Arianna Huffington
Arianna Huffington claims it is a dangerous time when polls come out with 78% of Americans dissatisfied with the country; demagogues tend to prevail. Yet, last night as the featured guest of 92Y’s Lexington Avenue venue, Huffington went on to sympathize with Glenn Beck, a demagogue who she believes understands that the nation will respond to a more spiritual type of rhetoric, connecting at the root with Americans. She continued this thought, alluding to our very own President Barack Obama, who used similar tactics during his presidential campaign. It is not the demagogues themselves whom Huffington would brand as dangerous. Rather, it is the despair and fears growing out of this dissatisfaction that will eventually push people to believe anything.
Moderated by chief content office of Bloomberg LP and chairman of Bloomberg Businessweek, Norman Pearlstine, Huffington’s interview and audience Q&A discussed topic highlights from her recently published book, Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream. Her conclusion about the relationship between demagogues (interchangeable for politicians) and the general public during a time of crisis seemed to have compelled her, in a ”Cassandra-esque” way, as she put it, to forewarn the American people of close-approaching havoc if the ‘system’ is not changed.
Huffington claimed the “system is rigged.” From the financial sector, to Washington, and even to education, she believes there is a fundamental problem where “we stop making things and keep making things up.” During her interview, she frequently referred to the United States’ current economic crisis as a direct result of the financial sector and Washington failing Americans. She explained how a campaigning Obama declared the middle class his “North star,” but once in the President’s seat, he seemed to have forgotten about them. Bailing out Wall St. “no strings attached” appalled Huffington. She sees Obama’s appointment of Lawrence Summers as Director of National Economic Council as the most tragic mistake Washington could have made. Though Summers is “brilliant,” as she said, he has a “Wall Street centric view of the world,” which does nothing to help the economy but leave us with 26 million Americans unemployed. Why did we see a “throw-down” for Wall Street, but not for unemployment when it is supposedly the government’s number one priority? Why did we save Wall Street, yet we’re not saving homeowners?
Through these sympathizing questions and personal remarks, mentioning her role as a mother, her Greek nationality, and retelling the stories of ordinary people she’s met, Huffington actually took on the role of a demagogue. The audience responded accordingly, with many murmurs of acknowledgment, nods of approval, and bursts of applaud. Huffington had them convinced. In such a “broken political system,” she called for “movement building that’s not political.”
She perhaps considers herself a part of the solution. In founding theHuffington Post, she said she wanted to “make it easy for people” to be heard. Huffington described the Huffington Post as a medium for people to express their views in a conversational setting that remains civil as comments are moderated. She strives to include the left out “third world America,” to use her terminology, by providing services that facilitate historians, professors, and even the average person, to write and converse.
Huffington didn’t reject that there are good people in politics. However, she called for new leaders, perhaps indirectly nominating herself as one. When Pearlstine questioned her about why her book does not mention tax reforms abundantly and whether she supports the idea of a voting fee, Huffington rejected the latter, suggesting the “need for a payroll tax holiday.” Pearlstine again asked if she would ever endorse a voting fee, but she cleverly answered that we should try her idea of more tax credits to increase the creation of new businesses before burdening Americans with another financial responsibility.
It is the politician’s accountability that Huffington sees as missing from today’s system, leading to dissatisfied “third world Americans.” When asked the top 5 things Obama should do, she listed the following:
- Acknowledge the way he’s been doing things is not working
- Goodbye Lawrence Summers!
- Elizabeth Warren instead, today.
- Make known that his July 2011 plan for Afghanistan is real, not a fiction of his imagination.
- Reach out to people and inspire them.
Huffington ensured that there is still a small opening for change that must be acted upon before it is shut: “We’re acting like the end of an empire…An empire dies not by murder but by suicide.”
If you would like to read more on this subject, check out Huffington’s NPR “Talk of the Nation.” Also, look out for an upcoming book review on Arianna Huffington’s Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream on this blog.
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nice list..really helpful.