Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History is a nonfiction book by Kurt Andersen, published in August 2020. It entered The New York Times Best Seller list for nonfiction at number 7, The Washington Post list at number 9, and the Los Angeles Times list at number 5. In January 2021, Evil Geniuses was number 14 on the bestsellers list of the American Booksellers Association.
Summary
Evil Geniuses examines coordinated efforts to implement conservative economical and political policies in the United States from the 1970s to 2020, and discusses how the resulting unfettered laissez-faire approach to capitalism has resulted in an extreme level of economic inequality.
Part One
In "Part One: A Brief History of America", Andersen frames the development of what would become the United States as a society with an unprecedented openness to all that is new. Based on ideals of the Age of Enlightenment and embracing the industrial revolution while pursuing growth by pushing out the frontier, Americans saw newness and modernization as progress. At the same time, society indulged in waves of nostalgia. During the period of 1600 to the 1960s, Andersen shows how economic growth led to social progress. In the late 1800s, there was a shift toward economic fairness being considered part of the social contract.
Evil Geniuses describes the economic checks and balances that were put into place to achieve a balance between fairness and security, such as unions, laws on minimum wage and child labor, regulatory agencies and antitrust laws, the non-profit Blue Cross and Blue Shield associations, and New Deal programs. The book describes this period as "[M]aking our vision of capitalism more fair, less harsh, and politically sustainable, a robust foundation for a growing middle class whose spending fueled more economic growth and a society that made most of its citizens reasonable content and proud."
The civil unrest and counterculture of the 1960s, bringing rapid changes that at times seemed wild and out of control, resulted in an emotional backlash throughout society and began a lengthy period of longing for a "simpler" or "better" idealized past.
Part Two
"Part Two: Turning Point" examines the 1970s. Liberal books Silent Spring, Unsafe at Any Speed, and The Greening of America are widely influential, and while 70% of Americans in 1968 felt that businesses fairly balance profits and public interest, by 1970 only 33% agreed with that statement. The growing distrust of "big business" causes consternation among capitalists. The conflicts from the 1960s and the continuing Vietnam War cause distrust of the government to spread on the left while taxes and increasing regulations encourage a resistance to government on the right. The mid-1970s are America's peak of economic equality with the national consensus still expecting the government to act on behalf of the public good. At the same time, Americans have become overwhelmed by novelty. A longing for more comfortable, familiar times turns into a "national immersion in nostalgia".
Coordinated plans by conservative corporate interests sparked efforts to realize the vision of the Powell Memorandum, which described a four-front conservative war on academia, media, politics, and the legal system to counter trends in liberalism and restraints on capitalism. This period saw the founding or expansion of the Pacific Legal Foundation and Mountain States Legal Foundation, the Business Roundtable, American Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institution, and The Cato Institute. The book Anarchy, State, and Utopia argued for a minimal state. Regulations were rolled back and antitrust efforts dwindled. The Friedman doctrine emboldened big business to place profits above all other considerations. The counterculture's "do your own thing" became the capitalists' "every man for himself".