A CITIZEN'S VIEW

A rumination on contemporary American politics.

“The common ground” in American political discourse, writes McKinney, has been replaced by “two warring ideological camps refusing to consider any possible merit in their opponent’s arguments.” In an effort to bridge this divide, he provides readers seven essays with what he characterizes as pragmatic solutions to some of the nation’s most pressing issues. Many offer alternative perspectives than those proposed by both major parties; on gun control, for instance, the book recognizes a need for rural Americans to have access to guns for self-protection, given their isolation from law enforcement, but also sees value in regulating weapons that have the “capacity for mass casualties.” His health care chapter, rather than focusing on costs or insurance, suggests that solutions should be directed toward corporations that inundate the food supply chain with “adulterated,” unhealthy, and addictive foods. Other essays focus on such topics as education, employment, and aspects of foreign policy, and a postscript provides an analysis of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. McKinney seems most passionate about environmentalism, which appears in multiple chapters, and he tackles the beliefs of climate change–deniers head-on; one particularly engaging idea is a kinetic energy project that converts the compression of airport foot traffic into usable energy. So central is the environmental crisis to McKinney’s vision of future political issues that he goes so far as to predict a resurgence of the Green Party as a viable third party. For the most part, though, this deliberately nonpartisan book straightforwardly lays out the Republican and Democratic stances on various issues with minimal criticism, which may be refreshing to some readers but will frustrate others as both-sides-ism. Nuanced disagreements within political parties are also largely ignored in this framework, be they conflicts between neoliberals and the left within the Democratic Party, or between the alt-right and fiscal conservatives among Republicans. There’s also a lack of citations and hard data to back up the author’s claims, which would have been made stronger with quantitative evidence.

An often well-reasoned, if sometimes speculative, challenge to American political orthodoxy.