A concise and prudent discussion of the nation’s bitter political contentions.
Paepke, a former practicing attorney, examines divisiveness and political dysfunction in the United States and proposes a plan for moving forward in this nonfiction work.
The author observes that, contrary to popular belief, the ideological polarization that currently beleaguers the United States is not the historical norm; in fact, following World War II, the country leapt “from strength to strength,” and, despite genuine political disagreement, reasonable compromises and consensus among citizens were concretely brokered. However, this is no longer the case—today, the least temperate members of the citizenry elect the least moderate politicians, and deeply divisive figures like Donald Trump and Joe Biden continue to win nominations for the presidency despite their lack of general support. Paepke asserts that this state of affairs has been engendered in part by an irresponsible media that intentionally stokes the flames of political acrimony and by a presidential primary nomination process designed to prefer voters “louder, angrier, and more extreme than mainstream Americans.” The result, in his estimation, has been a loss of shared national identity and purpose. “This extreme political climate has overflowed into broader society and everyday life. The shared sense of community has declined. Americans increasingly choose their states, their neighborhoods, their social lives, and their friends based on political compatibility. The choice of news and information sources too often becomes a definitive pledge of allegiance.” With great clarity and analytical meticulousness, Paepke sketches a sober, centrist political platform—which would seem to have broad appeal among voters—including positions on crime, climate control, and foreign policy. The author offers much more than a lament; he foresees a future in which widespread discontent is channeled into substantive political action and recommends that either the nomination process be radically revised or that the primaries be bypassed altogether by a presidential candidate independent of the two main parties. Paepke’s important and hopeful contribution is an impressive example of what he preaches: a common-sense pragmatism that earnestly seeks out centrist compromise.
A concise and prudent discussion of the nation’s bitter political contentions.Pub Date: June 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781637557419
Page Count: 190
Publisher: RealClear Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.
Essays on current political topics by a high-profile actor and activist.
Milano explains in an introduction that she began writing this uneven collection while dealing with a severe case of Covid-19 and suffering from "persistent brain fog.” In the first essay, "On Being Unapologetically Fucked Up,” the author begins by fuming over a February 2019 incident in which she compared MAGA caps worn by high school kids to KKK hoods. She then runs through a grab bag of flash-point news items (police shootings, border crimes, sexual predators in government), deploying the F-bomb with abandon and concluding, "What I know is that fucked up is as fundamental a state of the world as night and day. But I know there is better. I know that ‘less fucked up’ is a state we can live in.” The second essay, "Believe Women," discusses Milano’s seminal role in the MeToo movement; unfortunately, it is similarly conversational in tone and predictable in content. One of the few truly personal essays, "David," about the author's marriage, refutes the old saw about love meaning never having to say you're sorry, replacing it with "Love means you can suggest a national sex strike and your husband doesn't run away screaming." Milano assumes, perhaps rightly, that her audience is composed of followers and fans; perhaps these readers will know what she is talking about in the seemingly allegorical "By Any Other Name," about her bad experience with a certain rosebush. "Holy shit, giving birth sucked," begins one essay. "Words are weird, right?" begins the next. "Welp, this is going to piss some of you off. Hang in there," opens a screed about cancel culture—though she’s entirely correct that “it’s childish, divisive, conceited, and Trumpian to its core.” By the end, however, Milano's intelligence, compassion, integrity, and endurance somewhat compensate for her lack of literary polish.
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18329-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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