American contradiction Revolution and revenge from the 1950s to now

Starr (Entrenchment), cofounder of The American Prospect, offers a perceptive history of the past eight decades of U.S. partisan politics. Outlining the ideological paths taken by the "progressive left," the "mainstream" center, and the "reactionary" right, he pinpoints the Black civil rights movement as the prime driver of events to come. The progressive left, inspired by the civil rights fight, began to (rightfully, Starr asserts) see America as profoundly unequal, and supported more and more minority groups in demanding their fundamental rights. The center, however, preserved its reverence for American "exceptionalism"--the idea that America has "unique values and institutions" which ensure "openness, tolerance, and pluralism" as well as economic "dynamism"--and began to frame the left as "illiberal." Meanwhile, the reactionary right nurtured its grievance against racial equality, pointing to the decline of American manufacturing and the subsequent suffering of the working class as evidence that pluralism had fundamentally failed. Among Starr's aims is to prove to the left and center that they should concede one another's points about America's true nature--because both have merit, but also because neither ideology alone can achieve victory over President Trump and the reactionary right. To make his point, he astutely breaks down specific historical instances of left and "mainstream" victory, from the establishment of the EPA to the election of President Obama, to show how they were born of broad center-left consensus. The result is a persuasive call for unity. (Oct.)

Thoughtful study of the push and pull from right to left and back again in the past 75 years. Ronald Reagan liked the Puritan notion of America being a shining city on a hill. But, writes Princeton sociologist and Pulitzer Prize--winner Starr, more correctly, "the American republic has been like a city built on a geological fault, shaken often by tremors and periodically by earthquakes." In this lucid account, the author opens in the era when, united by the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats were often indistinguishable, with conservatives, moderates, and liberals in both parties and, in that "midcentury normal," sharing a commitment to a fair social contract, prosperity, education, science, and other public goods. (It helped, as Starr notes, that "the top marginal rate during the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s was 91 -percent, inconceivable -today.") It's worth considering, in that regard, that Richard Nixon proposed "a national guaranteed income," a sharp break from conservative orthodoxy. That common front began to wobble under Reagan, cracked with Newt Gingrich, and is shattered today, likely irreparably. Starr points out that while rural white resentment has proved a powerful fuel for Trumpism, it was the loss of manufacturing jobs in cities and the subsequent decline of many urban areas that fed both the destructive impoverishment of minority communities and the sharp rise in incarceration rates. It's ironic that corporations were the original champions of diversity programs, as the author notes, when in the 1980s "business leaders became convinced that they needed to prepare for a diverse workforce, diverse consumers, and diverse global markets." It's also ironic that both right and left hold that "Amer-i-ca broke its promises to working people," though nothing much is being done about that in a time dominated by "political interests in keeping America's social divisions at a high boil." A useful key to understanding how American politics and the American polity have become so intractably polarized. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.