The achievement of the market consensus was to produce a mental world in which alternatives to capitalism did not seem conceivable - much less attainable. The key, it seems, was to make the principle of rapacity and plunder into a new catechism for economic policymaking, and then to watch our culture collapse into miniature idols and our technology shrink from prosthetic gods to prosthetic pals. Cutting taxes for the rich and slashing social spending, downsizing workers and deregulating financial [...] its cultural power has become so concentrated among our leaders that it's produced a nearly unbroken fog over the past twenty-five years, shrouding a tiny elite from the disasters inflicted on the rest of us.

Criticism bearing our abrasive tone and uncompromising stance is sometimes derided as lowdown or (worse yet) easy. But the truth is, this kind of criticism is the hardest thing in the world to produce if you happen to live in a culture ruled by the dicta of positive thinking and dread of the existential crime of being negative [...] your compliance is ultimately expected, and the enterprise of criticism of America has to contend with a culture of consensus that reduces conflicts over values to matters of individual attitude.