by Richard Subber | Apr 14, 2024 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality
the American crisis…
Book review:
Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
by Christopher Hayes
New York: Crown Publishers, 2012
292 pages
Twilight of the Elites is a frightening assessment of our culture, our government—our civitas.
“We are in the midst of a broad and devastating crisis of authority” (p. 13). You bet we are—and Hayes was writing before Trump was even a speck in your eye.
Americans embrace the American Dream, the Horatio Alger thing, that is, meritocracy: the acceptance and endorsement of the goodness of the idea that we should help ourselves to prosper and be successful, and that those among us with the greatest talent and strength and ambition should enjoy greater prosperity and greater success. It is an article of faith among most Americans that the cream will rise to the top, and deservedly so. Honest hard work will and should be rewarded. One of Hayes’ definitions of a benign meritocracy is “the aristocracy of talent.”
An obvious characteristic of meritocracy, of course, is inequality. “It is precisely our collective embrace of inequality that has produced a cohort of socially distant, blinkered, and self-dealing elites. It is those same elites who have been responsible for the cascade of institutional failure that has produced the crisis of authority through which we are now living…the consistent theme that unites [these failures] is elite malfeasance and elite corruption” (pp. 22-23). This acceptance of the meritocracy mythology “allows everyone to imagine the possibility of deliverance [from unfavorable circumstances], to readily conjure the image of a lavish and wildly successful future” (p. 47).
Hayes points out, however, that “a deep recognition of the slow death of the meritocratic dream underlies the decline of trust in public institutions and the crisis of authority in which we are now mired. Since people cannot bring themselves to disbelieve in the central premise of the American dream, they focus their ire and skepticism instead on the broken institutions it has formed” (p. 63). There is ample attention to the dreadful failure of the media, among other institutions, to sustain our communal understanding and respect for facts and the truth.
A suggestion about one possible agent of positive change identifies a “radicalized upper middle class” that bridges the liberal-conservative division, and forces accountability on our institutions of government, justice, education and finance. Hayes imagines “a crisis…necessary upheaval and social transformation,” and acknowledges the obvious: those with power never want to give it up.
Twilight reminds us that the ultra-wealthy, ultra-powerful 1% will hang on to what they’ve got—and keep trying to get more—until their reality changes.
Hayes tells many truths about the devastation that wracks American culture and most Americans, because the myth of the American dream is enabling a tiny elite to amass wealth and power, and use both to corrupt our society.
Americans must accept the frightening hardships
of a sincere commitment to change things.
Let’s get started.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Tales from Shakespeare
summaries by Charles and Mary Lamb…
Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Mar 26, 2024 | History, Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
more than a war story….
Movie review:
Eye of the Needle
Good vs. evil is the undercurrent of Eye of the Needle (1981, rated R, 112 minutes) but the drama is in the living and the dying of the fully believable characters: Donald Sutherland as the WWII German spy—“die Nadel”—and Kate Nelligan as Lucy, who becomes his nemesis.
A worldly viewer can easily guess the ending of this movie, so it’s not really a spoiler to say that Sutherland, the brutal German spy, has the Allies’ Normandy invasion plans and is trying to get them to Germany when he is shipwrecked on a remote island off Scotland. Lucy, a patriotic English woman who is the wife of a sheep farmer on the island, falls in love with die Nadel before she figures out what he is and kills him.
Die Nadel is desperate, but human. Lucy is lonely, but ultimately she rages to do the right thing. The brief seduction scene is a lover’s delight (brief nudity). The awkward interaction of the two reluctant lovers is credible. The violence is matter-of-fact and vicious.
Eye of the Needle works as a war story, a spy story, and a love story. It won’t put you to sleep.
* * * * * *
Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: An Empire Divided
King George and his ministers
wanted the Caribbean sugar islands
more than they wanted the 13 colonies…
by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy
–
In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Feb 27, 2024 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
“We all love you, preacher!”
Movie review:
Pale Rider
“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”
Revelation 6:8
Pale Rider (1985, rated R, 115 minutes) goes a bit deeper than your usual Clint Eastwood action thriller.
As “the preacher,” Eastwood creates a mostly low-key character who mostly waxes philosophic about life and its vicissitudes, but also persistently urges the good guys to do some good, and (you’re not surprised) straps on his big pistol when he needs it.
The beleaguered “tin pan” miners, emboldened by “the preacher,” battle the vicious takeover attempts by the big bad rich guy, and you can guess who savors victory.
There’s an almost completely platonic love interest with the mother, Sarah (Carrie Snodgress is divinely demure), and 15-year-old Megan (Sydney Penny) learns a lot about unrequited love.
Pale Rider invites you to look deeply into the hearts of realistic people.
The obvious allusion to Revelation 6:8 (“…behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death…”) is puzzling. The preacher is not apocalyptic, there is no hint of theology in his role, and he mysteriously and provocatively rides away into the mountains at the last minute, leaving everyone else to resume their lives.
* * * * * *
Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They really didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
–
In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Feb 18, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
a real good story…
Book review:
The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943
754 pages
You already know something about what The Fountainhead is all about, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this review.
Here’s my contribution: think of The Fountainhead as a novel, as a love story, as a heroic fable, as a celebration of human virtue and the urge to do the right thing. Think about that moralistic gem from Hamlet: “To thine own self be true.”
The Fountainhead is an elaboration of Ayn Rand’s imagination about ambition, self-actualization, courage, endurance, and a kind of love that needs more marshmallows and less of the kind of talk that you wouldn’t expect to hear in the library stacks.
It’s a real good story. Roark, Dominique, and a couple other characters aren’t sketched, they’re lushly painted with many words that you don’t hear in ordinary conversation.
Forget about the political claptrap that’s bandied about using a rubric of “Ayn Rand’s philosophy.”
She was a novelist first, and her talent ran dry when she stepped out of the literary sphere.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
The Unknown American Revolution (book review)
in the streets, says Gary Nash
Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jan 30, 2024 | Human Nature, Reflections, Theater and play reviews
getting there…
Movie review:
To Serve Them All My Days
There is an utterly familiar plot line in To Serve Them All My Days (TV mini series, 1980-1981, 11 hours, 13 minutes): a Welsh coal miner’s son survives World War I, and becomes a teacher at a boys’ school in England south of Wales, and grows in his role to become the beloved avuncular headmaster.
John Duttine energetically plays the protagonist, David Powlett-Jones. Everyone calls him “P. J.” or “Pow-Wow,” with love and respect.
P. J. quite remarkably discovers that his calling, his life’s work, is with the faculty and boys at Bamfylde School. He judges everything from this perspective.
Much of the tale is an unfamiliarly rich creation of manifestly human characters who deal with the slings and arrows of life, and make the best of their worlds to give willing, deserving boys a good education and a glimpse of how to live a decent life.
The dialogue is above average in many scenes, and you will get inside the minds of the key players. There is enough reflection and imagination and longing and joy/despair for any discerning viewer.
No spoiler alert is needed here. You can’t possibly be in doubt about how the story ends.
In this story, getting there is the point of the journey.
Based on the 1973 novel (same title) by R. F. Delderfield.
* * * * * *
Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Snow Goose
…it’s sensual drama, eminently poetic…
by Paul Gallico
–
In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jan 9, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading
a sustaining emotional roadmap…
Book review:
The Woman at the Washington Zoo:
Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate
by Marjorie Williams (1958-2005)
Timothy Noah, ed.
New York: PublicAffairs, Perseus Books Group, 2005
358 pages
I wish I had known about Marjorie Williams’ work when she was an active staff writer at The Washington Post.
She had a pungent, penetrating style, and she carefully offered reasoned judgment as well as what we can nostalgically think of today as “facts.”
In The Woman at the Washington Zoo, her personal memoirs about her life and her cancer are wholly human, and they remain as a sustaining emotional roadmap for an engaged reader.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
“…and dipped in folly…”
only Poe knows how to say it…
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
