Dumbocracy: Adventures with the Loony Left, the Rabid Right, and Other American Idiots

by Marty Beckerman

In every election year, we hear much about the allpowerful "bases" of each major party. Who are these activists? What drives them? And why are they all equally dangerous to our lives, liberties, and pursuits of happiness? In Dumbocracy , journalist Marty Beckerman spends four years with foot soldiers of the Left and Right--prochoice and antichoice, progay rights and antigay rights, prowar and antiwar--and delivers a searing, hilarious indictment of the True Believer mentality. Whether it's banning free speech to protect people's feelings or banning adult entertainment to enforce morality, extremists have no use for our civil liberties. The ends justify the means for each side--such as brainwashing children and criminalizing dissent--because culture warriors have no other reason for living than victory. However, Beckerman is unafraid to expose their tactics--and their neverending hypocrisies--with comical, overthetop glee worthy of South Park or The Daily Show . No extremist will escape unscathed, but moderate readers of all stripes will fall in love with Beckerman's iconoclasm. In the tradition of P.J. O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores and Michael Moore's Stupid White Men , Beckerman's grand political satire will have readers laughing on the floor and ripping the hair from their scalps.

Genres: Politics

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2008

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author spent four years visiting with political extremists on both sides of the spectrum. These are people who believe in nothing less than total victory for their side. Most Americans are moderates on the issues, but, for instance, pro-life and anti-war activists still see things as very black and white.

Beckerman discovered a lot of interesting things in his travels. Betty Friedan, founder of the National Organization for Women, compared American housewives to "the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps." Those on the Right blame homosexuality for the destruction of American society, but just over half of Americans think of homosexuality as an acceptable life-style. Texas A&M University requires that all faculty members "celebrate and promote" homosexuality.

"It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact."--Ann Coulter. The American Institute for Philanthropy has ranked MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) as one of the most corrupt and least effective charities in the country. In 2006, the California Supreme Court allowed authorities to break into citizens’ homes anytime--without a warrant--to check their blood alcohol levels. A legislator in Missouri compared biology teachers to terrorists, for teaching evolution. Environmental activists have demanded control over citizens’ home thermostats, threatened to spy on those who do not recycle and suggested that governments should intelligently reduce human populations to one-sixth their present number.

In 2006, the Bush Administration joined with Iran to ban a gay-rights group from addressing the United Nations. In 2004, Canada officially banned criticism of homosexuality, which is now punishable by up to five years in prison. Also in 2006, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that forcing drug suspects to consume laxatives, in order to find drugs in their digestive tracts, is not an "unreasonable search." In the 1990’s, a Republican member of Congress proposed mandating the death penalty for all drug dealers. When his son was convicted of growing thirty marijuana plants, he received community service, not a lethal injection. Neither side has a monopoly on hatred of free speech.

This is the sort of book that will be thrown across the room by True Believers on both sides (sometimes those are the best kind of books). For everyone else, it is an excellent, and eye opening, look at the state of politics in America. It is very much worth reading.

[***Dave Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Original Review: http://hill-kleerup.org/blog/2008/12/...)

Overall: Good
Writing: Good
Re-Readability: Fair
Info: Good

The subtitle of the book is “Adventures with the Loony Left, the Rabid Right, and Other American Idiots,” and in keeping with that Beckerman proposes and entertainingly demonstrates how the fringe of both the Left and the Right have more in common with each other than with folks in the center: True Believers who Know Better than You Do what You Should Be Allowed to Do, Think, or Believe. Whether lambasting Rick Santorum or Andrea Dworkin, there’s almost always a chuckle every paragraph or three.

In different chapters, he takes on extemist ideologues over abortion, gay rights, foreign policy, the Middle East, politics, women’s rights, pornography, pot, and alcohol. In each case, he shows how the folks shouting the loudest tend to have the least concern for individual freedom, instead viewing their ideological ends as justifying any means, and the cause of their personal culture war brooking no Geneva Conventions. Brainwashing children, banning speech, and criminalizing dissent aren’t tools of just one wing of the nuttery.

Unfortunately, Beckerman’s work suffers from two significant flaws, and one lesser.

First, philosophically, his assertion that there are no principles that must never be compromised is somewhat sketchy (or at least open to more serious debate than he’s willing to entertain here). Most of the specific criticisms he offers up are about the symptoms of the extremist ideological thinking, not the issues underlying the extremes. I suspect Beckerman would suggest that, given that most non-extreme people have a realpolitik ability to accept or ignore or maintain cognitive dissonance over most such issues, e.g., abortion, the extremists in the matters ought to do the same, or at least have a stiff drink and STFU about it more often. For myself, I wonder if the centrist majority is willing to allow the extremists to natter on simply to externalize (and thus ignore) their own internal debates on the subjects.

More importantly, to demonstrate how whack-job folks at either end of the spectrum are, Beckerman tends to simplify and over-summarize their positions beyond fairness, sacrificing nuance for humorous or rhetorical effect, and, in so doing, falling prey to the same black-and-white thinking that he’s lampooning. As someone who recognized (and blogged about) some of the instances he mentions, it does make a difference. Though highly footnoted, the tirades against the Left have the same sound-bite attack quality as if they came from Rush or Hugh or Michelle; the ones against the Right are similarly nuggetized and stripped of important (indeed any) context.

A third, weaker critique is that while Beckerman certainly finds folks on the Left to poke fun / scorn at, his natural inclination seems more toward lambasting the Right. This is paralleled by his observations on the Middle East and Israel where, as a Jew, he feels more iconoclastically comfortable ridiculing (at length) aspects of Orthodox Judaism and Israeli Jingoism than in his less pointed criticisms of Islam and anti-Israeli terror.

All that said, it’s a generally entertaining book that most people will enjoy reading, especially if they don’t mind seeing a few of their own oxen gored, and are willing to console themselves with a large drink or other irresponsible pastime. Which Beckerman would argue is how more people ought to spend their hours rather than trying to enforce rules of ideological and moral virtue on each other.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

If the title of Marty Beckerman's latest book doesn't clue you in on where he's coming from, he erases any doubt with the first sentence. "Opinions are like genitals: if you force others to swallow yours, something is seriously wrong with you."[return][return]Since Dumbocracy: Adventures with the Loony Left, the Rabid Right, and Other American Idiots lays out plenty of opinions, Beckerman may well be saying there's also something seriously wrong with him. To describe the book as snarky would be an understatement. A self-described "professional asshole," Beckerman's tone brings to mind more war-oriented phrases, like search and destroy or scorched earth policy. All this, of course, with a heavy dose of sardonic humor.[return][return]Beckerman's attack isn't on the mainstream. The people and organizations most often in his sights are the true believers, the hard core on both the left and right, the extremists. In search and destroy mode, Dumbocracy explores how dyed-in-the-wool believers see only black and white and then pinpoints facts and statistics showing the fallacies and dangers of many absolutist positions. Beckerman's detailed marshaling of facts -- the book contains more than 800 endnotes documenting the sources of his factual statements -- helps justify his tone.[return][return]Balance of review here.

[Manny Furious · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book for anybody who's tired of hearing stupid people talk. Beckerman points out a lot of hypocrisy on both sides of the political spectrum, but the Right takes the brunt of most of his venom... and for good reason[s:]. The things that help this book stand out from other political texts is that Beckerman uses a whole lot of logic and common sense when confronting the issues, and, of course, he infuses those with a lot of scathing humor... especially, at least, a couple dozen biting one-liners.

My only real complaint of this book, and the reason I didn't give it 5 stars, is that Beckerman is a tremendous writer in his own right, with a pile of interesting ideas, and yet half the book (maybe more) is quotes from other people and sources. This bodes well for his reputation as a dedicated researcher, but I wish he would've filtered much of that research into more original, spontaneous prose, because he's good at it.

[Bernadette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nowadays, anyone who reads the news or watches it on television can’t escape the fact that polarization exists in politics around the world. And most often, it’s the extremist voices that get the most press – if it bleeds, it leads, as the saying goes. What goes missing in many news stories is mention of the gray areas in which most people find themselves. And somewhere in all this coverage, “compromise” has become a dirty word, a symbol of weakness or loss of the upper hand.

In his new book, Dumbocracy: Adventures with the Loony Left, the Rabid Right, and Other American Idiots, Marty Beckerman waxes acerbic about the faults of extremism and the “true believer” mentality many extremists have about their cause.

Read more at http://rantsravesreviews.homestead.co...

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting information and observations.