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is america going to hell of a hand basket
blassie's a signature manicure client economy education health care
consumer confidence and faith in our largest institutions
but according to my next guest although i lost
after all we have been here before
the civil war the depression and the world wars
the vietnam civil rights the cold war and september eleventh all brought dire
warnings about the end of america
but we survived recovered in many cases thrived after all
can we do it again
ozark urgings fallacies a national correspondent with the atlantic and the
former speechwriter for president jimmy carter alright first let me ask you
about all those previous times in american history
was that it would be people think it was as bad as it is today
maybe even worse
and how do we recover
i think there's certainly been a lot of perceived dark times american history
and and we have to always remember the civil war was worse than anything that
the country's gone through there before or since
were memorable when i was working for jimmy carter in the late nineteen
seventies is a sense of real national gloom and
nineteen sixties where a series of assassinations a transform politics
nineteen thirty zero ten years of economic hard times so
the fact that we've had a hard times for doesn't prove that will get out of these
ones but it is a useful perspective to bear in mind shamelessly trendy l_a_ i
read your piece and i agree with some parts obviously because
you know we've got some great things going for american like that's going to
help was not in the long run
and we've been through terrible suffering for
having said that action this year with your some parts so let's have that long
conversation
i think i think some things have dramatically changed
and bout
i would point to for example our manufacturing base
basically disappearing
you know corroboration a great article a couple of months back about how
beverage mail work in the last twenty years worth two hundred hours more
fabrics female worker works two hundred hours more or throughout the course of
the year right then we take action point three trillion dollars
from our homes
we're done that the base is done dot that's what we're worried about
babette other issues let's talk about that first
shirt to say that america has resilience and prospects overall and in the long
run doesn't mean that we have no problem so i think it is true that over the last
twenty years there's been pressure on
the middle in every sense in american life the median wage has gone down the
middle-class miss american cities american life has been under pressure
we've had an extreme of income that we haven't seen for probably a hundred
years so those are genuine issues so i think we can both say that america has
has done junior were source for capacities as universes are strong it
still is an engine of new technology new creativity
further things we need to address especially in the middle class prospects
for america's right where it really agree on that one
right now but that did so how do we dress the stuff views on immigration and
irish cases system
jealousy i agree with you and i think that that's a great hope for us going
forward
so when you look at our politics here is my argument for why this time it's
different this of course always been corruption is always been guys but
ninety thousand dollars in the freezer right but we have systemic corruption
now which is in which i think was brought about at the late nineteen
seventies early nineteen eighties
we certainly appropriations
person heard and we said hey you can spend of course culminating as citizens
united he said as much money as you like and basically by our politicians so that
i don't think of politicians represent us so they don't have an interest in
fixing this they have an interest
then you know furthering the monopoly of the guys who are making more money off
the system
sure i have a slightly different wrote to a similar conclusion your through
american politics especially a hundred years ago during the late eighteen
hundreds
the corruption of washington was if anything as as bad as it is now a new
york for some reason we have direct election of senators now is that before
that they were elected by state legislators and were more or less
directly purchased by corporations and so there is a kind of cutting out the
middleman or approach them so supplicant corruption is bad now but has been bad
at many points in american merrick unlike i think what is different here in
world war i again would agree with you we have a real problem
this many of the mechanics of our our government system or
out of date in a way that we don't allow one or corporations and our educational
institutions all the rest
look at the apportionment in the senate
when the senate was founded by the constitution i was on the attend one
difference between the biggest in the small states both with two senators now
it's seventy to one between white only in california and a routine use of the
filibuster asthmatic the old made it easier for you minority that the block
legislation so again
we're agreeing they're important structural issues of corruption of
fear chances for the average american
just talking about the right way to deal with them
so james that then let's get the heart of it how we fix it because
if we're going to make it back but we're going to get jobs again manufacturing
base if we're not so dependent
on these banks taking all these crazy rest a ballpark caveat
it would have been sold out don't we need our representatives to represent us
if we don't have that because the systemic corruption we talked about
what's our home
um our hope is something that i think you when i a different ways they're both
trying to approach and hope in the public officials will do to with saying
that
the prospects of the
average american the way in which that person then his or her family can have
prospects for their children to have a fair chance education a fair chance for
a better life may need to be more directly
talked about in our political system in our media in our schools so i think that
if we have
the only thing that again both you and i can do is try to have the media focus on
what the *** situation is for the average person in america
because i think that's been the real step backward last generation hit yeah
i've you know i would do that plots i would rip down the current political
system at
and i went in and say that if you don't we start over or anything like that
branding him a police officers accountable
but i think part of the way that we got out of the depression is sarah was
somebody like roosevelt
and doesn't have to be just one person in that case it was a process randall
coming in saying no we're going to change the way things are done
so you know we got a hold of peter the fire
yes and of course the people who are arguing that now mainly our garden tea
party people i personally don't agree with most of their solutions for bangs
but that is the sentiment and the administer capping so be nice to have
the same sentiment for change the same sex internet of hostility to the way
things are reading now
but in my view channeled towards a more sir progressive view of how the
mainstream americans can have a better sheer
of the countries are well
hello back couldn't agree more access via pulled out some hope for the tea
party
ami obviously you've got some strands of a better not productive but at least
this hole in their politicians accountable to some degree for the
moment being and bennett the progressives i think should do that
allot more and then join forces they come from the right now the guys come
from the left let's let's take these guys down because they're bought
we're not going to help us
uh... you know until we change that i think i think that you know it's up to
change everything else
all right so you know sometimes i thought i'd be a lesser market america
might think this an idealistic
pitch you've made that i would support
hi there we go agreement again
our ideas valves interest is the status of the for joining us