Customer Reviews

Delusional Democracy: Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government

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What can you say about someone who gets it right? Once you see through the veils, it's all too painfully clear. The author of this hard-headed, warm-hearted book gets it right, and right on the nose. His dissection of our "fearless leader" in debate -- with prompting from a device wired to his back, giving him facts to use in the debate -- is alone worth the price of this book. He has painstakingly researched what happened and how it could technically have been done (the author is a trained engineer); and his discussion of the silence of the mainstream media describes a national scandal that never happened, but one that keeps happening, day in and day out, on our pablum maintstream "news" broadcasts.

I run an executive resume service in the Pentagon. I hear and see a lot of spinning and worse about enough to make any citizen sick. The country is being hypnotized, and the Red and the Blue are each being convinced of their righteous wrath. No one listens, everyone yells. Here is a book that deconstructs the delusion and din, and offers sound ideas about how to move forward in rebuilding our national democracy. We could all do a lot worse than to spend a few illuminating, but disturbing, hours with the author as he takes us step by painful step through the mists and minefields of our delusions toward the profile of a clear-eyed vision for a possible future. Books like this deserve an audience. Authors like this deserve readers.

A must read book!

This book is well written and concise. It serves as a fantastic wake-up call to the American people. It succinctly describes the anti-democratic practices, tendancies, and directions in society, the economy, the mass media, and government that have been eroding our participatory institutions by distracting citizens for decades.

It is an indictment of the corruption that flourishes at all levels of society and particularly in government. It exposes the culture of lying and spin and describes how untruth damages democracy.

This book gives form and focus to the discontent shared by people around the country. It is a clear call to arms against the status quo in our time and offers thought-provoking and unconventional ideas for how to reform the system through citizen action.

Could a second American Revolution be required to set America on the correct path once more? "Delusional Democracy: Fixing the Republic without overthrowing the Government" is a deftly written call to action - not to overthrow the government, no, but to do whatever they can to set our democratic institution on the right path once more, to cut through the oceans of false information and misrepresentation that do no right for its citizens. Offering advice and protocol to save America while there's still time, "Delusional Democracy: Fixing the Republic without Overthrowing the Government" is highly recommended to community library political shelves everywhere and for anyone who wants an honest look at today's government.

The best book i have read this year. Joel Hirschhorn tells it like it is.

This book is a must read for anyone who wants to know what really is happening in our country today. I don't see how we can continue to ignore the trampling upon our freedoms and rights as Americans.

This is an important book, one of many about the downfall of democracy in the USA with some suggestions for action that are a mix of great ideas, out of date items, and a couple, such as Instant Run-Off, that I also fell prey to and have now been corrected on by the crowd-sourcing of the Electoral Reform Act of 2012 (easy to find online).

First off, the author was well-ahead of his time and this book joins four books in particular:

Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
The Broken Branch : How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)

Here is what the author himself summarizes as the key changes we need to make--I agree that Electoral Reform is the ONE THING that we can all agree on, but he has not availed himself of all of the expertise possible as I have in my open call for input, so we each lose one star--I wrote a book that was not focused on solutions, and he has written a book that needs to be updated and fleshed out.

A number of electoral reforms are necessary to rescue American democracy:

1. Expand the use of Clean Money, Clean Election programs.
2. Provide a None of the Above option on ballots.
3. Permit fusion candidates to promote third-party candidates.
4. Reform the Electoral College or its use by states.
5. Provide Instant Runoff Voting.
6. Pass the "Our Democracy, Our Airwaves" federal law.
7. For primary elections, support an open or crossover primary that
favors third-parties.
8. Make voting compulsory after other reforms

The Electoral Reform Act of 2012 introduced to OWS and now across America has eleven sections that have been exhaustively reviewed by many including non-profits focused on electoral reform matters:
1. Process [Election Integrity Principles from Gail Work, Eva Waskill, others]
2. Ballot Access
3. Voting for People
4. Voting for Issues
5. Debates
6. Cabinet
7. Representation
8. Districts
9. Funding
10. Legislation
11. Constitutional Amendment

I absolutely urge one and all to buy this book, carry it around, wave it around, and get folks talking about Electoral Reform as the ONE THING we can all agree on. Check out the viral video someone make of me, the last words are "there's nothing wrong with America the Beautiful that cannot be fixed by flushing Congress down the toilet.

Time is the one strategic variable that cannot be bought nor replaced. We not only cannot afford to lose 2012, in my view, but this is a unique moment in time when Obama could not veto such legislation, and no majority of Senators or Representatives could take the heat from a full-up 2 out of 3 angry eligible voters. IMHO.

Here is a book for every adult American who cares about what happens to his/her country. It will make you depressed and angry and ... well-informed. Get it.