An Afternoon with Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers, the most dangerous subversive progressive in the nation. Follow his every word.

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A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disasters - by Rebecca Solnit.

"We should build a world that helps bring out our goodness, but we haven't. While human beings have an instinct, even a talent, for empathy and collaboration, our politics doesn't enlist and nurture that instinct. Instead of helping us to live constructively and cooperatively, in a spirit of 'We the People' which is based upon a moral compact. Politics has become a winner take all juggernaut, powered by malignant narcissism, and life in America today is becoming a war of all against all, putting the weak and vulnerable, working people, and the middle class at the mercy of money, power, and privilege." - Dorthy Day, Catholic Social Worker

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Bill Moyers advice to those who would be ... good interviewers:

• Prepare Too Much
• Read the book
• Outline the conversation
• Only talk to people who want to talk

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"Gross inequality leads to social disease, when people's experiences have virtually nothing in common because of the economic chasm that separates their lives they experience little sympathy for each other, and this produces a social class; financial, media, and political elites, with all the characteristics of sociopaths. That is RADICALLY DEPRIVED OF EMPATHY." - from Spirt Level

The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger - by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson.

"We allegedly have a civilization, which has taken a long time to overcome the primal instincts of the jungle. But this time the Hyenas have left a wasteland. The single minded pursuit of wealth for its own sake, with no regard for the fate of others, has thrown millions out of work and homes, stolen their hope and dignity, and once again, as in the first Gilded Era has torn America apart, and the end is not in sight." - Bill Moyers

Kabuki Democracy: The System vs. Barack Obama - by Eric Alterman

"Democracy is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and making power responsive to their hopes and needs. - Sheldon Wollen

But that's not the case today, our political system now is geared to supporting the accumulation of vast wealth at the top, and instead of trying to tackle our massive and costly inequality - which will take this country right out from under us - the movers and shakers in both parties are asking ordinary people to embrace austerity and accept massive cuts in our public services even while giving the richest Americans more tax cuts and wind-falls. - Bill Moyers
Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class - by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson

We have reached this point by design, thirty years ago, ideologs and many in our Corporate Class, especially those at the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Round-table, set out to divide and conquer to fund electoral conflict for the purpose of forging a political class that would govern in its interest and they did it. - Bill Moyers