Morris Berman on why America failed: "They eat each other"

morris berman as interviewed by alternet on his latest book, Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline...

There is a story, probably apocryphal, of a Native American scouting expedition that came across the starving members of the Donner Party in 1847, who were snowbound in the Sierra Nevadas and resorted to cannibalism in order to survive. The expedition, which had never seen white people before, observed the Donner Party from a distance, then returned to base camp to report what they had seen. The report consisted of four words: “They eat each other.” Frankly, if I could summarize the argument of Why America Failed in a single phrase, this would be it. Unless Occupy Wall Street (or some other sociopolitical movement) manages to turn things around in a fundamental way, “They ate each other” will be our epitaph.

i'm a great fan of morris berman... i first started reading his work almost 30 years ago and it exposed me to a level of thoughtful insight that i hadn't previously experienced... i'm going to have to get my hands on this, his latest...

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