Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing Is Turning America Into a One-Party State [Mass Market Paperback]

This book was a very compelling look at the well-organized machine that is the right. I was impressed with how well-documented the book was, using the words of those on the right to make the case.

Those that criticize the book will have to refute an awful lot of quotes and facts by their conservative friends. With all the quotes, citations and endnotes, I don't know how one COULD refute the general claims of this book.

What was most frightening for me in this book was the push by the right to completely "wipe them [the left or the democrats] off the face of the planet." This quote by David Horowitz, political strategist for the right, is telling. As the book points out, for the Democrats, politics is a debate between two opposing camps or schools of thought. For the Republicans, it is a war for dominance. I am frightened by a group that does not welcome discourse, especially when that group is so powerful politically and economically. Squashing the political opponent seems very anti-American to me.

Read this book. Then vote.

The country has been so bombarded for deacdes by the claim that the media is liberal, readers like the one from Syracuse believe it, ignoring the power, reach and influence of the Wall Street Journal; talk radio, especially Rush Limbaugh; and MSNBC and Fox. Furthermore, the campaign has shifted all media rightward. But even Republicans have admitted the claims of a liberal media are a shell game, and a brilliantly successful one at that. This book and David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine and Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media should be read by all citizens who want to maintain and strengthen American democracy.

This is simply a must read for thinking Americans, a wake-up call and a political call to arms for those who still believe in the principles of open democracy. In BANANA REPUBLICANS, authors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber describe the political system of a country that is barely recognizable as that of the Founding Fathers. In clear and highly readable prose, with countless footnotes and dozens of supporting anecdotes, Rampton and Stauber portray today's political system as the type our Founders fled from when they left Europe, the kind of system they strove to prevent when crafting the Constitution. Reading their book, I could only cry for what has been lost, for how far we have strayed from the grand democratic ideals I was taught were our heritage and our trust.

BANANA REPUBLICANS is a book that will have you shaking your head in disgust or despair every few pages. The book begins by examining the Right Wing think tanks funded by a few wealthy families: the Mellons, Koch's, Bradleys, and Olins, for example, as well as the Coors. These wealthy scions have literally purchased the "marketplace of ideas," filling the air so insistently with radical, unscientific, poorly-researched notions that their mere repetition gradually gives them credence. The authors then move on to address the Right Wing's creation of a media "echo chamber" so loud, so effective, and so little concerned with truth that any story, no matter how unfounded, becomes credible. They offer as examples the absurdly misreported story of Bill Clinton's infamous airport runway haircut, Clinton's so-called "bimbo eruptions" and paternity allegations, and the hyperinflated and grossly incorrect misquoting and reporting about Al Gore's role in the early development of the Internet as examples of not only how the echo chamber operates, but how it diverts attention from issues to personalities and trivia. As anyone knows who listens to Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, et. al., they are masters of such ad hominem reductionism. Along the way, the authors also provide a well-deserved skewering of ABC's John Stossel, a reporter of right wing pseudo-science who has consistently hidden his agenda behind his audience's own lack of knowledge. Remember the Republican "outrage" over Clinton's use of the Lincoln Bedroom for political donors? Has anyone heard the issue mentioned since George Bush took office? Why not? The practice is as common today as it was during Clinton's Presidency.

Rampton and Stauber document the current Bush Administration's persistent manipulation of government studies and websites to fit its agenda, particularly in the area of scientific research. Chapter Five, "Block the Vote," is undoubtedly the most disturbing chapter of this book. As others have, the authors describe the Right Wing Republican agenda to subvert American democracy in the name of gaining and permanently holding political power. According to the authors, they have done so through fear and intimidation, disinformation campaigns, manipulating voter registration, suppressing black voter turnout, ramrodding off-year gerrymandered redistricting through state legislatures, and resorting to various forms of election fraud. Again, Rampton and Stauber support their case with numerous examples. In Chapter six, the last major content chapter, the authors illustrate how the current Administration, aided and abetted by the Conservative media echo chamber, has turned virtually all questioning and criticism of government plans, programs, and actions into "treason" or "traitorous behavior." So much for open debate in a democratic society, now just a memory among those of us old enough to recall it.

BANANA REPUBLICANS makes it clear that the Republican Party has not simply declared war on Democrats, they have declared war on democracy itself. The goal is a one party system with a marginalized second party for the sake of appearances. They can't afford for the United States to look too much like the old Soviet Union - it would puncture that rose-colored, idealized America they keep passing off as reality to Red Staters while they are busy subverting it. This is an eye-opening book for the uninitiated, well worth the little time it takes to read. If it results in feelings of outrage and despair over the state of our nation and our political system, well then, you've gotten the message.