The Unwinding

I am a voracious reader, averaging a book every ten days. I try to alternate fiction with non fiction. While non fiction is educational and often illuminating, it usually requires that I pay careful attention and not simply drift off into the haze of another time or place. On the other hand even great fiction is a bit akin to candy and I keep hearing my mothers voice in my ear - "Eat your vegetables first."On very rare occasions I come across a book that has the qualities of both - the informational value and understanding engendered by careful and diligent research and the compelling narrative of great fiction. The Unwinding by George Packard is one of these rare works. Packard has accomplished the rare feat of combining great research with compelling story telling. He makes the places and time palpable to the reader. And he does this with a most interesting format, short chapters on people and places that he keeps returning to and intertwining with each other until the conclusion is almost overwhelming.Without getting hyperbolic this is one of the most interesting and compelling works detailing how the US has become a declining society. One that is in danger of not just failing, but becoming irrelevant. Where income and inequality is destroying us and a classed based, stratified society is returning - something we thought we had moved beyond.And possibly more importantly this is the story of how we let it happen - shooting ourselves in the metaphorical foot. Is it doleful and a downer without doubt. Sad and painful all in one. Yet we have not hit rock bottom as yet and there is more than a little hope that we will recover - right the ship so to speak. There are promising signs out there both in the social and political spheres, and I am optimistic. Other wise I would simply pull the blanket over my head and no longer interact with the world at large.Many, including myself, have written about this phenomenon but in either a very broad brush way or abstract, academic terms. These writings are often so abstract that they do not cut through the fog of every day life and the tsunami of words, sounds and images that envelope us, so as to evoke core emotions and an understanding of the problem at a visceral level. George Packer does this brilliantly in his latest book The Unwinding: an inner history of the new America, by using the stories of real people and real places, small towns and big cities, to bring to his reader a resounding epiphany.

Clearly, George Packer is a well established member of the anti-establishment and that view determines the polarization of his pen as he sketches a series of lives and their experiences with what he terms the unwinding. He defines the unwinding as the change in American society present in the last 40 years as we have transitioned from a manufacturing-based and more localized economy to our present state. The author describes this world for us as a place where the institutions of government have failed us because they have been taken over by special interests and the only guardians of hope are the iconoclast organizers, journalists and activists determined to fight the system.However, any time these activists get to work, they better not get too big because they risk becoming part of the establishment, which creates a strange tension for me: while you can't trust any private institution to act responsibly, he seems to have a blind trust in the government to regulate and level the playing field. Through a set of engaging and short biographical vignettes, he builds the case for increased regulation to protect the public from our failed institutions. He puts a name and a history on what otherwise might be another name who loses their home. He portrays hapless families used by the big banks to take away their home, and to be content there, but to take away their dignity, their health and even their sanity in an insatiable act of greed. His message is clear -- a disease has taken over our country and it is in general the establishment and in particular republican party (wholly owned by big business) and the democrats of the permanent political class. But isn't he missing something here? Aren't we all culpable when it comes to greed? I know it is obvious, but I can't escape the fact that no one was forced to sign any of the mortgage papers that provided the legal justification to reclaim their homes after they repeatedly failed to make payments.While he exalts the value of the individual against the institution, even his heroes come off a bit weak. Dean Price, Tammy and Peter Theil all get their platform while some are put before us for outright scorn or tabloid entertainment: Breitbart, Gingrich, and Oprah. Yes, all the biographies are interesting, but besides their entertainment value many failed to fall into the larger narrative in any meaningful way.Despite my overall disagreement with his diagnosis, I greatly enjoyed this read and recommend it to my friends. He also exposes you to inside the system and does give some very interesting perspectives. The way he tells it in biographical sketches made the book very compelling and did teach me a lot about the world and the way he set up his framework forced me to ask some very interesting questions related to how I think the world fits together.In the end, was left motivated by the book to do something. Not just motivated to be part of the solution, but I was committed to not be at the mercy of legal and banking systems. Most of all I want to be full in my humanity. I want to be an individual empowered by the ability to have freedom of action and freedom to be and I want to be part of the world that empowers individuals to do the same.

I more than enjoyed reading this book, I recommend it to anyone interested in social evolutions, politics, or the United States by and large. A great book.

Lays bare the whole structure of power and the bypassing of large parts of the population, a must read for everyone!

Mr. Packer has written a book which gathers together the stories of individuals at home in the American economy: at the bottom and at the top, in the east and west, and uses those stories to show how the economy fell apart.It isn't a new story: ineffectual regulatory oversight, individual greed and globalization creates a polarization of wealth, where the top 1% end up owning 70% of the wealth in America. The middle class, historically reliant upon manufacturing, disappears as the main driver of capitalism becomes cost reduction, and manufacturing disappears.It may not be new, but Mr. Packer achieves a freshness and originality by retelling it from the perspective of the individual. People participating in their daily lives, often unaware of, and sometimes contributing to, the forces swirling around them that are shaping their destiny and ultimately undermining their future.Mr. Packer appears to have adopted John Dos Passos' style from the USA trilogy Dos Passos wrote after World War I, using individual stories, which occasionally interlink, together with short biographies of more well-known people (Newt Gingrich, for example), and collections of headlines and quotes from other news sources, to paint a picture of the era. The lessons he wants us to learn tumble effortlessly from the stories, as their overall impact accumulates.I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it.

George Packer erzählt von einer Nation im Umbruch. In nüchternen, unaufgeregten Sätzen beschreibt er den Wandel einer Solidargemeinschaft zu einer Gesellschaft, in der jeder auf sich selbst gestellt ist. Er beschreibt, was es bedeutet, wenn das Geld nicht mehr in Firmen verdient wird, die tatsächlich Werte erzeugen, indem sie etwas produzieren, sondern in Banken, Anwaltskanzleien und anderen "Dienstleistern", deren Gewinne stets gleichzusetzen sind mit den Verlusten anderer - nicht selten ihrer eigenen Kunden und Geschäftspartner. Und er beschreibt, was es bedeutet, wenn der Begriff der Freiheit missbraucht wird für eine Politik der reinen Verweigerung, in der es stets um die Macht und nie um die Sache geht.Das Schöne an Packers Analyse ist die Abwesenheit jeglicher Polemik. Er lässt die Tatsachen für sich sprechen, und die Tatsachen sind in diesem Fall die Schicksale von Menschen, die diesen Umbruch durchlebt haben. Und es sind beileibe nicht nur Opfer - viele haben (ich bitte diese inzwischen furchtbar abgenutzte Formulierung zu entschuldigen) den Wandel als Chance genutzt, oder haben es zumindest versucht. Aber das hat schließlich auch dazu beigetragen, dass die Vermögensverteilung immer grotesker auseinanderklafft.Interessanterweise macht Packer diesen Umbruch aber auch an Industrien fest, denen man nicht unbedingt nachweint: Dem Tabakanbau, der Stahlindustrie mit ihrer katastrophalen Umweltverschmutzung, oder den Autozulieferern mit ihren beinahe ausbeuterischen Arbeitsbedingungen. So überlässt er es dem Leser, zu seinen eigenen Schlussfolgerungen zu gelangen, auch wenn unterm Strich nicht zu verkennen ist, auf wessen Seite er steht.Das zeigen auch die kurzen Biographien von großen Movern und Shakern, die Packer immer wieder einstreut und in denen wir einige interessante Blicke hinter die Fassaden tun dürfen: Newt Gingrich, Colin Powell, Sam Walton, Oprah Winfrey oder Jay Z, um nur einige zu nennen, bekommen alle ihre Portion Fett weg, der eine mehr, der andere weniger, meistens aber mehr."The Unwinding" ist eine äußerst bemerkenswerte Bestandsaufnahme der amerikanischen Gesellschaft, die den Leser ständigen Wechselbädern zwischen Resignation und Hoffnung unterzieht. Inwieweit wir damit auch einen Blick in die Zukunft Europas tun, möchte ich aber lieber dahingestellt sein lassen. Allein die Tatsache, dass diesseits des Atlantiks der Solidargedanke spürbar lebendiger ist, lässt mich nämlich ein wenig hoffen.

America is a country I've grown to love (or at least certainly the bits I've visited). And as Bono has said more than once (perhaps explaining why he's never forsaken his Irish roots despite his love for the US): Ireland's a great country, but America is a great idea.But like all idealism, it often gets dislocated from reality. Patriotic fervour blinds us to the margins and the dispossessed. Which is why New Yorker staff-writer George Packer's new book is so extraordinary. The Unwinding: An Inner history of the New America is nothing short of a masterpiece. The prose is superlative: understated, humane, at times even lyrical. The subject-matter is dealt with great sensitivity and non-partisanship. There are no political sideswipes here. He is merely trying to hold up a mirror. This is more a careful diagnosis of a country that is greatly loved but for which is there is great (and justifiable) concern. For what is happening to the great American idea when such contrasting bandwagons as Occupy and the Tea Party have gained such traction? How did the Credit Crunch and the sub-prime mortgage scandal come about; what has happened to the much touted American sense of optimism? Why do the big institutions like the federal government, banks, media and the legal system all seem to be failing those who need them most?Packer artfully manages to take the nation's temperature by means of a handful of individuals, whose stories from the last 30 years he tells through the book. They are well-chosen: a small-business entrepreneur in North Carolina; a newspaper reporter in Tampa, Florida; an African-American single mother in the Rust Belt; an Indian immigrant struggling to keep her motel franchise afloat; a DC beltway insider who has been lawyer, Wall St drone, on Joe Biden's senate staff, successful lobbyist; a key player in Silicon Valley. These stories are leitmotifs, around which Packer weaves thumbnail sketches of iconic figures in recent American history like Newt Gingrich, Oprah Winfrey, Sam 'Walmart' Walton and short story writer Raymond Carver.His thesis is striking for its moderation, in a way. He doesn't detect a total collapse, as more histrionic or irresponsible journalists might. He simply calls it an 'unwinding', something which has happened from time to time in American history, and from which the country has often bounced back. But left unaddressed, the genuine grievances articulated here will lead to a problem far more serious than a mere unwinding."When the norms that made the old institutions useful began to unwind, and the leaders abandoned their posts, the Roosevelt Republic that had reigned for almost half a century came undone. The void was filled by the default force in American life, organized money. ... The unwinding is nothing new. There have been unwindings every generation or two." (p3)Drawing on conversations with silicon valley billionaire Peter Thiel, there is an interesting point about the 2012 presidential election:"President Obama probably believed that there wasn't much to be done about decline except manage it, but he couldn't give another `malaise' speech (after what happened to Jimmy Carter, no one ever would again), so his picture of the future remained strangely empty. Both Obama and Romney ended up in the wrong place: the former thought American exceptionalism was no longer true and should be given up while the latter thought it was still true. Neither was willing to tell Americans that they were no longer exceptional but should try to be again." (p385)For foreigners like me, the notion of American exceptionalism is a tricky one. I can't help but be reminded of the jingoistic pride of British imperialism 100 years ago. I say this with what I hope is sensitivity, but to consider one's country as the best in every way is both fallacious and idolatrous. It is of course totally different to aspire to be great as a country, but one has to be very careful to choose the right criteria for measuring that greatness. Having the world's biggest defence budget or largest economy might not be the best yardsticks, especially when there are such significant problems as personified by the testimonies recounted in this book. Again the libertarian-minded Peter Thiel has a challenging warning:"In the history of the modern world, inequality has only been ended through communist revolution, war, or deflationary economic collapse. It's a disturbing question which of these three is going to happen today, or if there's a fourth way out."(p372)For all our sakes, but especially for those trapped at the bottom of a deeply divided society (and therefore a long way from experiencing true American liberty), let us hope there can now be a rewinding.