PREFACE
G rowing up, I remember walking to school in Athens past a statue of President Truman. The statue was a daily reminder of the magnificent nation responsible for, among other things, the Marshall Plan.
Everyone in Greece either had a family member, or, like my family, a friend, who’d left to find a better life in America. That was the phrase everyone associated with America: “a better life.” America was a place you could go to work really hard, make a good living, and even send money back home—a better life.
I was sixteen when I first came to America as part of a program called the Experiment in International Living. I spent the summer in York, Pennsylvania, staying with four different families. I went back to Athens, and then soon went on to Cambridge and London. But part of me remained in America.
When I came back in 1980, I knew that this time it would be for good. Thirty years later, there’s still no other place I’d rather live. Over that time, one of the characteristics I’ve come to love the most about my adopted country is its optimism. In fact, it melded perfectly with my own Greek temperament: Zorba the Greek meets the American spirit. The Italian journalist Luigi Barzini wrote that America “is alarmingly optimistic, compassionate, incredibly generous … It was a spiritual wind that droveAmericans irresistibly ahead from the beginning.” 1 The only downside of the optimistic spirit is that it can sometimes prevent us from seeing what is unfolding until it’s too late.
In recent years, as the evidence mounted about the road we’re on as a country—one that I was sure would prove disastrous if we failed to course-correct in time—I was conflicted. I wanted to believe everything would turn out okay, as it has so often in the past. But the stubborn facts kept nagging at me as the warning signs became more and more numerous. I had to choose whether to sound like Cassandra or fall back on a double dose of the congenital optimism of both my native and adopted countries and assume it was all just another speed bump on the road to a “more perfect union.” It’s never fun being Cassandra. But remember, Cassandra ended up being right. And the Trojans, who remained blissfully blind to her warnings, ended up being very wrong and very dead.
So, yes, as I look around at our great, sprawling country, we are obviously not yet a Third World nation. But we are well on our way. This is the unspoken fear of so many out-of-work Americans and those still at work but anxious about their futures and the futures of their children. My goal for this book is to sound the alarm so that we never do become “Third World America.”
“America,” Winston Churchill reportedly said, “can always be counted on to do the right thing, after it has exhausted all other possibilities.” 2 Well, we have exhausted a lot of possibilities, and for millions of the unemployed, the underemployed, the ones whose homes have been foreclosed, and the ones who’ve declared bankruptcy or can’t pay their credit card bills, the process has already been very painful. It’s time now to do the right things.
The book closes on an optimistic note. Part 5 is about many of those
right things
being done around the country. Because in the end, despite the acts of greed, cronyism, and disregard for the public interest committed by both business and political leaders, I am ultimately heartened by the resilience, creativity, and largely unheralded acts of compassion and empathy that I see among Americans everywhere. Turning our country around will take the concerted effort of citizens all across America, standing up for themselves, their families, and their communities—both demanding change and embodying it—and keeping the promise of the American Dream alive for future generations.
BRENDA CARTER
I was a manager of information systems at the same company for thirteen years. I thought my job was secure. All the purchasing approval
G rowing up, I remember walking to school in Athens past a statue of President Truman. The statue was a daily reminder of the magnificent nation responsible for, among other things, the Marshall Plan.
Everyone in Greece either had a family member, or, like my family, a friend, who’d left to find a better life in America. That was the phrase everyone associated with America: “a better life.” America was a place you could go to work really hard, make a good living, and even send money back home—a better life.
I was sixteen when I first came to America as part of a program called the Experiment in International Living. I spent the summer in York, Pennsylvania, staying with four different families. I went back to Athens, and then soon went on to Cambridge and London. But part of me remained in America.
When I came back in 1980, I knew that this time it would be for good. Thirty years later, there’s still no other place I’d rather live. Over that time, one of the characteristics I’ve come to love the most about my adopted country is its optimism. In fact, it melded perfectly with my own Greek temperament: Zorba the Greek meets the American spirit. The Italian journalist Luigi Barzini wrote that America “is alarmingly optimistic, compassionate, incredibly generous … It was a spiritual wind that droveAmericans irresistibly ahead from the beginning.” 1 The only downside of the optimistic spirit is that it can sometimes prevent us from seeing what is unfolding until it’s too late.
In recent years, as the evidence mounted about the road we’re on as a country—one that I was sure would prove disastrous if we failed to course-correct in time—I was conflicted. I wanted to believe everything would turn out okay, as it has so often in the past. But the stubborn facts kept nagging at me as the warning signs became more and more numerous. I had to choose whether to sound like Cassandra or fall back on a double dose of the congenital optimism of both my native and adopted countries and assume it was all just another speed bump on the road to a “more perfect union.” It’s never fun being Cassandra. But remember, Cassandra ended up being right. And the Trojans, who remained blissfully blind to her warnings, ended up being very wrong and very dead.
So, yes, as I look around at our great, sprawling country, we are obviously not yet a Third World nation. But we are well on our way. This is the unspoken fear of so many out-of-work Americans and those still at work but anxious about their futures and the futures of their children. My goal for this book is to sound the alarm so that we never do become “Third World America.”
“America,” Winston Churchill reportedly said, “can always be counted on to do the right thing, after it has exhausted all other possibilities.” 2 Well, we have exhausted a lot of possibilities, and for millions of the unemployed, the underemployed, the ones whose homes have been foreclosed, and the ones who’ve declared bankruptcy or can’t pay their credit card bills, the process has already been very painful. It’s time now to do the right things.
The book closes on an optimistic note. Part 5 is about many of those
right things
being done around the country. Because in the end, despite the acts of greed, cronyism, and disregard for the public interest committed by both business and political leaders, I am ultimately heartened by the resilience, creativity, and largely unheralded acts of compassion and empathy that I see among Americans everywhere. Turning our country around will take the concerted effort of citizens all across America, standing up for themselves, their families, and their communities—both demanding change and embodying it—and keeping the promise of the American Dream alive for future generations.
BRENDA CARTER
I was a manager of information systems at the same company for thirteen years. I thought my job was secure. All the purchasing approval
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