Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country--And Its Time to Take It Back

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Summary: Finally something i can give my parents!
Review: Yes there are a lot of books like this around. Many are really good. The problem I have had is that many of them have sections that my parents would find as distasteful or anti-religous. This makes them counter productive. This book on the other hand is respectful, funny, and VERY pointed as well as being filled with good common sense. VERY good!

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Summary: A Michael Moore wannabe
Review: When I first came across this book I thought this might be a liberal point-of-view that would be humorous and enlightening in the same vein of Al Franken. Sadly, it is the complete opposite. Hightower perhaps tries TOO hard to be funny. About 60% of this book must either be in upper case or with exclamation marks, and there are way too many sarcastic or cynical comments. Ranting? It was more like rambling!

His main shtick seems to be one of the oldest complaints of the left: big daddy capitalist owns the world. He wants to prove that Bush is more corrupt than any other president, but this boils down to simply finding capitalist conspiracies any where he can. For example, he uses an isolated incident and a source of "some disgruntled high officers" (whatever those are) that soldiers had to buy flashlights to go into an Afghan cave. First, most soldiers in Afghanistan are in fact well armed, and if we do indeed buy from corporations it is because we have done so for years, going back to WWII. He later on goes on to rant about NAFTA and the WTO, calling them "twin sledgehammers giving global corporations the power to crush the strength of workers and environmentalists around the world." (pg. 99) Strong words, but then again the WTO also opens up trade to third-world or developing nations (which make up of 3/4 of WTO's member nations) and sends technicians to train foreign governments to improve their quality-of-life. NAFTA has also helped improve Mexico's economy and increase jobs for the "workers" the WTO apparently oppresses, not to mention the organization has been accredited to the improvement of many South American nations from their 1980's recessions. It then seems odd to almost compare the World Trade Organization to toxic waste as Hightower does on page 92.

I find it ironic that Hightower continually tries to claim the Bush presidency insults American intellegence, but I found my own intellegence insulted reading this book. On page 33 he attempts to claim that the Bush administration, in creating a government similar to George Orwell's "1984," talks to America in newspeak with such words as streamline, archaic, flexibility, and balance. Mr. Hightower, I hate to tell you but...those are real words. George Orwell's newspeak was the combination of words to shorten phrases, and was inspired by such Soviet models as AgitProp or ComIntern. In fact...the only newspeak we find in this book is by Mr. Hightower himself: on page 3 he describes the Bush's connections to Corporations as "BushCo"; on page 98 he calls Democrats who wobble between sides "wobblycrats"...there are others scattered through out the chapters. Another moment that insulted me was on page 81 when he says "the annual Pentagon nut is now at $400 billion. That's almost $4 trillion over the next decade." As you can see, he simply multiplied 400 by 10. In actuality, depending on circumstances, that might either be lower or higher, but showing he knows simple multiplicity is simply ridiculous and reminds me of when the news said the total number of AIDS victims is "the same as the population of Australia" - it doesn't make sense, it just sounds smart.

His understanding of American history or politics seems odd. He fails to realize, for example, that even if Bush got 24% of eligible voters in the 2000 elections, as he claims, Gore got the same amount. Let me explain: both Bush and Gore got 48% of the total votes (source: CNN's website) so if we're only counting eligible voters (ie, people who could vote who did) Gore would only come in around 24% as well (wow, and Hightower accuses Bush of spinning the truth!). On censorship, Hightower uses the example of a girl who got a bad grade on a paper that questioned the American flag's meaning; the paper included the words: "School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge justice and equality." I think the girl might have gotten a bad grade for her failure of understanding some basic things: first, the pledge starts out as "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and TO THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS." It also includes later on: "with LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL." Apparently even Hightower can't remember the full Pledge of Allegiance, because he goes on to say that the girl is "but one example of the phenomenal strength that we can draw on from young folks today." (pg. 139) On a final note, a most humorous bit was when he tried to compare the WTO protests to the Boston Tea Party, which Hightower claims "rallied the colonies' rebels to the democratic cause." (pg. 143) Hightower must have missed the lesson in history class, because few colonists joined the revolutionary cause after the Party. Even when the Revolutionary War broke out, only 1/3 of Americans supported it.

Since Hightower seems to have quarrels with a lot about our nation's current situation, you're probably wondering if he has figured out a way to solve it. I will give you a sampling of how he thinks we can solve our energy dependance problems, the first one being to take a group of scientists and have them work to make cheap energy resources. Of course...they have already been doing this for the past two decades, but Hightower has a solution to the slow results: "lock them in a room, and don't let them out until they make the advances needed." (pg. 128) What he has just told us is this: take a bunch of scientists, and put them really hard at work finding cheap resources! This is like saying, "We will end war by getting rid of all our weapons" - it is a very simple solution to a much more complicated problem. The second snippet of Mr. Hightower's solutions is "building a high-speed, energy-effecient, 21st century train system to criss-cross the nation, linking all cities with fast, reliable service." (pg. 129) Once again, Mr. Hightower looks at the situation with rose-colored glasses. He has just told us to make the greatest train system ever, not only with modern-day technology but also with the best service possible. To do this, you need money and time. The government cannot possible afford this, as even grants to the airlines fail to stimulate flight-based economies. The only option for this would to allow the re-emergence of several train companies like that of the 19th century...and I seriously doubt Mr. Hightower, looking at his previous record regarding corporations, wants that.

All in all, this was a remarkably fun book to read - as in I had fun nitpicking the fine details. I could write a longer review of the piece, but I've already written too much.