Reviews for Superpatriotism

The average rating for Superpatriotism based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-08-14 00:00:00 Suzanne Thomas "Democracy is not about trust; it is about distrust. It is about accountability, exposure, open debate, critical challenge, and popular input and feedback from the citizenry. It is about responsible government. We have to get our fellow Americans to trust their leaders less and themselves more, trust their own questions and suspicions, and their own desire to know what is going on" -pg 81. This book is a good starter on the subject, and brings up a batch of good points, this, above, being one of my favorites. It is dangerous to be a blind patriot, and never questioning, never criticising even those that, at face value we would support and agree with. I read the entire thing in one evening, so its a quick read, and the book is stuck in the time it was written (Bush #2), but it was a nice reminder of what is at stake if we blindly follow what is commonly attributed as "patriotism". what is a patriot to you?

Review # 2 was written on 2016-06-01 00:00:00 Jerry Petty Written in 2004, this short and impassioned polemic rages against the rise in right-wing narratives of nationalism, strength and prosperity that had come to a head by the eve of Bush II's re-election. Parenti is in full choir-preaching mode, sure, but it's immensely satisfying to have a 160-page laundry list of "patriotic" crimes, failures, fallacies and hypocrisy. There are some frustrating parts - he fails to connect the dots between, say, the Christian narratives of American superiority and the burgeoning "prosperity gospel" of right-wing evagelism. But overall it's a short, fun and empowering book, written for an audience who at the time would have been in dire need of the catharsis.