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"Greider's moment...may have arrived. Given the current, gloomy circumstances, all neatly summarized here, it's more difficult than ever to argue with his analysis, and he's surely correct that 'in crisis lies opportunity'...With the times propitious and unprecedented organizing tools (the Internet, especially) readily available, the people may finally be sufficiently aroused--in the manner of the late 19th-century Populists and the early New Dealers--to demand accountability from a system that has failed them. If they do, historians may point to this book as one of the prairie fire's first sparks. Astute, hopeful and humane commentary."

-- Kirkus Reviews

From the Bill Moyers Journal on PBS:

William Greider wants Americans to start shaking things up. His new book, COME HOME AMERICA: THE RISE AND FALL (AND REDEEMING PROMISE) OF OUR COUNTRY, doesn't mince words from the very first sentence: "I have some hard things to say about our country." And he does.
After outlining many of the systemic problems he feels the United States faces, Greider lays out the case for a fundamental restructuring of America's economy and society. He compares the moment — a decline in American power exarcerbated by the financial collapse — to World War II, not literally, but as a moment of economic transformation. "Just as World War II presented a chance to thoroughly reorder American life," he writes, "this generation of Americans has the opportunity — the obligation — to envision a country very different from the one we have known for more than half a century."

The Financial Bailout

Greider worries the Obama administration won't seize the chance for change without pressure from citizens. Referring to the stimulus package and Secretary Geithner's new bailout proposal, Greider tells Bill Moyers on THE JOURNAL, that President Obama "does seem absolutely committed to restoration of the old order."

Greider further criticizes the Obama administration's bank bailout plan in a recent article for THE NATION, likening it to a game of Monopoly just for Wall Street:

It's very much like the regular Monopoly game that kids play--only better--because this one uses real money, provided courtesy of the taxpayers. The best thing about Obama's game is nobody loses. Usually, the winner in Monopoly is the one who winds up with the most money. In the Obama version, the losers get any losses back from the government at the end of the game.

Greider doesn't believe change is going to originate in Washington or that the Obama administration will make the right changes alone. In the final chapter of his book, Greider lays out the case that real democratic change must start with people organizing themselves and forcing change up from the grassroots.

He tells Bill Moyers on THE JOURNAL, "I think that's what I hope for now: that people of every stripe will stand up and say, 'We love you Mr. President, but you don't have it right yet. And we're gonna bang on your door until you get it right'."

About William Greider:

Now THE NATION's national affairs correspondent, William Greider has been a political journalist for more than 35 years. A former ROLLING STONE and WASHINGTON POST editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers ONE WORLD, READY OR NOT, SECRETS OF THE TEMPLE, WHO WILL TELL THE PEOPLE, THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM and, most recently, COME HOME AMERICA.

***

From Booklist:

Ever since the early 1990s, Greider (Who Will Tell the People?) has been warning that our democracy is in peril because America’s political parties have abandoned the citizenry in favor of the interests of corporations and the power elite. Here he outlines the full substance of the predicament we find ourselves in as exhibited by the financial collapse: a culmination of our decaying democracy, the negative effects of globalism, the dominance of militarism in our financial policy, the destruction of the middle class, and the threat of global climate change. Greider argues that spreading our style of democracy through force is a new form of imperialism stemming from an arrogance of power. He sees much pain in our future if we remain on our current course but finds hope for a day of reckoning when mass social movements and a third front that fills the space between big government and the private sector will take power back into the hands of ordinary citizens.

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