Short takes: ‘Evil Geniuses,’ ‘Logan’s Run,’ ‘John Dies at the End,’ ‘Agent Running in the Field,’ ‘Hangsaman’ and more

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Dec. 4, 2020

Well, it’s been another month and a half since I last wrote about the movies I’ve watched and books I’ve read or heard. I would have liked to have written about a few of the following items, especially the first one, in more detail than I have here; alas, circumstances prevented that from happening.

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History by Kurt Andersen (2020): The journalist and recently retired radio host explores how a determined group of conservatives — many of them quite wealthy or connected to those who were — succeeded in making our country safe for oligarchy over a 40-year period. Working primarily in the realms of economics, law and politics, various individuals and groups with varying degrees of coordination systematically undermined unions, conventional American notions of fairness and the idea that businesses should do anything other than accumulate vast amounts of wealth for a small number of executives and business owners or shareholders.

Andersen writes engagingly and earnestly about a concerted effort that has been so successful that the results have sometimes dismayed its own engineers. He also argues that a type of socialism, notably in the form of a universal basic income, will be necessary to stave off the deleterious long-term effects of automation and the devastating short-term effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic.