Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order - Softcover

Miller Ph.D., Mark Crispin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393326780 ISBN 13: 9780393326789

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005

Synopsis

"A critical contribution to America's internal, life-or-death debate over foreign and domestic policy."―Booklist

Read a newspaper or catch the news on television and you might get the impression that America's current leadership is "mainstream": perhaps a bit more conservative and in its foreign policy more belligerent than its predecessors, but still a federal authority that functions within America's political traditions. But as Mark Crispin Miller argues here with great clarity and effect, we are in fact living in a state that would appall the Founding Fathers: a state that is neither democratic nor republican, and no more "conservative" than it is liberal. He exposes the Bush Republicans' contempt for democratic practice, their bullying religiosity, their reckless militarism, their apocalyptic views of the economy and the planet, and―above all―their emotional dependence on sheer hatefulness. Abraham Lincoln once observed that, if the United States should ever be subverted, "it will be conquered from within." And that is exactly what has happened.

About this title

Review

While numerous books have been written criticizing the policies and practices of the George W. Bush administration, few have been as foreboding about the meaning of those policies and practices as Mark Crispin Miller's Cruel and Unusual. In Bush and company, Miller sees a regime comparable to the most ruthless authoritarian dictatorships of the modern era and warns that Americans, skillfully duped by a corrupt government and a complicit mass media, are blithely accepting the curtailing of their liberties and the eradication of their democracy. The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the tremendous fear and insecurity they generated among the American people provided, in Miller's estimation, ample opportunity for Bush and company to move the country to a place where dissent is crushed by force, wars are started on lies, and democratic elections will soon be a thing of the past. Cruel and Unusual makes a compelling case by providing massive amounts of evidence, some concrete and some speculative, although at times the sprawling range of his subject matter harms Miller's attempts to form a cohesive argument. And for someone writing a book about George W. Bush, Miller is awfully preoccupied with the treatment President Bill Clinton received from the press and right-wing activists. Particularly strong, however, are passages related to the build-up to war in Iraq and the discrediting of weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who insisted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Miller provides transcripts from cable news talk shows where administration spokesman attack Ritter with the apparent assistance of like-minded hosts while Ritter himself doggedly defends himself and persistently rejects the main reason given for war. Cruel and Unusual is one of the most energetic and dire criticisms of the Bush administration but its urgency is matched by the crimes it sees being committed. --John Moe

About the Author

Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media studies at New York University and the author of The Bush Dyslexicon. He lives in New York City.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0393326780
• ISBN 13: 9780393326789
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 368