America's Got Democracy [electronic resource] : The Making of the World's Longest-Running Reality Show

This year there are more substantial differences between the two [US] parties, mostly because the Republicans have gone feral. The essential point of this book is these differences are still not enough to merit the term democracy. As a Marxist, I admittedly have high standards. I start from the premise that it should be possible to live in a society in which residents decide how to be policed, workers organize where they work, and soldiers vote for war and peace. I’m not going to rail at Barack Obama for not creating large-scale communes in abandoned Rust Belt factories (although ...) but we can only appreciate how piss-poor our democracy is by considering what it could be. Even if you don’t agree with this book’s socialist premise (some of which has appeared in my columns for Socialistworker.org), you will hopefully find this perspective useful. And funny. - from the introduction by the author A humorous but passionate look at the criminal silliness of the US political system from the author who has “better comic bomb sights than John Stewart” (Mike Davis, author of The Monster at Our Door). In this raucous, irreverent book, Danny Katch diagnoses the various mental disorders peculiar to those who have way too much money and power—and the politicians who work for them. He shows how the very elections that are supposed to be our way of bringing about change have become a tool to get us to accept the insane status quo. “The funniest, smartest, and most dangerous political writer you never heard of is Danny Katch. You’ll laugh. You’ll get pissed off. You’ll disagree. And you’ll wonder how you read this terrific book in one sitting. A welcome antidote to what passes for political writing in an election year.” —Dave Zirin, author of Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down “From Cocoa Puffs to melting ice caps, Danny Katch’s America’s Got Democracy gets to the heart of how and why our political establishment creates economic, social, and environmental crapification, and he does it with a flair even the most disaffected café barista with a PhD will love. But if you enjoy reading dry, abstract political works in which the words go clopping across the page on little wooden feet, don’t read Katch’s book.” —Sherry Wolf, author of Sexuality and Socialism “Guess what? It’s even more boringer reading it than talking about it.” —Lila Katch, seven years old A HUMOROUS but passionate look at the criminal silliness of the U.S. political system. The 2012 election is a bummer. A loud, angry, expensive bummer. In four years Americans have gone from hoping Obama could fix the countrys enormous problems to praying he can just hold off the Romney Ryan creep show. What happened? The problem, according to Danny Katch, is that the real decision making authority resides in institutions from Wall Street to the Pentagon that are literally mad with power. In this raucous irreverent book, Katch diagnoses the various mental disorders peculiar to those who have way too much money and power and the politicians who work for them. He shows how the very elections that are supposed to be our way of bringing about change have become a tool to get us to accept the insane status quo. Combining a Marxists critical perspective with a stand ups comic timing, Katch ridicules the fundamental assumptions of our political system from the perspective of one who is stuck like everybody else inside that system with no short term alternative. For anybody with a basic sense that something is very wrong with the system, regardless of how they plan to vote in November, Americas Got Democracy! can help them maintain perspective, sanity, and humor during the silliest and scariest final months of the campaign.