Dumbocracy: Adventures with the
Loony Left, the Rabid Right, and Other American Idiots, by Marty Beckerman
The Disinformation Company, 2008
Nowadays, anyone who reads the news or watches it on television can’t escape the fact that polarization exists in politics around the world. And most often, it’s the extremist voices that get the most press – if it bleeds, it leads, as the saying goes. What goes missing in many news stories is mention of the gray areas in which most people find themselves. And somewhere in all this coverage, “compromise” has become a dirty word, a symbol of weakness or loss of the upper hand.
In his new book, Dumbocracy: Adventures with the Loony Left, the Rabid Right, and Other American Idiots, Marty Beckerman waxes acerbic about the faults of extremism and the “true believer” mentality many extremists have about their cause.
With his trademark snide and crude sense of wit, Beckerman takes on the predictable topics of abortion, gay rights and anti-war activism, but he also broadens the spectrum to lash out at the politics of the nanny-state as well as extreme Zionism. While Beckerman provides many facts and figures that show he has done much research on these subjects, make no mistake: this is a Molotov cocktail of in-your-face satire.
As an example of the type of opining Beckerman engages in, the following is from the chapter “Castration Nation vs. Procreation Nation”:
Good Lord, I can’t take this bickering anymore. No self-respecting journalist would force himself to listen to this godforsaken bullshit. There is no safe ground: you are either against Choice, Life, Freedom, Equality, Babies, God or something holy to someone. Never mind that both sides are pro-life and¬ pro-choice: Christians cherish the lives of babies; feminists cherish the lives of women. Christians believe people should make better choices in bed; feminists believe that women should choose whether they’re ready for motherhood. They might actually find some common ground if everyone were to shut the fuck up for five seconds.
While the title of the book gives equal play to both sides of extremism, it’s easy to see which side Beckerman leans toward. His is not a strictly unbiased, journalistic essaying forth, with repeated references to “King Retard” (aka George W. Bush) and a heavier leaning on the Republican side of the spectrum. I should be quick to point out, however, that Beckerman does disservice President Bill Clinton as “President Blow-Job”, but much of Beckerman’s “Looney Left” consists of hippies & anti-war protesters as well as the pro-choice feminists he refers to as “the hideous herd of heterosexuality-hating heifers.”
Where this book succeeds is when Beckerman moves away from his “shtick” of teenage-machismo-potty-mouth-crudeness and just lets the extremists speak for themselves. But, perhaps the demographic he is targeting with this book does enjoy their political satire with a heaping helping of sentences such as: “When it comes to homosexuality, Americans are more divided and torn than the average homosexual’s asshole.” Obviously, I am not in the demographic to which he is trying to appeal.
The most engaging section of this book in my eyes is the last, “The Promised Land,” where Beckerman deals with the subject of religious extremism and its hypocritical aspects, from the point of exploring his own Jewish roots. There is less “shtick” here and more of what seems to be a genuine attempt at understanding how extremist and non-extremist views diverge so radically from the same point of origin. The final chapter, “Jew-Boy Looks for God, Finds Drugs Instead,” is perhaps the best in the book. Beckerman steps away from his potty-mouth persona for a little while:
When I speak to fundamentalists of each religion, I hear exactly the same things: hardcore Jews say that God does not hear the prayers of Muslims or Christians; hardcore Muslims say that God does not hear the prayers of Jews or Christians; hardcore Christians say that God does not hear the prayers of Jews and Muslims. If God is everywhere, I want to scream, doesn’t He hear everything?
“All of my friends who have killed themselves or tried to kill themselves were atheists,” I say to a Christian. “But I hope they were wrong, you know?”
“Why do you hope they were wrong?” the Christian asks. “If God exists, they’re in hell.”
Dumbocracy will appeal more to readers who can take being poked-fun-at and, more importantly, who can deal with Beckerman's gratuituous use of expletives and crude language. If you can look past the false bravado of Beckerman’s “persona” to the satire of what has become the world’s political arena, this is an engaging and enlightening – as well as sometimes infuriating – collection of essays.
239 pp.
