Good morning all. Let me apologize in advance for the abbreviated content in today's Books In My Life. I am now entering week TWO of cold/flu enervation. Those of you suffering along with me in your various states know just what I'm talking about.
So this morning we will go to the open forum format. Today's topic will be the books that had the greatest influence on your political worldview and political philosophy and that you would personally would like to seen taught in schools or that you would hand out for free to the masses if you could.
The two major influences on me were:
Howard Zinn's A People History of the United States
and
Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine
Zinn opened my eyes to the fact that our national history whether we realize it or not, has been one long uninterrupted battle between the Haves and the Have Not's, or, in its most basic terms, a class struggle. Some people want to rise and some people want to oppress. The classes or groups switch, some based on ethnicity or race or gender or economic status, but the struggle remains the same. This is a great book for fighting depression and hopelessness - The fight for social justice has always been hard, it is hard and it will always be hard. Any advances that are made always run the risk of being ephemeral and lost. But we can never ever ever give up in trying to make the world and our country a better place.
Naomi Klein's book is subtitled Disaster Capitalism. One of it's major tenets is that often events that are portrayed with ideological trappings are essentially economic opportunism at their core. The book stripped away any remaining naivete I may had had about the motivations underlying many of our global adventures and misadventures and the players involved. Sometimes the white hats are from the props department.
If I were wealthy and trying to educate the public about both our past and our future, I would have a bookmobile and drive around the country handing out free copies of these two books - what books would you stock your bookmobile with?