In his new best-selling book, “Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History,’’ the author and cultural critic Kurt Andersen performs a deep excavation of the country’s inequality crisis. He finds the roots not only in the balance-tilting schemes of Wall Street and the champions of right-wing political economics but also in the obliviousness of the liberal professional class.
For decades, these liberals have been the “useful idiots,’’ as he calls them, in the plan that has funneled financial spoils to the tiny percentage of Americans now riding out the current catastrophes in Hamptons compounds, and left everyone else scrambling. Kurt, a former colleague at Time magazine (and by colleague, I mean boss), cops to his own part in the profound social reordering that has taken place since the 1980s.
For this and other reasons, I had questions for him — and also for myself. Below, an edited version of our conversation about how we got to this place and where we are headed.
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