- The Koch Bros. & Their Billionaire Web
- Bernie Sanders Explained Plus Sue Grafton’s X
- Eric Laursen, THE PEOPLE’S PENSION & Greg Palast, BILLIONAIRES AND BALLOT BANDITS.
- Doug Henwood, MY TURN: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency
- Gerald Friedman: A Bernie Sanders Presidency Boosts Incomes & Jobs
- Comix as Art and Politics: Art Spiegelman and Greg Palast
- Paul Theroux, DEEP SOUTH & Ted Rall, BERNIE
- DISPATCHES FROM THE RELIGIOUS LEFT
- Ron Suskind, THE WAY OF THE WORLD and ELIZABETH WINTHROP, COUNTING ON GRACE
- David Cay Johnston, FREE LUNCH
- The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
- Margot Livesey, HOUSE ON FORTUNE STREET
- Our Eroding Democracy: Steven Levitsky, Ted Rall, Harmon Leon
- Call for Independent Exit Polling
- Web Extra: 9-11 Press for Truth video
- The Vote Count Protection Project
- URGENT: Stealth bill threatens democracy
- Voting Problems?
- Danielle Allen, OUR DECLARATION & Katy Simpson Smith, THE STORY OF LAND AND SEA
- Bill de Blasio’s Civic Experiment – Is It Working?
- Linda Coleman: Radical Descent & Greg Guma on Bernie
- Greg Guma on Bernie Sanders’ “Insurgent” Run
- Cicero’s End, Dust Up over Sanders’ Plan, & Remembering Quentin Young
- Is Hillary Clinton Good For Women?
- Historian Donna Murch on The Clintons’ War On Drugs, Mass Incarceration & The Black Vote
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We talk with Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die. Then, political cartoonist Ted Rall and author Harmon Leon tell us about their book, Meet The Deplorables: Infiltrating Trump America.
In May, President Trump crossed a dangerous Rubicon. He demanded that “his” Justice Department investigate the Mueller probe into his own campaign’s ties with Russia. And Deputy Director Ron Rosenstein complied in part (although some say the compliance was an end run around complete capitulation.)
This intimidation of the independent judiciary falls squarely within the attack on democracy that Steven Levitsky warns about in the book he co-authored with Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die. The New York Times reviewer said,
Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies have collapsed elsewhere—not just through violent coups, but more commonly (and insidiously) through a gradual slide into authoritarianism. How Democracies Die is a lucid and essential guide to what can happen here.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are professors of government at Harvard University.
Read an excerpt from How Democracies Die
Ted Rall & Harmon Leon
Ted Rall has been a guest on Writers Voice more than once to talk about his sharp skewering of the body politic. His targets have been not just the Republican rightwing but also the center-right, including Democrats.
Now he’s teamed up with legendary infiltration journalist Harmon Leon to answer the question so many of us have been asking since the night of November 8, 2016: “What the hell happened?”
In their book, Meet the Deplorables, Leon goes deep undercover into the heart of Trump America, and Rall adds an innovative extra dimension to the book with his own essays and full-color cartoons.
Ted Rall has worked in almost every aspect of cartooning. His syndicated editorial cartoons for Andrews McMeel Syndication have appeared in publications like The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Washington Post, and Village Voicesince the 1990s and have earned him two RFK Journalism Awards and a Pulitzer finalistship.
Harmon Leon is a journalist, comedian, and the author of six previous books, including The Harmon Chronicles and Republican Like Me, which both won Independent Publisher Awards for humor. Leon has appeared on This American Life, The Howard Stern Show, MSNBC, Penn and Teller: Bullshit!, Last Call with Carson Daly, and the BBC.
See images from Meet The Deplorables.