That thread about....the USA and commentators about it and on the media.

[Mark Kohut]

Jochen, although you've moved beyond that remark about 'who are you to
judge?' with an explanation, I'm going
to answer it in a general way because on the face of it the answer to that
remark matters to me.

He is one of any of us, a person alive in these times who pays attention to
news and learns shit and thinks and therefore has a right, nay a duty, to
"judge'. A Jeffersonian (and not only him) ideal.
We all do or should where we want and can. You do as the further posts
show.
(I've recently read about early Rhode island and the incredible fostering
by Roger Williams of a state-wide political culture
of argumentative working it out. He pushed that. (One can think of the
fierce clashes at the US Constitutional Convention and after as touchstones
of the notion by the national founders.)

Then Jochen sez:
"If you really want to know what's wrong
with the USA you should read Travels with Charley (again?) and then Geert
Mak's In America (Reizen zonder John). I'm recommending it for some time."

yes, Jochen has urged me to read it and if I did not read so slowly and had
not my self-designed reading priorites, I might have already. Maybe I will
now get it
and read Steinbeck and it for my course on the sixties. With Mak, I can
Iceland-Spar the virtual present. Lifelong learning students will like that
and do it naturally anyway.....(but 2010 "politically" is still 'far' from
2019 in many, many must-know ways)

here are a couple reviews:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/27/in-america-travels-with-steinbeck-geert-mak-review

http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php?title=In_America_Travels_with_John_Steinbeck_by_Geert_Mak

But I have to say, without reading Mak (yet) a couple things. One, even if
Mak's book is a full-out cohesive masterpiece, worth whispering
about---even shouting
about--within earshot of de Tocqueville fans, first: the ''''what's wrong
with America" is also seen by many, many others, maybe piecemeal, maybe not
as well written, maybe as flat as UN reports [ on poverty in this country]
but many intelligent Americans can and have, sought out to learn, even
experience, understand that stuff. It infuses one's judgments and political
actions, starting with voting--or not (as too many decide).

[Personal aside: my very politically active and US observant international
law professor is also Dutch, like Mak]

Second, and more important, from de Tocqueville thru Steinbeck and Mak such
insight into America and Americans seldom relates to questions such as the
one which started this thread: Greenwald and the guy writing on MSNBC and
the Deep State. I cannot see the connection AT ALL, Jochen, please make it.
[as in the wide range of pundits and historians of varying political bents
who quote de Tocqueville]. ..
>From the reviews, it is a positive that Mak sees the fake news, the lying
channel that is Fox News---now, of course, the proxy State Department, the
very Shallow Blind State that is setting US domestic and foreign policy at
the moment.