[lbo-talk] Bizarre Comment from David Brooks

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Tue Apr 6 10:47:13 PDT 2010


James Leveque wrote:
>
>
> To quote Frank Sobotka from "The Wire": "You know what the trouble is
> Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just
> put
> our hand in the next guy's pocket."

I hope you are not under the illusion that the U.S. of T. Roosevelt, W. Wilson, John Rockefeller, Sr. was a bit less destructive than the present U.S.

Making things is no better than not making things in and of itself. Have you ever heard of child labor in the U.S. or read Melville's "Paradise of Bachelors, Purgatory of Maids"? Or haven't you ever heard about slavery or the Mexican War or the genocide of the American INdians.

This sort of glib implicit comparison between the present and the past is really distorting.

Carrol



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