Web Letters: Extreme Inequality

Even a batch of milquetoast has more flavor than this. The subject is advertised as "extreme inequality," yet young Mr. Brook writes as if he is angling for some nice, comfortable think-tank sinecure where previous rashness gets disavowed in front of his elders.

Let's see... the estimable Mr. Johnston, who says in his talks that there is no one else in America even on his beat of the plutocratic destruction of the human social world, can be thought of as "irresponsible" for associating the US with Brazil, Mexico and Russia. Brook sees Johnston as going into outrage "overdrive," as if the subject of economic inequality should be greeted with the famous tepid unfeeling of the ensconced academic or corporate liberal, the kind who thinks our country is populated by folks who pledge allegiance to Adam Smith (not too many folks I know have ol' Adam up there next to Dale or the Gipper).

Brook then has some horse come before some cart, earning a nice B from some Yale professor and finishing off the poor reader who expected some degree of, yes, outrage, perhaps an emotion, perhaps a consideration that we are talking about worldwide economic crisis engendered by US pharaohs of calculator capital consigning untold numbers of their fellow humans to pain, suffering and death.

This may be too harsh, as Brook makes some subsequent noises that allude to an actual iota of concern about these matters, but he needs to stop uttering inanities that purport to hold out better plans for "rolling back the new inequality" or asking how to "turn a nation of gamblers into a nation of citizens." Is The Nation now where real issues now come to die, instantly? Where you can now instruct us lessers to be for the man who is now for the war (Scahill and Juhasz are clear about this) he was against, albeit only mildly and symbolically?

Martin White

Salem, NY