Not only have dissenters to the corporate model of America been dropped from the historical record. In recent decades, for example, the existence of significant unemployment has been made to appear as a normal part of national life. Yet it is indisputable that unemployment has not been a major political issue in recent years, despite its perseverance at a distressingly high level. The changing character of the postwar economy, the attrition of the organized labor force, and the values that have been generated by a temporarily triumphant corporate economy have enfeebled the once strong sense of social justice and solidarity that in an earlier time would have reacted strongly to this condition. And so, approaching the twenty-first century, joblessness continues to afflict the work force.
Homelessness is a national scourge.
Electoral politics is meaningless to half the voters. National leaders and the governing elite honor conspiratorial war hawks. High and low-level influence peddlers are ubiquitous. And the media dutifully, if not joyously, transmit bizarre diversions endlessly into the country's living rooms. In this way, the necessity for imagining and developing genuine social alternatives to the deepening crisis is by-passed.