Erin reviewed Democracy for the few by Michael Parenti
Review of 'Democracy for the few' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This was okay - it reminded me of American Exceptionalism and American Innocence as well as Lies My Teacher Told Me. There's useful information in here, I've just already heard much of it elsewhere in some form. This would have been much more useful to me years ago.
It's also largely a list of facts or "facts." Unfortunately, air quotes are needed because sometimes his sources are real iffy, and he makes some unwarranted leaps of logic. That's extra frustrating when you agree with the overall point an author is making - don't ruin it with shoddy research. The fluoride stuff was a real eye twitch moment for me.
The thing about lists of facts, though, is that it's not very interesting to me. I can't retain all of that, especially when it's so much and so broad. The data he included often felt meaningless without context. "x gallons of …
This was okay - it reminded me of American Exceptionalism and American Innocence as well as Lies My Teacher Told Me. There's useful information in here, I've just already heard much of it elsewhere in some form. This would have been much more useful to me years ago.
It's also largely a list of facts or "facts." Unfortunately, air quotes are needed because sometimes his sources are real iffy, and he makes some unwarranted leaps of logic. That's extra frustrating when you agree with the overall point an author is making - don't ruin it with shoddy research. The fluoride stuff was a real eye twitch moment for me.
The thing about lists of facts, though, is that it's not very interesting to me. I can't retain all of that, especially when it's so much and so broad. The data he included often felt meaningless without context. "x gallons of toxic chemicals are dumped into our water supply every year!" Okay, I guess that's bad? Should it be zero? Should it just be lower? I appreciated it when he gave me the context I needed to make sense of the data, like when he compared the cuts made to a social welfare program to 1/3 of the cost to build and maintain one military aircraft.
I do appreciate that this exists because there was a time I was looking for more of this information and couldn't find a resource. It's unfortunate that it's a textbook and expensive. A mishmash of other cheaper books cover a lot of the same ground, but having it all in one place is nice.
