By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

TURNER – Progressive authors Adam and Arlie Hochschild wait for the outrage.

In the America they see, the water and air grow dirtier. Rich people get richer while help shrinks for the poor. Leaders proclaim their patriotism while they begin a war with a lie.

“There’s a fire in the living room and a flag-raising ceremony on the lawn,” Arlie Hochschild said.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

“Why are people not outraged?” asked Adam Hochschild, a founder of the liberal investigative magazine, Mother Jones. “That, for me, is the big question.”

It’s a question that he and his wife hope to address tonight when they host a free forum at Bates College titled “Finding Our Way in Bush’s America.”

Both say the country’s current direction scares them.

“There’s a giving to the rich and a taking from the average American,” said Arlie. “And nobody talks about the poor anymore.” She is a sociologist who has written several books on the American family and how it has changed. She and Adam now teach at the University of California at Berkeley.

He has written extensively on Africa and the former Soviet Union. He sees America’s decision to invade Iraq and impose a government as ill-fated.

President Bush and his aides have shown a “dangerous arrogance,” believing they can create a democracy in a dramatically different country and culture, Adam said.

“I think they really do believe their own rhetoric,” he said. “I think that’s really scary.”

From the couple’s home in Turner, the country’s problems seem far away. Arlie’s father, Francis Russell, grew up here in a farmhouse on the ridge north of town.

For decades, they have been coming here every summer. After Russell’s death in 1996, they remodeled the house. When the college year is over, they migrate here from San Francisco.

They write and they read.

Arlie’s last three books were written here. Much of Adam’s latest book, “Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves,” was penned here, too.

There’s no TV to distract them. They visit with friends and read newspapers. It seems an idyllic destination for a pair of self-described “children of the ’60s.”

Adam and Arlie graduated from college in the early 1960s. Both marched in Mississippi for civil rights. They also protested the war in Vietnam.

In 1965, Adam began a reporting career at the San Francisco Chronicle. By 1969, Arlie was teaching at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Five years later, Adam helped start Mother Jones.

Momentum lost

In those days, it seemed that America was evolving, even if progress sometimes seemed too slow.

“We finally, finally got out of a war we never should have begun,” Adam recalled. There was hope that America had learned to stay out of the quagmire of war. Social causes seemed to have momentum.

“If you had told me back then we wouldn’t have a form of national health care by now, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Adam said. “It seems to have turned around.”

It depresses them. Neither has lost hope, though. The government can change.

Part of the answer could come in the form of coalitions, suggested Adam, something American politics has done poorly in the past.

Various groups – social advocates, labor organizations and environmentalists – might all work together to oust conservative leaders. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party must find something to stand for, Adam said.

There might also be a lesson in his most recent book, he said.

“Bury the Chains” tells the story of Britain’s anti-slavery movement and its humble beginnings.

“They were a bunch of oddball do-gooders,” said Arlie.

And they changed the superpower of their time.