Americans have a short collective memory when it comes to political upheaval. It's one thing to learn about and study cultural disruptions from a historical point of view. In something else entirely to have lived through them. In Last Best Hope George Packer is writing from within one of those moments of disruptive change It's the same moment I'm living through right now, circa the third decade of the 21st century. We're still too close to current events to fully appreciate the long view, but history shows us that these events are inevitable from time to time. But at the same time, we've never been at *this* particular moment in time, with all its digital and global influences, so trying to forecast the outcome is nearly impossible.

America is going through a crisis. The whole world is by a similar measure if we're being honestly inclusive. This is a topic I've been fascinated about since before Donald Trump entered the international stage. The rise of Trump told me there were factors in play that I didn't understand. And then COVID-19 hit and accelerated ALL problems, possibly bringing them to a head far sooner than they otherwise would have. To say we live in interesting times would be a massive understatement.

George Packer's Last Best Hope is an stunning look back at the core principles of America and democracy in an effort to see past, and maybe resolve, the country's current political and cultural divides. A brighter tomorrow isn't inevitable, but it certainly isn't impossible. ( )

Non Fiction, Read, 2022 ( )

Like Wildland which I read last month, this book is another attempt to explain how America got to the position in which it currently finds itself. Packer sees 4 opposing narratives by which Americans define themselves:

1. FREE AMERICA--(basically Republicans)-libertarian, tax cuts, deregulation, individualism, property rights (no public investment), hostility to government, religious traditionalists, break the unions, starve social programs, nationalistic. This group is represented by Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz, Sean Hannity, and others of their ilk. Tax cuts and deregulation equals freedom and prosperity. They mobilize anger and despair by offering up scapegoats.

2. SMART AMERICA--(basically Democrats) success depends on brainpower, not accumulation of wealth. Meritocracy, social liberalism, fairness, but if you don't make the cut you have no one to blame but yourself. Smart America lost the white working class. Sees the answer to all problems as education.

3. REAL AMERICA--this began with Sarah Palin (who Packer describes as John the Baptist for the coming of Trump). Proud ignorance and contempt for the establishment and for experts. Anti-intellectual, the country of white people, religious and nationalistic, an offshoot of FREE AMERICA, but they pay the costs of Americas liars.

4. JUST AMERICA--seeks continuous wrongs to be battled. assaults the meritocracy of SMART AMERICA, identity politics and political correctness, not just concerned with race, some followers are socialists, environmentalists, feminists; "Something is deeply wrong; our society is unjust; our institutions are corrupt." Its members are mostly young and well-educated; because the most desireable occupations have contracted our cities have large populations of overeducated and underemployed young people; intolerant and coercive.

Packer states, "Free America celebrates the energy of the unencumbered individual. Smart America respects intelligence and welcomes change. Real America commits itself to a place and has a sense of limits. Just America demands a confrontation with what others want to avoid. They arise from a single society, and even in one as polarized as ours they continually shape, absorb, and morph into one another. But their tendency is also to divide us up, pitting tribe against tribe. These divisions impoverish each narrative into a cramped and evermore extreme version of itself."

I found Packer's division of the country into these four factions to have a reasonable basis in fact, and an interesting way to describe the problem. He also offers some solutions to try to bring us back together once more as a country. Most of his suggestions are related in some way to addressing the extreme economic inequalities prevailing nowadays. Looking at our Congress, its inability to address the massive voter suppression efforts well underway, as well as the extreme politization of the Supreme Court, I personally don't have much hope that there is going to be a solution to the problem any time soon.
3 stars ( )

An excellent analysis of the current American moment, informed by previous periods when it felt like the American experiment might fail, and how we emerged from them a stronger union. Inspiring and hopeful, in a way, while also quite terrifying. This book provides some tools to help us think about ur current situation, and perhaps, to muddle through.

"These years we're living through feel like the 1850s, one crisis after another, an impending collapse that keeps being postponed, and unbearable tension between mutual hatred and inconceivable disunion. There have been several near-death experiences in American history: The Gilded Age, the Great Depression, the 60s, and the nearest of all the Civil War. Each of them was in some way brought on by inequality, the broken American code, none starker than that between citizen and slave. We're living through one of our own. It throws up different problems and makes different demands, but nothing is really new. Earlier Americans used the same tools of citizenship that are in our possession - journalism, government, activism - when they thought democracy was about to commit suicide. They show us ways of being American, that we've forgotten that can fortify and instruct us in our own crisis."


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