Democracy’s premise rests on the notion that the collective wisdom of the majority will prove right more often than it’s wrong; that given sufficient opportunity in the pursuit of happiness, your population will develop its talents, its intellect, its better judgment; that over time its capacity for discernment and self-correction will be enlarged. Ben Fountain Read Quote
In true demagogic fashion, Trump bypassed the head and spoke directly to the gut, to the biles and bubbling acids of raw emotion. Ben Fountain Read Quote
The national framework of social insurance – social security, unemployment and disability benefits, work programs, and workers’ compensation – protected citizens from the kinds of risks that private markets couldn’t or wouldn’t insure. Ben Fountain Read Quote
The New Deal saved capitalism – saved it from the big-time capitalists – though many of the big-timers didn’t see it that way. Ben Fountain Read Quote
Nobody ever came to America with a starry-eyed dream of working for starvation wages. Ben Fountain Read Quote
Upward mobility across classes peaked in the U.S. in the late 19th century. Most of the gains of the 20th century were achieved en masse; it wasn’t so much a phenomenon of great numbers of people rising from one class to the next as it was standards of living rising sharply for all classes. You didn’t have to be exceptional to rise. Ben Fountain Read Quote
Political rights notwithstanding, ‘freedom’ rings awfully hollow when you’re getting nickel-and-dimed to death in your everyday life. Ben Fountain Read Quote
