Growing Inequality Is A Huge Problem, And

All Of Us Living In Today's World Are Facing An Enormous Crisis - Arguably The Greatest That Humanity Has Ever Faced - In The Form Of Man-made Global Warming; One Can't Be Neutral At Such A Moment. It's Like Claiming To Be Neutral If You're Living In Germany In 1933.

Things Have Gotten Openly More Extreme In The Last Few Years. I Was Lecturing In Hungary, Whose Prime Minister, Victor Orban, Is An Example Of This Trend. All Over Budapest, Statues Have Been Replaced, Museum Exhibits Have Been Redone, To Turn Ethnic Hungarians, Not Jews, Into The Prime Victims Of The Germans During World War Ii. Five Years Ago, Who Would Have Thought This Possible?

If Your Real Wages Are Declining, Your Job Is At Risk, You Fear Your Children Will Be Worse Off Than You Are, It's Tempting To Want To Blame It All On An Easily Identifiable Target: Muslims, Immigrants, Refugees, Blacks, Jews.

In Canada, The U.s. And Most Of Europe It May Be Easy To Take Political Stands, This Is Something For Which You Can Be Forced To Pay With Your Life, Or Your Freedom, In Many Other Parts Of The World, From Iran To Russia To Pakistan To China.

One Of My Favourite Contemporary Fiction Writers Is A Texan, Ben Fountain. His Extraordinary Novel, Billy Lynn's Long Half-time Walk, All Takes Place Within The Half-time Show At A Dallas Cowboys Football Game. No One Has Better Summed Up The American Appetite For Spectacle, The Link Between Sports And Politics, And The Absolute Madness Of George W. Bush's Iraq War.