Deliverance from Stupidparty Land
How to Eradicate the Destructive Forces Destroying American Democracy
Deliverance is potent medicine for those who feel aggrieved by the current state of affairs.
Patrick M. Andendall’s Deliverance from Stupidparty Land is an intense polemic that examines America’s current, contentious political era with scrupulous detail.
Ferocious in its dissection of the Republican Party’s leaders and supporters, Deliverance is not a polite, academic, punch-pulling book. It’s a full-on pugilistic tome that pummels an assortment of players—mostly Donald Trump and the Republican Party, which is called “intellectually and morally dead … [surviving] in zombie form only.”
Long, and with multiple appendices and a bevy of endnotes, the book contains page after page of charts that groan with statistics aimed at supporting its points. Assertions include the declaration that blue states are superior to red ones by almost every conceivable measure and that most GOP policy positions—from “profitizing schools” and “trickle down economic fallacy”—are “pro-death.”
Anti-Republican memes and political cartoons are threaded throughout, as is research about the biggest donors to the Democratic and Republican Parties. An analysis of which party members lie more often is included as well. These assessments are intermingled with aggressive insults: the book refers to Trump as “the monster,” and current GOP members and Trump supporters are depicted as lost causes.
Prescriptive sections are aimed at assisting those who wish to defeat these right-leaning factions—for example, giving advice to those who want to keep abortion legal. A proposal to create a “Smartparty” to combat the ruling “Stupidparty” includes a six-point policy agenda, ranging from altering gun culture and promoting campaign finance reform to ending gerrymandering and voter suppression.
Serious issues are analyzed here, and the book’s suggestions for “delivering” American democracy are sincere. These efforts are undermined, though, by the mean-spiritedness of the writing. Although the work is passionate and backed by ample research, it’s hard to separate the solutions the book advocates from its rampant mocking of those on the political right.
There’s no pretense of objectivity here. This is not an effort to root out the real story of what’s happening in Washington. Still, any truth in the research is overshadowed by the use of the same rhetorical tactics employed by the president the book rails against: it invokes colorful, fiery language and hostile nicknames.
The book’s images appear distorted, and its charts contain misspellings, randomly capitalized words, and inconsistent punctuation. Progressives who are just as angry as the text is might not find these shortcomings problematic, though.
Deliverance is potent medicine for those who feel aggrieved by the current state of affairs.
Reviewed by
Meredith O'Brien
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
