Book Thoughts - The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This feels like one of the most significant books I've read. Taibbi's reporting is thorough and detailed, his writing is accessible, and he relays the human impact of so many of the issues he discusses that throughout the book, and definitely by the end of the book, the reader will be mad.

Taibbi's book looks at how economic status, in a variety of senses, effects how the criminal justice system treats individuals. The most glaring example of this, and one that Taibbi uses well, is how poor individuals, often black, are arrested without cause in what amounts to a "fishing expedition" are then charged with "blocking pedestrian traffic" (unbelievably true), while the individuals who knowingly defrauded thousands of individuals of billions of dollars, and knowingly broke laws dealing with financial regulation, faced no arrests or jail time whatsoever, often only paying a fine that was a fraction of what was inappropriately obtained in the first place. This results in communities who have understandably distrustful relationships with police, a police state that finances itself on the backs of poor individuals, and rich business individuals who understand the payment of criminal fines simply as the cost of doing business.

The book is filled with story after story that highlights the inequalities in our criminal justice system, based primarily on race and economics. It's enough to make the most idealistic person about the system and rule of law in the United States feel disheartened, which I often did at times during this book. But the reality is that Taibbi gets at and exposes is something that needs to be addressed. The idea behind the system of law in the United States truly is about equal treatment, regardless of status. To have the system continue on its current path, where so much inequality exists, which necessarily and rightly results in a lack of trust and justice in the system, will result in the system not being sustainable.

Every year, we spend untold amounts of money fighting welfare fraud, worried about the individual who may be getting $400 per month when they don't really meet the requirements; enough so that law enforcement officers actually conduct searches without consent that should be considered violative of the Fourth Amendment, to bring those individuals to justice, but the system does nothing criminal in nature to those that truly have defrauded individuals of billions of dollars.

Its a book that will make you very angry, but even more than that, saddened that the injustices Taibbi relates are allowed to occur so frequently. Highly recommend.



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