London calling

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS, 22 October 2009
--The argument of [THE SPIRIT LEVEL] is easy to summarize: among rich countries, the more unequal ones do worse according to almost every quality of life indicator you can imagine. ...this pattern holds inside the US as well, where states with high levels of income inequality also tend to have the greatest social problems. ...the US has the worst record of any rich country by [in the matter of imprisonment where a log scale must be used, otherwise it is “off the chart, even off the page”] ... rich English patients [in unequal England are] more vulnerable than poor Swedish ones [in egalitarian Sweden] p. 3
--The Republican party of 2009 ... has become the party of wars and jails, and its moral physiognomy is captured by the faces of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, faces hard to match outside Cruikshank’s drawings of Dickens’ villains, hard as nails and mean as dirt .... Equality in the United States in the early 21st century has become a gospel preached by a liberal elite to a populace who feel they have no stake in equality. ... For Obama to do the courageous thing and withdraw [from Afghanistan] would mean having deployed against him the wrath of the mainstream media, the oil interest, the Israel lobby, the weapons and security industries, all those who have reasons both avowed and unavowed for the perpetuation of American force projection in the Middle East. Pp. 7,10