Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Introduction

PART I: FLYOVER COUNTRY

The View from Flyover Country

Expensive Cities Are Killing Creativity

The Peril of Hipster Economics

Mourn the Fall of the Mall

PART II: THE POST-EMPLOYMENT ECONOMY

Surviving the Post-Employment Economy

Meritocracy for Sale

Survival Is Not an Aspiration

Zero-Opportunity Employers

A Government Shutdown, a Social Breakdown

The Men Who Set Themselves on Fire

Charity Is Not a Substitute for Justice

The Unaffordable Baby Boomer Dream

The Millennial Parent

Mothers Are Not “Opting Out”—They Are Out of Options

PART III: RACE AND RELIGION

The Wrong Kind of Caucasian

The Fallacy of the Phrase “the Muslim World”

In the Trial of Trayvon, the U.S. Is Guilty

St. Louis’s Sons, Taken Too Soon

The Freedom to Criticize Free Speech

PART IV: HIGHER EDUCATION

The Closing of American Academia

Academic Paywalls Mean Publish and Perish

Academia’s Indentured Servants

The Political Consequences of Academic Paywalls

The Immorality of College Admissions

College Is a Promise the Economy Does Not Keep

PART V: MEDIA

Managed Expectations in the Post-Employment Economy

Who Is a “Journalist”? People Who Can Afford to Be

Blame It on the Internet

When the Mainstream Media Are the Lunatic Fringe

PART VI: BEYOND FLYOVER COUNTRY

U.S. Foreign Policy’s Gender Gap

Snowden and the Paranoid State

Iraq and the Reinvention of Reality

Where Following the Law Is Radical

Water Is a Human Right, But Who Is Considered a Human Being?

The Telegenically Dead

CODA

In Defense of Complaining

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright