Book Review: This Land Is Their Land - Reports from a Divided Nation by Barbara Ehrenreich

When historians begin to analyze what brought about the decline and fall of the most-powerful and affluent empire in the history of Earth, they will turn to the works of Barbara Ehrenreich as much as to Xenophon, Vegetius, and Gibbon. Ehrenreich's output will offer a view focused on a specific aspect that is lacking in the works of these great historians - that of the common citizen adversely affected by the covetous blunders of their leaders. That is indeed the focus of Ehrenreich's latest, This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation.

This empire's common citizens live in what was once a wondrous land, a land which was converted -- with the citizenry mired complacently in media-cemented acceptance -- into a mirror image of Alice in Wonderland, which gradually grew curiouser and curiouser as it was involuntarily interfused with the authoritarianism of 1984 and the inexhaustible cupidity of Charles Dickens' Hard Times. It's a place where a group the size of Gulliver's Lilliputians -- minuscule both in terms of numbers and in the quantity and quality of their moral values -- have created a Brobdingnagian-sized problem for the balance of their society and for their world. Mad Magazine couldn't have conceived of a more topsy-turvy "civilization," and yet it exists in reality.

There is only one place where people are offered health insurance for their animals -- even by their employers -- while their children go without medical care from any source, and that place is the United States of America. A sample of the insanity is that a child who died for a lack of $80 dollars to pay a dentist to remove an infected tooth cannot legally see a veterinarian who regularly performs similar surgery on household pets at a lower cost as a last resort to save his life.

Another example of how unbalanced America has become is related in the tale of the employees of Circuit City, who were fired for "earning too much" by a CEO who was taking home millions of dollars in remuneration. Or in the tale of the attempted swindle of Wendy's by two opportunists that involved a planted severed finger, unsafe equipment, and escaped employer consequences.

Such is the country the neoconfidence men led by George W. Bush have created. Seeking only to enrich their wealthy benefactors, there is no concern whatsoever for the welfare of those who pay the costs of such bountiful beneficence delivered to the overtly opulent through reduced wages, lost jobs, and eliminated health care benefits.

Article Author: Realist

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