A well-researched, proactive guidebook for defeating Trumpism.
Fish and Aghaie chart a path to defeating Trumpism in this nonfiction book.
On November 9, 2016, Fish recalls following the news of Donald Trump’s presidential victory: “I collapsed onto the couch, spent and dejected.” His wife, co-author Aghaie, reminded him that his “life’s work has been the study of democracy” in faraway places as a political scientist whose research had brought him to the front line of Ukrainian coal workers’ strikes, Solidarity-infused church services in communist Poland, and whispered interviews in dictatorial Uzbekistan—and that he now had “the responsibility, the privilege, of fighting for democracy” in his home country. The book begins with a somber introductory piece, “Democracy on the Line,” that surveys the state of the contemporary Republican Party. The authors’ cogent analysis argues that ideological conservatism in itself is not a threat, noting that Republicans from Ronald Reagan to John McCain were “far more consistent God-and-country conservative than Trump” in their tax policies, spending on social programs, and skepticism of big government. Ironically, per the book, many “genuine conservatives,” such as David Brooks and Tom Nichols, have left Republican ranks as the party has fallen under the spell of authoritarian Trumpism. Beyond the scathing introductory survey of Trump’s grip on the Republican establishment, the book focuses on the Democratic Party’s tepid response, which has been unable to mount a compelling countermovement to rid American politics of, in the authors’ view, the xenophobic, violent, and antidemocratic ethos of Trump.
Divided into four parts, the book first surveys today’s politics, rejecting common myths that dominate the “Standard Story” of contemporary narratives with chapters that argue that fears of economic decline or constitutional flaws like the Electoral College are not to blame for our democratic crisis. Part two explores the Republican obsession with “a high-dominance political style” (exemplified by their glee when Trump “owns the libs”) that, per the authors, thrives on divisive rhetoric, eschews compromise, and normalizes coercion and cruelty. This approach is contrasted with, in the authors’ estimation, the ineffective, low-dominance style deployed by Democrats, whose “pathologically risk-averse and poll-driven” approach means that they refuse to meaningfully engage with any politically difficult, hot-button issues (aside from abortion). Fish and Aghaie assert that, for many Americans who don’t closely follow politics, it’s difficult to see the Democratic Party as a vibrant, fresh, and determined alternative. Part three of the book centers on the necessity of Democrats to retake the mantle of patriotism from Republicans by championing a “National-Democratic Narrative” that juxtaposes American democracy against the authoritarian, nativist rhetoric of Trumpism. The book concludes with a collection of historical vignettes and primary source excerpts written by America’s greatest prodemocratic voices, reminding readers that a central aspect of U.S. history has been the expansion of democracy at both the grassroots and national levels. Those profiled include Black activists like Frederick Douglass and Mary McLeod Bethune (whose acclaimed 1939 speech, “What American Democracy Means to Me,” concludes the book) and U.S. presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, whose eloquent defenses of democracy stand in stark contrast to Trump’s actions. A professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Fish displays his academic bona fides with almost 400 scholarly endnotes, while Aghaie’s background as an educational consultant for community-based organizations informs the book’s accessible, grounded writing style.
A well-researched, proactive guidebook for defeating Trumpism.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781953943538
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Rivertowns Books
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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