So the Nineties turned out to be the lie we always said they were. Those gains in productivity? That was from unpaid overtime at Wal-Mart and the high commissions brokers got from the stocks they hyped. The co-prosperity sphere of NAFTA? Mexican jobs went to China, and unemployed Mexicans to America. The popular inevitability and inevitable popularity of free-market views? Try hawking that idea in Brazil or France about now. Already we’re nostalgic for our days as superfluous men and women; a part of our integrity, a part of our dissent, was to be of no use to anyone. Edmund Wilson: “One couldn’t help being exhilarated at the sudden unexpected collapse of that stupid gigantic fraud.” Sure. Still, it was pleasant there for a few years to suspect we might be wrong about everything.