The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America

by Sarah Kendzior

Hope was flaunted by pundits and politicians safely ensconced in elite coastal enclaves, who implied—with their endless proclamations that prosperity awaited if you worked for it—that the lack of prospects for the rest of us must be our own fault.

Rich cities such as New York and San Francisco have become what journalist Simon Kuper calls gated citadels, “vast gated communities where the one percent reproduces itself.” Struggling U.S. cities of the Rust Belt and heartland lack the investment

reward the unpaid worker with “exposure” and “experience.” The promotion of unpaid labor has already eroded opportunity—and quality—in fields like journalism and politics. A false meritocracy breeds mediocrity.

inequality, and other issues of injustice is something that only rich people should do. Qualities that should be encouraged in society—like empathy and the willingness to stand up for others—are devalued when ordinary people are told that they literally cannot afford to care. “I think right-wing populists hate the ‘liberal elite’ more than economic elites because they’ve grabbed all

The job you work increasingly reflects the money you already had.

Mistaking wealth for virtue is a cruelty of our time.

Economic opportunity, he argued, is essential to human rights.

In America, there is little chance at a reversal of fortune for those less fortunate. Poverty is a sentence for the crime of existing. Poverty is a denial of rights sold as a character flaw.

We are passive subjects, held hostage to a vindictive minority divorced from public will.

Charity, as a supplement to justice, should be applauded. But charity as a substitute for justice is neither charity nor justice.

Walmart, whose six heirs to the company fortune have as much wealth as the bottom 42 percent of Americans, pays its workers salaries so low that many qualify for food stamps. The costs are then transferred to taxpayers. A report by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce estimated that one Walmart Supercenter employing three hundred workers could cost taxpayers at least $904,000 annually.

On November 23, East Saint Louis, an impoverished city with a high rate of gun violence, offered a trade to city residents: bring in your gun and receive a $100 gift certificate at a local grocery store. At 9:00 A.M. a long line had formed of residents with guns in hands. Within ten minutes, $10,000 of grocery store gift cards had been given away.

charity can be beautiful. But it is an investment in the present, not the future. If you value the future—if you value a society where people can imagine their future—work for justice.

“The life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in almost any other advanced country for which there is data,” writes economist Joseph E. Stiglitz in an editorial aptly titled “Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth.”

Self-fulfillment is a low priority in an economy fueled by worker insecurity.

“There is never interpretation, understanding and knowledge when there is no interest,”

One way to test whether you are reading a reasonable analysis of the Tsarnaev case—and yes, they exist—is to replace the word “Chechen” with another ethnicity. “I

Minority-hunting in Vienna never ends well.

Perception is rooted in power, a power bestowed upon birth, reified through experience, and verified through discrimination masked as fairness and fact.

College is a promise the economy does not keep—but not going to college promises you will struggle to survive.

Paranoia is aggression masked as defense.

The Bush administration was marked by twin delusions: hysteria over terrorism, abetted by an insistence on defining reality contrary to evidence, and self-congratulation on triumphs never achieved: Hurricane Katrina relief efforts characterized as a “heck of a job,” the war in Iraq characterization as “mission accomplished,” and

Today, one’s relative humanity—and