I wouldn't say I didn't like Nixonland (thanks Op!), but I do feel like it could've been distilled down to one page, to include it's theme (in order to win votes, focus people's attentions on their rage), it's playbook (lie, lie, lie, and when they catch you just keep lying), both culminating in what I'm sure Marley meant to be my lesson: shit's same as it ever was (ie Rove/W invented neither political divisiveness nor lying.)
I also didn't need hundreds of pages or re-hashing whichever particular events of the decade the author felt like rolling on and on about, mostly seemingly on a whim, all without the sense of being on the inside like Katzenbach's book did. Or a laundry list once he felt he was in a groove (I don't need a list of every act of violence in every single riot as if I'm reading a police report, I can get a sense of it through good writing.)
Tho once the main theme was nailed into my brain, ie page 3, I did enjoy some of the sheer dark paranoid shenanigans-with-no-apology from Nixon himself. And it is pretty significant to think about how embedded into normal, everyday politics Nixonland has become, as in we should never again be surprised by the way political parties roll and wobble as if rotating planets into whichever position will best suit them as "put-upon victim," therein fooling people into righteous indignation and ensuring their own success.
In other words, I guess Nixonland woulda made a helluva blog post.
2 comments:
I'm not sure you could have derived less from a book if you'd eaten it with Pop Rocks and Cherry Coke instead of reading it.
that was funny!
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