost Massachusetts – 1
• The Moth – 1
• The Memory Palace – 1
• 99% Invisible – 2
• Politically Re-Active – 2
• Planet Money – 2
• Radio Boston – 2
• Radiolab – 2
• Reparations: The Big Payback – 1
• Scientific American – 1
• Seizing Freedom – 2
• Sidedoor – 1
• Strong Songs – 1
• This American Life  – 2
• This Day in Esoteric Political History – 1
• Throughline – 5
• Twenty Thousand Hertz – 2
• Up First – 1
• The War on Cars – 1
• What Next – 1

Classic Movie Review: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Title: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Release Date: October 17, 1939
Director: Frank Capra
Production Company: Columbia Pictures
Summary/Review:

When I watched this movie as a child, I was gobsmacked by the depiction of rank corruption in the government. It wasn’t that I didn’t know about political corruption throughout US history, I just didn’t expect it in an old Hollywood film. For all the criticism of Frank Capra of making sentimental “Capra-corn,” this movie is cynical and dark. I mean they show flunkies of a political machine attacking children and driving them off a road, fer chrissakes!

The story begins with the death of a senator from a unnamed party in an unnamed state (Capra is very careful never to mention either of these things, ignoring the specific people and places where corruption thrived giving this movie an unfortunate “bothsiderism” undertone). The governor (Guy Kibbee) is torn between selecting a replacement suggested by his party’s political boss Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) or a reform candidate suggested by citizens’ committees. His sons convince him to instead nominate a popular scouting leader Jefferson Smith (James Stewart). Since the appointment is only for a few months, everyone believes that the noble but naïve Smith will keep his mouth shut and just occupy the seat for a short time.

Stewart does a great job of portraying Smith, at first awed by the symbolism of Washington DC and the majesty of the Senate. Smith’s mentor and the senior senator from his state, Joseph Paine (Claude Rains) advises Smith to work on some small legislation to keep him busy. Despite Paine’s public persona as honest man, he’s working for Taylor’s machine, and wants to keep Smith from learning about a bill which contains a dam-building graft scheme.

Smith works with his world-weary and cynical assistant Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur) who teaches him how the sausage is made in the Senate while at the same time his optimism begins to rub off on her. Unfortunately, Smith’s bill for a national boys’ camp uses the same land as dam project. To cover their tracks, Paine and the Taylor machine frame Smith for corruption. Which leads to the final act, the famous and dramatic filibuster in the Senate.

This movie is considered inspirational, although I find it uninspiring that Smith only succeeds because he is able to make Paine feel shame, and then Paine makes a full confession. After all, Senators today won’t even apologize for mistakes they’ve made in the past, much less admit to corruption. In the past four years we’ve seen members of the Senate choosing to look the other way in full knowledge of corruption and crimes that affect the very heart of our democracy and the lives of millions of people. So I don’t believe that standing against corruption like Smith will change the hearts of the wicked, but I do believe it is correct to stand for America’s best ideals and what is best for the country, nonetheless.

This movie features some terrific acting, especially from Stewart, Raines, and Arthur. I particularly like the depiction of Saunders as an intelligent and independent woman within the government, something else you don’t expect to see in a movie from the 1930s. I also like Capra’s direction and some of the subtle choices he made to undergird his theme. For example, when Smith is reading the Gettysburg Address at the Lincoln Memorial, an elderly Black man (possibly born in slavery) is seen in the background.

This is definitely one of the great films of all-time and one that remains relevant to our times.

Rating: ****1/2

Podcasts of the Week Ending October 17

Throughline :: The Electoral College

The history of why the United States has a backwards system of electing Presidents and how it has been used to promote slaveholding and racism throughout history.

Planet Money :: Caste Comes to Silicon Valley

The constitution of India officially outlawed the ancient caste system in 1947, but discrimination against people based on caste persists in India and has followed Indian immigrants to the US.

Code Switch :: Let’s Talk About Kamala Harris

Evaluating Kamala Harris’ record on criminal justice as a prosecutor and California attorney general.

The War on Cars :: America’s Love Affair With Cars

Efforts to fight the deleterious effects of the automobile are often countered with the statement that Americans have a love affair with their cars. This podcast traces the origin of this term in an industry promotional program starring Groucho Marx and questions the validity of the “love affair.”

RUNNING TALLY OF PODCAST OF THE WEEK APPEARANCES

• AirSpace – 1
• Afropop Worldwide – 3
• All Songs Considered – 3
• And Nothing Less – Entire series
• The Anthropocene Reviewed – 1
• BackStory – 4
• Brattle Film Podcast – 2
• Best of the Left – 2
• Coronavirus Daily/Consider This – 5
• Code Switch – 4
• Decoder Ring – 5
• Fresh Air – 9
• Futility Closet – 3
• Have You Heard – 3
• Here & Now – 1
• Hidden Brain – 3
• Hit Parade – 3
• Hub History – 1
• The Last Archive – 4
• LeVar Burton Reads – 1
• Memory Palace – 4
• More Than Enough – 4
• Mortified – 1
• The Moth – 1
• Nice White Parents – entire series
• 99% Invisible – 10
• 60-Second Science – 4
• Planet Money – 6
• The Politics of Everything – 2
• Radio Boston – 3
• Radiolab – 8
• Retro Disney World – 1
• Risk! – 1
• Science Talk – 2
• Smithsonian Sidedoor – 4
• Snap Judgment – 1
• Sound Opinions – 1
• The Thirty20Eight – 1
• This American Life – 2
• This Day in Esoteric Public History – 1
• Throughline – 12
• The Tomorrow Society – 1
• The Truth – 1
• Twenty Thousand Hertz – 7
• The War on Cars – 1
• Wedway Radio – 1
• What Next – 11

Massachusetts: It’s Time to VOTE!!!

Today it is exactly four weeks until Election Day on November 3rd, 2020. It’s an exciting and terrifying time, but I remain hopeful. Voting alone will not help restore democracy and help make our country that works for all its people – advocacy, activism, and protest will be necessary as well – but I believe the results of the 2020 election can give us a big push in the correct direction.

I need my fellow Massachusetts citizens to do the following things:

• • Double-check your registration.
  • Find your polling location at www.wheredoivotema.com. 
  • Early voting begins on October 17. Check www.MassEarlyVote.com for the postings of early voting information for cities and towns or visit your own city/town hall website. Boston has a particularly helpful website for early voting at https://www.boston.gov/departments/elections/vote-early-boston
  • Apply to vote by mail if you haven’t already.
  • Check my lists of candidates running for the US Senate and Governor in other states and adopt one or more candidates to support with donations, contacting friends who live in those states, and volunteering for their campaigns. 
  • Vote YES on ballot question #2 to bring Ranked Choice Voting to Massachusetts.  This is an exciting opportunity to ensure that our elected officials represent the majority of the people rather than extremist factions.

Please share this post widely on social media and feel free to contact me if you need help figuring how to navigate the electoral system in you city or town.  I’m pretty good at tracking those things down.