March 11, 2023
I really wanted to give this book 5 stars. The first 40% of the book deserves it. But then the next 50% of the book is dedicated to the critique of one topic: wokeness. The last 10% of the book then tells us how to address this problem.
The thesis is clearly laid out and is compelling. That is, there is more to politics than a simple right/left divide. There is a full matrix, with progressive and clear thinking on each end of the spectrum, as well as emotionally driven argumentative silliness on each end of the spectrum. I totally agree! It makes sense. And the illustrations are a lot of fun and fully inspired. Tim lays out good examples of this thinking, and he even touches on the recent downward slide of the Republican Party into the emotionally driven argumentative ridiculous stuff that we have all witnessed since about 2015. I thought he was brave for going there, as I feared it might alienate half of his readership to do so.
Here is the problem: Why did he need to spend fully half of the book on the problem of wokeness, when the Trump problem only took a few pages? He beats a dead horse for half the book. A few pages would have covered it. It seems he doth protest too much. So my fear that he would alienate half of his readership suddenly shifted to the other half of his readership, in our highly polarized country. It started to feel like he had given a few pages of criticism to the lower level thinking in the Republican Party, in order to balance the scales for his upcoming and quite extensive criticism of lower level thinking in the Democratic Party.
I think Tim is giving away his own emotionally based lower level bias in his dedication of fully half of this book to one topic, when he was able to cover multiple similar topics in the first 40% of the book. I could not give this book more than 3 stars because of this glaring problem.
His solution, after wading through chapters and chapters and chapters about the problems of wokeness, is that we all should value and seek truth, and not be afraid to speak the truth, and be brave in doing so. However, his 50% of the book about wokeness demonstrates why that won’t work in this world that he has so carefully described. One will be cancelled if they speak their truth. So it doesn’t quite make sense. I think he is afraid of something that he is making much bigger than it is.
I must say I’ve been a fan of his blog and of his way of explaining things, and drawing charts and graphs to illustrate them, for many years. I was excited for this book. But it needed a lot of editing help in the middle half. And the glaring problem with this section, sadly, makes the rest of the ideas put forth look much weaker. As if he is quite defensive about something that we are not quite able to see, through all of the words.
The thesis is clearly laid out and is compelling. That is, there is more to politics than a simple right/left divide. There is a full matrix, with progressive and clear thinking on each end of the spectrum, as well as emotionally driven argumentative silliness on each end of the spectrum. I totally agree! It makes sense. And the illustrations are a lot of fun and fully inspired. Tim lays out good examples of this thinking, and he even touches on the recent downward slide of the Republican Party into the emotionally driven argumentative ridiculous stuff that we have all witnessed since about 2015. I thought he was brave for going there, as I feared it might alienate half of his readership to do so.
Here is the problem: Why did he need to spend fully half of the book on the problem of wokeness, when the Trump problem only took a few pages? He beats a dead horse for half the book. A few pages would have covered it. It seems he doth protest too much. So my fear that he would alienate half of his readership suddenly shifted to the other half of his readership, in our highly polarized country. It started to feel like he had given a few pages of criticism to the lower level thinking in the Republican Party, in order to balance the scales for his upcoming and quite extensive criticism of lower level thinking in the Democratic Party.
I think Tim is giving away his own emotionally based lower level bias in his dedication of fully half of this book to one topic, when he was able to cover multiple similar topics in the first 40% of the book. I could not give this book more than 3 stars because of this glaring problem.
His solution, after wading through chapters and chapters and chapters about the problems of wokeness, is that we all should value and seek truth, and not be afraid to speak the truth, and be brave in doing so. However, his 50% of the book about wokeness demonstrates why that won’t work in this world that he has so carefully described. One will be cancelled if they speak their truth. So it doesn’t quite make sense. I think he is afraid of something that he is making much bigger than it is.
I must say I’ve been a fan of his blog and of his way of explaining things, and drawing charts and graphs to illustrate them, for many years. I was excited for this book. But it needed a lot of editing help in the middle half. And the glaring problem with this section, sadly, makes the rest of the ideas put forth look much weaker. As if he is quite defensive about something that we are not quite able to see, through all of the words.
