Summary #1

I chose to summarize the first essay "A Fire in the Bathroom" by Bob Herbert. The essays introduction was about an eleven year old little girl who was talking to the police. He uses this story, which included the girl getting wrongly convicted and put in jail for three years, to hint at his thesis which is that the United States is collapsing. He is not saying that the United States is folding in just one specific ways but in many ways.
He uses stories like an actor in New York being arrested, although he did nothing wrong, because the police did not want to take the time out to perform the investigation at the time. He continues by describing how the war with Iraq is harmful to the United States. He discusses how the war "will not be characterized by history as the noble campaign of a powerful nation striding toward greatness"(399). He is saying that the war will not be remembered as a righteous war that was constructive.
Herbert explains how funding is going to the war while middle class families are struggling to survive. He also presents the example of an Oregon School district being shut down because of budget problems and the statement from the physics teacher he interviewed that "During the Great Depression we didn't close schools...We didn't close schools during World War II" to show the struggle going on in America(396). He is saying that the problems now are causing effects that some of the major issues of the past didn't cause.
Herbert uses different accounts to show that with the United States the way it is now the rich is getting richer while the lower class is forced into desperate and often illegal means to carry on. He states "That can-do era sputtered to an end, and we let the selfish, the vain, the greedy, and the incompetent take control of our nation"(402). He is saying that we used to strive for greatness and now we have let people who don't have good values control our counrty.
Bob Herbert ends by stating that "There's a fire in the basement of the United States and we're behaving as if we cannot even smell the smoke." (403). He is insisting that there is a danger within our country that needs to be addressed before it progresses.