Excellent book. Engelhardt demonstrates we have moved from a "national security state" to a "national surveillance state". He also makes clear this has little to do with protecting U.S. citizens from terrorist attacks, and everything to do with the government keeping track of EVERYONE 24/7/52. Realizing just how much the government spies on its own citizens, and how hard it endeavors to keep everyone under constant surveillance is both sad and depressing. But the ruling oligarchy, unfortunately, understands, as they keep appropriating an ever greater percentage of the nation's wealth into their insatiably greedy pockets, and the remainder of the nation sees their standard of living consistently slipping lower and lower, at some point, it is going to be more than riots in Ferguson over a police shooting of a Black man. When discontent becomes pervasive, as Americans begin to wake up and understand fully what is being done to them just so the rich can have it all, "we, the people", are likely to become even more rebellious than almost any time in our nation's history. Understanding that, the oligarchy wants to militarize the police and wants the state to be able to identify and eliminate any "trouble makers" before massive resistance can be organized. At that point, we become the fascist police state the oligarchy dreams of. The more people who read Engelhardt, and other authors such as Stiglitz (for example, The Cost of Inequality), Suskind (e.g., The Way of the World), Bacevich (e.g. Washington Rules or The Limits of Power), Kuttner (e.g. Debtors' Prison), Stuckler (e.g. The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills), Graeber (e.g. Debt: The First 5,000 Years); Klein (e.g. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism), Ravitch (e.g., Reign of Error), Blyth (e.g. Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea), the better positioned we are to recognize the lies of Republicans in general, and "Democrats" like both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Once that happens, the possibility of meaningful change, of getting OUR country back on the track to genuine economic prosperity, and a rising standard of living begins to grow. Once the power of the oligarchy is broken, the "need" for the kinds of government surveillance Engelhardt discusses will cease to exist; and intelligence agencies and the police can return to the duties and responsibilities most Americans see as protecting and serving the people in general, those for whom they are supposed to work.
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Reviewed in Canada on August 22, 2015
