Pizza kings, mama bears, fake PAC ads, and obscene tweets: Today's politics seem to have grown crazier--and more contentious--than ever. But is it really any weirder now than it ever was? In a world filled with corruption, lies, and illicit affairs, where the news regularly serves up politicians' gaffes, crimes, and screwups, it's hard to imagine things were ever stranger. Well, guess what? America has a long history of bizarre politics... and it's all here! We invite you into the political loony bin, where you'll encounter dozens of really unlikely candidates, follow campaign trail madness, meet far too many contenders with foot-in-mouth disease, and learn about a host of false promises and lies meant to lure (presumably gullible) voters.
Government and politics might seem twisted today, but they’ve always been strange. There’s something about public office that, throughout time, has transcended normalcy. Politics Weird-o-Pedia presents some of the oddest and most interesting political absurdities and tidbits from around the world, from Peter the Great’s tax on beards to a lawmaker’s mistress whom he kept on the congressional payroll despite her admission that “I can't type, I can't file, I can't even answer the phone.” Eminences include: Some of America’s Founding Fathers wanted to jail newspaper reporters. A Mongolian conqueror liked to build cement walls out of the bodies of his vanquished opponents (while they were still alive). An all-female resistance to nuclear missiles in Britain resulted in a protest that lasted for nineteen years—long after the missiles were gone. Politics Weird-o-Pedia doesn’t stand still for a minute. It is intriguing, funny, and occasionally startling. It is more than a collection of trivia, adding bits of context and historical vignettes that make it clear that no matter how dysfunctional politics and government might seem today—we’ve been through it all many times before.
Pizza kings, mama bears, fake PAC ads, and obscene tweets: Today's politics seem to have grown crazier--and more contentious--than ever. But is it really any weirder now than it ever was? In a world filled with corruption, lies, and illicit affairs, where the news regularly serves up politicians' gaffes, crimes, and screwups, it's hard to imagine things were ever stranger. Well, guess what? America has a long history of bizarre politics... and it's all here! We invite you into the political loony bin, where you'll encounter dozens of really unlikely candidates, follow campaign trail madness, meet far too many contenders with foot-in-mouth disease, and learn about a host of false promises and lies meant to lure (presumably gullible) voters.
In 2013, when Washington D.C. law enforcement learned that Trey Radel, then a Republican congressman from Florida, had bought cocaine, he quickly became the target of a police sting. In October of that year, Radel was arrested for attempting to buy cocaine from an undercover cop, and subsequently became the subject of intense media coverage and scrutiny. When Radel resigned in 2014, he left with insider knowledge that remains unknown to most American citizens. Democrazy is Radel's candid account of the making of a modern political star and the inner workings of Congress.
The acerbic columnist for The Washington Post offers a trenchant look at the enigmatic culture of American politics, examining the often bizarre behavior, language, culture, social institutions, and taboos of Washington politicians. Reprint.
Grab your hat and fasten your safety belt. You are about to embark on a ride which will take you on a whirlwind tour through the bizarre back streets of American politics. If you think politicians are just suit-wearing stiffs, think again. This book of politically humorous and obscure political information will enable you to dazzle your friends at cocktail parties, at the office water cooler, or at the coffee shop. Politics does not have to be a blood sport where people remain entrenched in their views and fight it out like they are on The Jerry Springer Show. As outrageous as it may sound, this book will provide you with ammunition to make a political conversation fun, and allow you to sound smart at the same time. Major topics in this book include the following: unusual presidential facts, feisty first ladies, family feuds, debate debacles, White House rats, diabolical dirty tricks, embarrassing hot microphone moments, inflammatory insults, White House ghosts, and humiliating bloopers. When political conversations get ugly, my advice is to insert some peculiar political minutia and then divert -- divert--divert. Instead of focusing on the divisive side of politics, why not lighten up the conversation by mentioning the battle with rats (the furry ones, not the corrupt ones) at the White House, or haunted happenings in the White House, or mentioning some of the more famous insults politicians have made to harm their opponents, or the dirty tricks politicians play on one another, or the hilarious bloopers politicians have made. Politicians can be witty, nasty, callous, and just plain nutty. As Mark McKinnon, the executive producer of the hit "Showtime" series "The Circus" opines about this book: "It is terrifically entertaining and fun. And it's non-partisan so you can break it out at parties and not offend anyone." Like the cover of this book, we are all in the same leaky boat together. So why not lighten up?
A Strange Liberty calls for the relentless pursuit of decentralization in whatever manner this course is still open to decent, freedom-loving citizens. Quoting from, among others, the late Angelo Codevilla, a bold scholar of government and an unabashed critic of our democratic decadence, Deist proposes that states that oppose federal overreach and woke indoctrination react against these evils through noncompliance. He shows again and again that the federal government’s behavior has been blatantly unconstitutional for a very long time. As the book chronicles, the Department of Justice, the IRS, and other federal agencies have all been repeatedly unleashed on those whom the one-party state wishes to target. In light of this situation, state governments should not be obliged to serve slavishly a federal administration that is making war on some of its citizens. Up until Joe Biden’s election, it was in fact the Left, with media incitement, which was calling for resistance to the federal government, on behalf of marijuana use, sanctuary for illegals, and gay marriage before that. Why shouldn’t the Right or the non-Left have the same right to disobey federal directives which are coming from a regime that is openly hostile? Jeff here has given outraged citizens a voice and extolls them to pursue this practice of resistance through state or local governments where they can. Although he knows it’s not clear this strategy will be sufficient to work against federal overreach, he encourages us to get out of our chairs and be proactive in finding ways to push back. In A Strange Liberty, there is more of the mood and wit of H.L. Mencken’s American Mercury than the spirit of National Review. This anthology does not just duplicate the positions of a previous generation. It is a creative return to truths that were never lost and should be given an active voice again.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dispatches from the 2016 election that provide an eerily prescient take on our democracy’s uncertain future, by the country’s most perceptive and fearless political journalist. In twenty-five pieces from Rolling Stone—plus two original essays—Matt Taibbi tells the story of Western civilization’s very own train wreck, from its tragicomic beginnings to its apocalyptic conclusion. Years before the clown car of candidates was fully loaded, Taibbi grasped the essential themes of the story: the power of spectacle over substance, or even truth; the absence of a shared reality; the nihilistic rebellion of the white working class; the death of the political establishment; and the emergence of a new, explicit form of white nationalism that would destroy what was left of the Kingian dream of a successful pluralistic society. Taibbi captures, with dead-on, real-time analysis, the failures of the right and the left, from the thwarted Bernie Sanders insurgency to the flawed and aimless Hillary Clinton campaign; the rise of the “dangerously bright” alt-right with its wall-loving identity politics and its rapturous view of the “Racial Holy War” to come; and the giant fail of a flailing, reactive political media that fed a ravenous news cycle not with reporting on political ideology, but with undigested propaganda served straight from the campaign bubble. At the center of it all stands Donald J. Trump, leading a historic revolt against his own party, “bloviating and farting his way” through the campaign, “saying outrageous things, acting like Hitler one minute and Andrew Dice Clay the next.” For Taibbi, the stunning rise of Trump marks the apotheosis of the new postfactual movement. Taibbi frames the reporting with original essays that explore the seismic shift in how we perceive our national institutions, the democratic process, and the future of the country. Insane Clown President is not just a postmortem on the collapse and failure of American democracy. It offers the riveting, surreal, unique, and essential experience of seeing the future in hindsight. “Scathing . . . What keeps the pages turning in this so freshly familiar story line is the vivid observation and original turns of phrase.”—San Francisco Chronicle
A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A Bloomberg Best Non-Fiction Book of 2020 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2020 A Human Behavior & Evolution Society Must-Read Popular Evolution Book of 2020 A bold, epic account of how the co-evolution of psychology and culture created the peculiar Western mind that has profoundly shaped the modern world. Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world. Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history. Includes black-and-white illustrations.
From the author of Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies, a probing exploration of the bizarre and dangerous conspiracies that have roiled America over the past decade and captured the minds of so many Americans Some of the conspiracy theories now gripping American politics contend that Joe Biden was executed and replaced by a clone and that John F. Kennedy Jr., faked his death and will one day return to slay Trump’s enemies. But who is susceptible to them, and what makes them so politically potent? Investigating the historical roots of our peculiar brand of political paranoia, Arthur Goldwag helps us make sense of the senseless and, in so doing, uncovers three uncomfortable truths: that it is older than Trumpism and will outlast it; that theocratic authoritarianism is as hardwired in our American heritage as the principles of the Enlightenment; and that the fear that our system is “rigged” is not altogether unfounded. A probing, surprising, and critical examination of America’s paranoid style, The Politics of Fear sheds new light on the age-old question: What exactly are we so afraid of?
