Stakes is High: Life After the American Dream

Smith uses the word “accountability” as the title for the third part of the book, where he emphasizes the need for consequences for men who have engaged in predatory sexual behavior, citing the examples of Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and R. Kelly, among others. There is a reckoning, a call to hold these men accountable for their actions. Yet even as this level of accountability seems right, Smith offers the following perspective:

Some of the men are falling, and as satisfying as that may be, the punishment they face also feels insufficient to mitigate the level of harm they caused. Bill Cosby will probably die in prison, but do we claim this as justice? It hardly even qualifies as accountability (115).

By questioning accountability, Smith invites the reader to wonder whether prison—effectively a punitive rather than restorative attempt at justice—is indeed providing the kind of accountability America needs, in these cases and in so many others.

For Smith, capitalism is not merely an economic system pragmatically employed by democratic nations in order to promote wealth and prosperity. Instead, Smith discusses capitalism as a caste system, an ideology that classifies poverty as nothing more than a mindset, as emphasized in this passage: “Poverty is a capitalist’s main resource, as it ensures there will always be a class of people to exploit” (73).