American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush.

American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush

Kevin Phillips 

NYC: Penguin

ISBN: 0670032646 $25.95, xiv + 397 pp.

This is quite possibly the single most important political biography in modern American history. American Dynasty, by conservative intellectual Kevin Phillips, is a vast, detailed study of the Bush dynasty, which has become without doubt the most powerful family in American history. He studies all aspects of their rise to power, from the early 1900s down to the early 2000s. What is most disgusting though, is the outlandish (in what they have done and gotten away with) recurrent themes of criminality, corruption, and greed that pervade almost a century of various Bush machinations. The fact that this is all studied and exposed by a Republican heavyweight makes it all the more disturbing and damning.

At the heart of everything Bush lies deceit. There is a frightful, appalling record of abuses within these pages. And the scary part is that some portions of it, like the full details of Bush I's scandalous presidency and Bush II's entire presidency, are still harshly guarded secrets, thanks to George W.'s reversal of the policy for the release of presidential papers. But even what little is publicly known is devastating and criminal. Phillips uses terms such as Texanomics and megalomania to discuss aspects of Bushist thought and policy. War profiteering seems to be the main criminal enterprise of all generations of the Bush empire, but a fascist philosophy of life is the true root evil. The web of connections and actions taken throughout the decades are disturbing in the highest order. Fascism, as Mussolini defined it, is state corporatism, which is indeed the mantra of the Bushes. It is the subjugation of the individual to the machine with profit as the sole motivating factor. The Bushes espouse this publicly and follow it literally in their policies and government reforms. Furthermore, to protect their interests and to cover their activities, the Bush regimes follow a strict Machiavellian "security state" policy of covert operations and secrecy above all else. This rival philosophical stance to democracy is indeed a serious, and, sadly, apparently a growing threat. Secrecy and fascism are fundamentally opposed to everything we stand for. It is the one thing that most shakes America to its core.

The one point of the book I reject is Phillips conclusion that the entire American political system has taken a decisive turn towards an old style aristocracy, that we have witnessed the rise of a dynastic system in Congress and the Presidency. Though this is somewhat true on the surface, and while the Bush family is indeed a dynasty and Senatorial chairs (among others) have become in some ways hereditary, I believe American democracy to be much more vigorous than expected. The common man, though much maligned and subjected, will never allow the ascension of outright aristocracy. Even now we see the slow awakening and push back against such over reaches in terror power as the Patriotic Act, etc., so that over time much damage may be undone. The question is whether the people as a slow-moving inertial mass can act quickly enough to stop a single family from abolishing democracy. History reminds us that the occasional coup can indeed work. The public's awareness to this imminent danger need merely be awakened and I believe corrections are possible. That is, it is merely a small group of extremists forcing their narrowly focused agenda, rather than a broad based shift in American policy. I believe this book goes a long way towards the waking of America to the truth.

Given the urgency current political season, this book is an immediate must read. American Dynasty tells us something deeply troubling is occurring in America, tells us that we have taken our eye off the ball and allowed something fundamentally terrible to happen with the ascendancy of a powerful crime family. However, it does warn us and it is not too late. This book is political dynamite. It is impossible not to be profoundly shocked and substantially altered by reading it.