In this passionate debut laced with sardonic humor, Pittsburgh native Bridge writes that American citizens, formerly rugged individualists, have been reduced to mere consumers under the heel of profit-driven, power-hungry transnational corporate elites. These corporations, he asserts, have vastly enriched themselves by waging war on ordinary workers, while virtually turning the U.S. government into a wholly owned subsidiary.
“Today in America,” he writes, “a handful of powerful corporate forces are exerting pressure on the political system to such a degree that to speak of democracy is to sound like a fool and a simpleton.”
U.S. Supreme Court decisions granting personhood to corporations, he writes, have perverted the intentions of the founders by giving corporate entities rights meant for living, breathing human beings. In this well-argued, liberally footnoted book, he finds that even the press is too deeply infected by corporate ownership to sound a clarion call over all that has gone wrong, since to do so, he writes, would be to bite the hand of the master. Instead, he notes, corporate-owned mass media deliver increasingly coarse entertainment, while military adventures flicker in the background.
The book reads like the heartfelt cry of an expatriate, although his style is sometimes a bit over-the-top. Bridge obviously depicts contemporary America as an oppressive place, but he makes his case too strongly for readers to completely discount it—even if he isn’t the first to present such a picture.
Yet another book to add to your collection. Your grandchildren will one day want to know why the world is so jacked up-this is a good book to start in their quest for answers..
OneLove
::MME:::
