the48er

Corrupt Conservatism

The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot
by Naomi Wolf

A best-selling author (The Beauty Myth; 1991) and high-stakes political consultant finds that fascist regimes have pursued nearly identical preliminary machinations, and that BushCo's been following the script. The establishing steps Wolf says fascist regimes follow are Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy; Create secret prisons where torture takes place; Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens; Set up an internal surveillance system; Harass citizens' groups; Engage in arbitrary detention and release; Target key individuals Control the press; Declare all dissent to be treason; and Subvert the rule of law. Wolf says that while the Republicans may be beaten in upcoming elections, their nomenclature of fascism will survive them, and that fascism has become a possibility even under ostensibly "liberal" leadership. She issues a call to concerned citizens to take action now, before the America most people envision becomes an impossibility.

The End of America ... published September 5, 2007 by Chelsea Green Publishing

The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got
Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics by Jonathan Chait

Long ago, The New Republic was a first-rate progressive journal. Now, sadly, it's troubled; scandal-plagued, with plummeting circulation and revolving-door editorships. In spite of that, a TNR editor here manages an often clear-headed and incisive analysis (intermittent "centrist" pandering notwithstanding) of GOP voodoo economics and how it's prevailed since the days of the Laffer curve. Chait concludes,

A century ago, there were vast disparities in wealth and income, and the political system was dominated by a self-serving elite. What finally turned the tide was a wave of labor violence and radical activism. ... The business and political elite feared that capitalism itself was under siege and might not survive and in time embraced the palliative of moderate liberal reform in order to safeguard the free enterprise system. [ ¶ ] ... The conservatives of today ... have forgotten the lessons of their forbears, and if sanity is to be restored to our political order, they must re-learn them.

The Big Con ... published September 12, 2007 by Houghton Mifflin

Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and
The Subversion of American Democracy by Charlie Savage

The author's a Boston Globe reporter who won the 2007 National Reporting Pulitzer for his work exposing BushCo's now notorious use of signing statements to nullify elements of laws not to its liking. While Savage herein addresses the signing statements, he does so in relatively few pages; most of his book is devoted to the myriad other ways in which the Bush administration has worked to create an imperial presidency powerful beyond anything even Richard Nixon might have hoped for. Among the most disturbing examples Savage explores are those of Bush's Supreme Court appointees John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Both have been highly supportive of the Unitary Executive Theory that BushCo has embedded in federal governance. Bush himself is largely absent from this volume, appearing mainly as references to the "Bush-Cheney administration." Cheney and crackpot legal theoreticians such as John Yoo and David Addington, however, are at the center of the story. Creating an imperial presidency was, we see, one of Cheney's top explicitly stated goals on taking office.

Savage spoke with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air.

Takeover ... published September 5, 2007 by Little, Brown and Company

Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches by John Dean

Dean delivers the final installment of his anti-Republican trilogy that began with Worse than Watergate (2004) and Conservatives Without Conscience (2006). Here he focuses on the processes -- as opposed to the policies -- of governing, although he observes that post-Watergate Republicans have tended to rule, rather than govern. He shows how Dick Cheney and theorists such as Terry Eastland have fostered the development of a "unitary" (as in, "imperial") executive branch that's packed the courts with extreme right-wing ideologues ("fundamentalists," he calls them) and hamstrung (with the help of Republican Congresses) legislative oversight. Where have two generations of GOP usurpation of the Constitution left us? The legislative branch is now "Broken but Under Repair"; the executive, "Broken and in Need of Repair"; while the judicial branch is lurching "Toward the Breaking Point." Dean calls himself a Goldwater Republican, and he's now working on a Goldwater bio; presumably it will bolster his claim that his mentor would now be considered a liberal, given how far to the extreme right America's political pendulum has swung.

*Also available, unabridged, on Audio CD

Broken Government ... published September 11, 2007 by Viking Adult

Follow the Money: How George W. Bush and the Texas Republicans Hog-Tied America by John Anderson

An attorney and well-regarded author takes Deep Throat's advice and follows the money -- in this case, that which has greased the palms of those in league with George W. Bush, Tom Delay and their assorted Texas cronies. At the center of much of the story is Jack Abramoff and his breathtakingly cynical fleecing of his clients in the Native American gaming industry. In addition to his accounting of many of the best- known Republicans' depredations, Anderson also delves into the roles played by such deeply complicit but less generally well known individuals as Joe Barton, Susan Ralston, Ed Buckham and Billy Tauzin. Tauzin, for example, left Congress after shepherding the Medicare Modernization Act and was promptly rewarded with a cushy job in the pharmaceutical industry. Also falling under Anderson's gaze are well- connected law firms such as Preston Gates & Ellis, Greenberg Traurig and Vinson & Elkins, and political action committees including Texans for a Republican Majority.

*Also available, unabridged, on mp3 CD and audio CD

Follow the Money ... published September 11, 2007 by Scribner

Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking
Of the American Presidency by Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein

The editor and former editor of the Texas Observer peel back the curtain to shed some daylight on a man they show to be the most powerful and probably the most secretive Vice President in U.S. history. The Cheney we see is a consummate political intriguer and infighter, adept at making sure that he's the last to have gotten the president's ear. Cheney's typically quiet, low-key, reasonable-seeming public persona, the authors observe, belies the PNAC radicalism that he's channeled through Bush. The most obvious result of that radicalism is the Iraq invasion, for which they show Cheney pushed aggressively, returning to CIA headquarters at Langley at least eight different times to browbeat CIA officials into reworking intelligence reports again and again until they suited his purposes. Bernstein and Dubose also reveal evidence that shortly after the Iraq invasion, Iran made diplomatic overtures toward the U.S., indicating a willingness to negotiate about pretty much anything -- but Cheney essentially slammed the door in their faces.

Dubose spoke with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air.

Vice ... published October 17, 2006 by Random House

Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction by David Kuo

As second in command of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives during Bush's first term, Kuo became frustrated that the administration delivered only a fraction of the money promised for such programs. It's important to note that Kuo started complaining vigorously about this at least 18 months ago. Given that and Kuo's extensive right-wing credentials, it's going to be tough to discount what he's saying -- although far be it from James Dobson and Tony Perkins to let a funny liberal idea such as "reality" impede The Lord's Work. One of the most startling realities Kuo brings to light is something that many people have long suspected or said: that BushCo and its minions have exploited the Christian right by telling them what they want to hear while laughing behind their backs -- calling them "ridiculous" and "nuts," Kuo says. And there's lots of additional damning material here as well, including credible allegations that Ken Mehlman used eager evangelicals to commit some very serious elections-related crimes.

Tempting Faith ... published October 16, 2006 by Free Press

The Greatest Story Ever Sold:
The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina by Frank Rich

NY Times theater critic turned political columnist Rich offers a comprehensive recounting of the Iraq War-related lies the Bush administration has used on the American people for political gain. A two-column appendix compares the lies BushCo fed the public with what the administration actually knew to be true; it's very damning. A fawning lapdog mainstream media also comes in for a well-deserved thrashing for serving as BushCo's stenographers and megaphones. The MSM made it possible for Bush, et. al. to lie America into an unprovoked war that in 2002 guaranteed the GOP "slam-dunk midterm election victories." (One unforgiving reviewer notes that the American publicas gets off scot-free here. He's right, and that's too bad.) But depending what happens this November, this volume could become a useful reference guide that a Democratic Congress can thumb while holding BushCo accountable for its relentless criminality.

Rich spoke with Dave Davies on NPR's Fresh Air

*Also available, unabridged, on Audio CD

The Greatest Story Ever Sold ... pub'd September 19, 2006 by The Penguin Press HC

The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan
For Absolute Power by James Moore and Wayne Slater

Having previously looked at Karl Rove's and George Bush's unholy union and ascendancy, the authors of Bush's Brain now consider Rove's efforts to create a thousand-year Republican Reich (okay I'm paraphrasing). Unsurprisingly, the Rove one encounters here is cynical, hypocritical and dishonest to truly spectacular degrees. For example, when he was directing the most viciously homophobic campaign in American history, his stepfather, a man with whom Rove was extremely close and respectful, was dying; he was also gay -- as is RNC chair Ken Mehlman. Likewise, despite the fact Rove has forged a seemingly unbeatable Republican coalition grounded in primitivist Christianity, he himself is apparently agnostic. Say the authors,

Under Rove, the politics of deception has become a conventional political tool. By drumming up the cash he needs from corporate supporters, Rove has been able to fill the ether with television and radio ads that create an alternative reality.

The Architect ... published September 5, 2006 by Crown

Monsters to Destroy:
The Neoconservative War on Terror And Sin by Ira Chernus

A religious studies prof at UC-Boulder says George Bush and other neoconservatives have persuaded themselves and many of us that "the terrorists" are not human beings at all but monsters to be destroyed. Such simple-minded imaginings, says Chernus, are intensely counterproductive to efforts to "keep America safe." He says that neoconservatives have been peddling stories of absolute good vs. absolute evil, us vs. them, "you're either with us or against us," since long before 9/11. As an alternative, he suggests that we recall instead the kinds of stories that Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi told about all of humanity belonging to one community, one family. In spite of the obvious risks of taking such a tack, he generally avoids substituting progressive platitudes for the neoconservative horror stories he decries. With reference to 9/11 Chernus concludes, "Can we dare to imagine that the true memorial to the victims of that terrible day already exists in Martin Luther King's message of nonviolence?"

Monsters to Destroy ... published August 30, 2006 by Paradigm Publishers

One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance
In the 21st Century by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten

Two LA Times reporters delve into the mechanics and infrastructure that the far-Right has built over the last 40 years and used to assume control of our government. A key component is Voter Vault: a diabolically detailed voter database used to micro-target and peel away just enough Democratic votes to maintain control. The Democrats have tried to emulate it, but haven't yet succeeded. Say the authors,

The Republican Party of the early twenty-first century may perform poorly in individual elections, but it remains firmly in the lead when it comes to the science and strategy of attaining power - and keeping it. That advantage has been constructed painstakingly over decades and then, using taxpayer dollars and unprecedented politicization of government bureaucracies, strengthened dramatically under the presidency of George W. Bush.

One Party Country ... published July 28, 2006 by Wiley

Conservatives Without Conscience by John Dean

The title's a tip of the hat to Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative. Dean says that shortly before Goldwater died, they'd been commiserating about some of the ruthless thugs who were then taking over their GOP. Now Dean thinks he's found the problem: many new right-wingers are clinically authoritarian. Some long to "lead," others to follow; either way, tens of millions of Americans want harsh authoritarianism. This footnote-laden volume looks at the science of authoritarian personalities, pioneered by Abraham Maslow and especially Theodor W. Adorno (The Authoritarian Personality; 1950). Robert Altemeyer ("What Happens When Authoritarians Inherit the Earth? A Simulation"; 2003) has recently devoted considerable attention to specifically right-wing authoritarianism. Says Dean of America's current crop of pre-fascists, "They cannot be stopped because their behavior is simply a function of the way they are and how they think. ... However they can be understood, exposed, and watched and there is compelling reason to do so."

*Also available, unabridged, on Audio CD

Conservatives Without Conscience ... published July 11, 2006 by Viking Adult

The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind

One is shocked -- shocked -- to read that George Bush is an imbecilic jerk who's president in name only. (Okay, I'm paraphrasing; but that's the nub of it.) He's intentionally kept in the dark about pretty much everything while Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove busy themselves pursuing their special brand of sociopathy. In the process, there's almost no ethical or logical boundary that they and their minions won't cross on behalf of their insanely incompetent agendas. Susskind's same basic story's been credibly told, from a wide variety of angles, again and again: in his previous The Price of Loyalty; Richard Clark's Against All Enemies; Michael Scheuer's Imperial Hubris; John Nichols' The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney, etc. Will it matter this time?

Full reviews: NY Times, Salon, Washington Post

*Also available, in abridgement, on Audio CD

The One Percent Doctrine ... published June 20, 2006 by Simon and Schuster

Imaginary Weapons by Sharon Weinberger

While BushCo has busied itself kicking mainstream science to the curb again and again, an assortment of fringe-science types have been given free rein and millions of taxpayer dollars to pursue their fantasies. This is particularly true at the Pentagon, where such inclinations were already unhealthily strong. As a result, America's funded investigation into such things as anti-matter weapons and telepathy.

After reviewing a variety of these well-funded boondoggles, the editor of Defense Technology International turns her attention to the "hafnium" or "isomer" bomb. Though the thinking behind its "development" has been discredited, powerful supporters have seen to it that it goes on anyway. And what's not to like about the isomer bomb? Although it's no bigger than a softball, it delivers the full wallop of a conventional nuclear device, but without all that pesky nuclear fallout. And in a delightful retro twist, one of the best reasons for developing this technology is that ... if we don't, the Russians might beat us to it. Yup.

Imaginary Weapons ... published May 28, 2006 by Nation Books

The K Street Gang by Mathew Continetti

Written by a barely-out-of-short-pants staffer at the Weekly Standard, this volume vividly (if often fancifully) traces the dozen-year arc of the far-Right's triumphs -- and now its difficulties -- under the sway of DeLay, Abramoff, et. al. Continetti limits his dosages of Republican Koolaid served with his narrative, but it's still necessary to proceed on this one with one's crap detector on maximum gain. Earlier this month the NY Observer's Sheelah Kolhatkar contributed an incisive look at how it was that the Right was positioned literally to write the book (or at least a book) on this story before the Left could exercise more control over public perception of the story with its own tome. While there's much to recommend the young right-winger's effort, progressives might find Kolhatkar's article more worthwhile. Continetti spins the story of a very dark recent past, while Kolhatkar points the way (albeit indirectly) toward a progressive future -- if Democrats can replicate some of the sensible organizational techniques that the Right's employed.

Robert Siegel interviewed Continetti on NPR's All Things Considered.

The K Street Gang ... published April 18, 2006 by Doubleday

The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision
Of America's Power and Purpose by Tony Zinni & Tony Koltz

The Bush administration's bellicose unilateralism needs to give way to flexible American multilateralism, says retired USMC Gen. Tony Zinni, from 1977-2000 the commander of CENTCOM. Zinni's long been one of the administration's toughest critics, not only about Iraq, but in general; he's now calling for Donald Rumsfeld's dismissal. Though a few conservative Democratic dreamers have made some noise about "drafting" Zinni to seek high elective or appointive office under their banner, that seems unlikely. He's apparently a Republican of the so-called "realist" school of international relations who endorsed Bush in 2000 -- but regrets it. Says Zinni, "I'm not going to do anything political again -- ever. I made that mistake one time."

Zinni was interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered.

The Battle for Peace ... published April 4, 2006 by Palgrave Macmillan

American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips

A high-profile former Republican strategist is horrified at where the GOP is taking America and the world. Phillips says there are at least three deeply troubling conditions fostered by today's Republicans: our nation's thralldom to Oil; the takeover of American conservatism by primitivist religious twits (my word, not his); and vast quantities of festering debt. The daft theocratic crap is an especially ugly harbinger, says Phillips:

Historically, great powers have too often gone out in the blazes of religious invocation. The newly Christian fourth-century Rome of the emperor Constantine and his successors held up the cross as Rome faced military defeat and crumbling frontiers from Hadrian's Wall to Assyria. So did seventeenth-century Spain, the proud but ill-omened command post of the Catholic Counter Reformation. Vestments of crusaderdom also cloaked imperial Britain's overreach in World War I and its aftermath.

Phillips held forth on both Fresh Air and Democracy Now! last Tuesday.

*Also available, unabridged, on Audio CD

American Theocracy ... published Tuesday, March 21, 2006 by Viking Adult

The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's
Plans for the Rest of Us by James Rudin

Considering that Rabbi Rudin (a retired American Jewish Committee staffer) made his mark by forging interreligious bonds between Jews and Christians and Jews and Muslims, it's especially significant that he should warn in such dire tones against right-wing Christian theocracy. But in this important book, we see that there is indeed excellent cause to be very afraid. Says Rudin,

A specter is haunting America and it is not socialism and certainly not communism. It is the specter of Americans kneeling in submission to a particular interpretation of a religion that has become an ideology and all encompassing way of life. It is the specter of our nation ruled by the extreme Christian right, who would make of the United States a "Christian Nation" where their version of God's law supersedes all human law -- including the Constitution.

The Baptizing of America ... first published January 9, 2006 by Thunder's Mouth Press

The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney by John Nichols

Originally published in hardcover as Dick: The Man Who Is President, this one's mandatory reading. If you're not already a big John Nichols fan, this book should fix that. His research and reporting are always solid; his prose is succinct, restrained, and down-to-earth; and he's got a fine sense of where and how to inject subtle black humor. While there's a lot in The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney that many readers will not have known about the planet's most evil Dick, the basic picture's about what we've suspected all along: Bush is indeed, to a great extent, Cheney's front man. The VP's quite open about the fact that he likes to wield real power behind the scenes while others get the attention. What I did find surprising is the fact that Cheney's nothing like an evil genius. Fact is -- and Nichols presents plenty of highly credible evidence to back this up -- Cheney's not terribly bright, and his political instincts have been consistently atrocious. Great. It was bad enough when we thought an American Moriarty ran the world. Now it turns out that our guy is actually Dr. Evil.

The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney ... published November 3, 2005 by New Press

The Age of Anxiety by Haynes Johnson

While there's nothing new about comparisons between the Bush administration and Joe McCarthy, Haynes Johnson's latest has to be viewed as the definitive work on that subject. The book's primary focus is on how 1950s Republicans rode McCarthy's scorched-earth fearmongering to power, but its most important point is that we're now getting more of the same -- and maybe worse:

McCarthy's Republican Party was far more moderate -- even liberal and progressive -- than the present Republican Party. ... [A] more rigidly ideological Republican Party has emerged, forged by many of the forces that McCarthy unleashed or harnessed. ... McCarthyism was a major factor in the rise of the radical right and the polarization that plagues American of life, pitting group against group and region against region, sowing cynicism and distrust, and manipulating public of opinion through fear and smear. The so-called culture wars that afflict our public discourse are another of McCarthy's legacies, as is the continuing demonization of liberals, the national press, and others whose values are not those of "real" and "patriotic" and church-going Americans.

*Also available, in abridgement, on Audio CD.

The Age of Anxiety ... first published October 3, 2005 by Harcourt

A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey

David Harvey (The New Imperialism), a geographer and anthropologist at CUNY, previously at Oxford and Johns Hopkins, traces the disappearance of liberalism and the rise of neoliberalism since the 1970s. Harvey notes that one of FDR's Four Freedoms was Freedom from Want. Neoliberalism offers no such freedom; free markets are now expected to deliver such things -- and do -- for the wealthy few.

This is an erudite, wide-ranging, and well-reasoned exposition of a degradation of the essential "values" that underpin our society. Unfortunately, non-academics may find at least some sections to be eye-glazing slogs. But the effort is justified by (1) the lucidity and consequence of Harvey's ideas (if not always of his diction and syntax); and (2) his provocation of some serious thought about what "freedom" means -- or should. He concludes, "There is a far, far nobler prospect of freedom to be won than that which neoliberalism preaches. There is a far, far worthier system of governance than that which neoconservatism allows."

A Brief History of Neoliberalism ... pub'd Sept. 15, 2005 by Oxford University Press, USA

The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney

Given conservative Christians' militant anti-intellectualism and laissez- faire capitalists' pathological lust for short-term financial gain, one shouldn't be surprised at the Republican Party's pandering to its primary constituencies by systematically and aggressively attacking reason itself. Mooney does a fine job of chronicling the assault's many fronts -- and of appealing to the rest of us to defeat the lunatics at the polls.

The word Orwellian gets tossed around pretty freely, but this Republican war is nothing if not that. Mooney documents dozens of instances in which the GOP's "sound science" mantra is pure Newspeak. Rather than using mainstream scientific opinion to inform policy, the Republicans start with policy and then cast about until they've found fringe "experts" who'll support their constituency's medieval worldviews and chronic disregard for the environment. It's a many-pronged assault, we see, using pseudo-science to accelerate global warming, eliminate basic reproductive rights, and perpetrate countless other depredations.

The Republican War on Science ... first published August 30, 2005 by Basic Books