Despite political gridlock and polarization, Ralph Nader remains optimistic on America. The permanent insurgent, who rose to prominence in the ’60s after calling out Detroit for manufacturing cars unsafe at any speed, sees more purple than red or blue—a convergence of opposition to the control of big corporations over our economy, our government and our lives. Nader cites cases where left and right worked together to defeat legislation and identifies potential avenues of collaboration between unlikely allies such as drug decriminalization, curbing corporate welfare and cutting military spending. Nader takes some dubious populist positions but makes good points on the hijacking of the word “conservative” by radicals bent on turning back the clock to a time that never was.
