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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A book by an interesting man , July 10, 2008
The author of this short polemic is a most interesting man. On his blog he writes about current events, sociological trends, the ups and downs of his life, his children, his troubled childhood, the comedy scene and other issues in a most engaging manner. What is most appealing about Mr. Perrin is how unpretentious he is. He has been through many highs and lows in his life. He was once something of a big shot. He worked for the outstanding group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), appeared on C-Span and other media outlets to argue against the American war on Iraq in 1991, wrote jokes for Bill Maher and other comedians, and published a book about Michael O'Donoghue to which Chevy Chase contributed a blurb of praise. But eight or nine years ago he developed some very severe financial problems and eneded up in Michigan working as a mall janitor. He later worked for a time at a janitorial service owned by John Birchers. The author's descent down the American class ladder seems to have provided him with a whole new perspective on class and social status in this country. He mentions only one experience relating to his janitorial service in this book, when he talked to the owner of a Korean eatery at a mall food court about the situation in Korea.
In more than one way the book serves as a brief introduction to the radical leftist critique of how our political class serves the rich and powerful. Much of this book gives a summary of the Democratic Party's historical support for repression of labor militancy domestically and, in the third world, human rights violations and war crimes. Gore Vidal produced a little book about the American presidency some years ago that had a similar idea as this one but I think this book is better than Vidal's.
People who are well versed in the works of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn will probably not be staggered by much new information in this book. And the book is too short to go into significant depth on the issues. Among the issues mentioned are Andrew Jackson's ethnic cleansing, Grover Cleveland's repression of the Pullman strike, Eugene Debs's imprisonment, the geostrategic and economic rivalries that were the driving force behind American involvement in World War II, etc (not resistance to aggression and war crimes). But of course it is always good to review aspects of our history. Moreover Perrin writes very well.
The author makes some effective points in this book. Early on he points out that Jimmy Carter is greatly under-appreciated for the way his phony "human rights" rhetoric provided new legtimacy to American imperialism. In spite of being denounced as a weak liberal Carter provided massive military aid to Indonesia's near genocidal assault in East Timor, ignored Archbishop Romero's plea not to send aid to the military junta in El Salvador, etc. Regarding Iraq, Perrin notes that most liberals probably would have supported an invasion of Iraq in 2003 if Al Gore had been in office. Most liberals objected to the Iraq war on the ground that it was a tactical mistake and not an act of international aggression. I think this point is frequently overlooked in discussing "anti-war" Democrats.
Perrin's book ends with a discussion of the Nader campaign of 2000, his brief support for the war on Afghanistan, the Kerry campaign of 2004 and, in the last and best chapter of the book, his attendance at the annual Daily Kos convention in 2007. The chapter on the Dailykos is quite good. The conclusion he reaches about liberal "netroots" activism is all too painfully true.
The author has many gifts and it is an injustice that he dosen't have regular paid writing work at the moment. He could write about a great many subjects in a lively way. The Nation should fire Eric Alterman and hire Perrin.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
US Politics--Everything Hidden in Plain Sight , June 30, 2008
Savage Mules: The Democrats and Endless War reveals US politics and policies (concerning both major parties, more or less) which feed my nation's lust for war. These strategies are all hidden in plain sight but Dennis Perrin sheds the light via a quick, sometimes comic, hold-no-punches presentation. In a little more than 100-pages, Perrin has written an important book that's fun to read.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's hopeless, says Perrin. If you want to fix things, get another book., August 23, 2008
The common perception of Democrats is that we're weak-willed pacifists. The reality, says Dennis Perrin, is that the Democrats are just as much a part of this country's bloody history as any other party. They've been at the vanguard of U.S. imperialism since at least President Wilson.
What's more, we're hypocrites. We're willing to cheer on President Clinton's violence against, say, Yugoslavia, because that's Democratic violence. Republicans, of course, "cheer mass murder because they're evil and stupid." Not us, though. Says Perrin:
"Had Clinton been president after 9/11 and desired an invasion of Iraq (a natural extension of his policy of sanctions and bombing) as part of the War on Terror, chances are extremely high that a vast majority of liberals would have supported him, based on their previous allegiance."
All Americans buy into whatever the reigning orthodoxy is; usually that reigning orthodoxy involves the need to bomb a defenseless country into submission. We've been doing it forever, from massacres in the Philippines to Nicaraguan death squads to the Iraq War. This isn't characteristically Republican; it's characteristically American.
Structurally, the problem is that we have a political atmosphere that confines debate to a narrow range of admissible topics. Says Perrin of the Iran-Contra hearings: "[C]over-up, dismissal, suppression and destruction of evidence, and round-the-clock rationalizing [particularly on the part of the U.S. media] helped to squelch what, in a functioning constitutional democracy, would have been grounds for presidential impeachment and criminal prosecution."
Which is where Perrin trips me up: what would make this country functional? His book is profoundly pessimistic about "the American talent for self-delusion," but he's too slash-and-burn to want to fix it. In that way, Savage Mules is a lot like A People's History of the United States: since the accepted truths about U.S. political life are so far off from the reality, Perrin needs to bang us over the head for a while until we can see things clearly; he has little time left to explain what might fix our problems. If you read Sandy Levinson on Balkinization, by contrast, you'll identify a host of systemic problems that need to be addressed before any long-lasting change will come our way: abolishing the Electoral College; allowing the president to be removed by something akin to a no-confidence vote; stripping the vice president of any responsibility or staff. Read Hendrik Hertzberg, and you'll get an impassioned defense of the National Popular Vote as a way to eliminate the Electoral College without a Constitutional amendment. These are bloggers looking for solutions; on the basis of his book, anyway, it's not clear to me that Perrin cares particularly much about such things.
To a lot of us, indeed, it seems as though blogs are where the most interesting political discussion happens nowadays. Blogs should be free of the disease that Noam Chomsky pointed out so many years ago, namely that corporate media reflect the interests of their corporate masters. Granted, we are often parasitic on the corporate media, feeding off the work that they do and spitting out commentary. More than that, says Perrin, we -- like all Americans -- parrot back the mainstream foreign-policy line and accept whatever bloody wars our party tells us to back.
Nowhere is this clearer than at the annual Kos convention, which Perrin attends at the end of Savage Mules. The unfortunate bit about his attending the convention is that he is clearly trying to be Too Cool For The Democrats. The narrowmindedness of all the "Kossacks" (nyuk nyuk nyuk) forces Perrin to smoke a joint in the hotel bathroom and toss back a few soothing drinks. He's like Holden Caulfield among the Democrats. That last chapter made me reconsider the rest of the book: is Savage Mules ultimately about Perrin's own vanity?
His spearing the "American talent for self-delusion" is maybe odder, when you consider that he -- like many of us, including me -- voted for Nader in 2000. Are Nader voters self-deluded? If so, then Perrin is self-deluded as well. Or maybe Nader voters are among the enlightened. Maybe there's the tiniest glimmer of hope that a few people want to fix things, and were willing to endure their friends' ridicule to do so. Maybe not all Americans are self-deluded.
If you want hope, and you want to get to work, then Perrin's book is not for you.
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