Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture PDF Download

Author: Benjamin Leontief Alpers
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807854167
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Focusing on portrayals of Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany, and Stalin's Russia in U.S. films, magazine and newspaper articles, books, plays, speeches, and other texts, Benjamin Alpers traces changing American understandings of dictatorship from the la

Author: Rick Ainsworth
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780977037629
Category : Intelligence service
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Could it possibly happen?After a polarizing and scandal-plagued presidency, a new American president is swept into office by a large majority. M. Spencer Howell, a popular governor of impeccable character and credentials, assumes the presidency with party majorities in Congress, and proceeds to transform America back to his vision of the founders' ideal.Howell's vision drives his administration to dramatic changes in law and policy, addressing crime, immigration, education, and other issues in a forthright assault on his predecessor's record. With enormous popularity among the American people, supermajorities in both houses of Congress, and new appointees to the Supreme Court, President Howell has a free hand to repair a broken American culture and society.Voices inside and outside the government have vague misgivings about the speed and direction of Howell's policies, and the creation of a new Militia answerable to the President's team. This large, well-trained force appears benign and quickly wins over the American public with courtesy and aplomb.But who can argue with a president who is so obviously sincere? Howell is a military veteran, a married man about whom his election opponents could not find the slightest flaw in judgment or character. If anyone can be trusted with the near absolute power created by his presidency, it's M. Spencer Howell.About his administration, however, some questions arise and, stubbornly, refuse to go away, at least in the minds of some of Howell's most loyal staffers. His vice president appears to head a cadre of ex-military men and spies, and there are whispers that not everything he does is being communicated to the President. And then there is the new and terrifying weapon, perfected at the beginning of Howell's term. The new president sees it as the ultimate deterrent, a force for good, but others see the potential for the most devastating first strike weapon the world has ever seen. This story chronicles the rise to power of a man beyond reproach, and serves as a cautionary tale to all who believe power cannot corrupt.

Author: John Mulder
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
ISBN: 1612042120
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
A multi-billionaire Senator has believed for years that the United States is slowly disintegrating, due to politicians caring more about getting re-elected than about their country. Wisconsin Senator Stevens feels that political correctness has run amok and that people have swallowed the lie that government can solve all problems. American stature worldwide has shrunk to the extent that the country is no longer considered a military threat or a reliable partner. The very existence of the once mighty and respected country is being threatened. The senator uses his vast wealth and powerful friends to get others sympathetic to his ideals elected into office. Due to the tremendous upheaval caused by the threat of Muslim extremism, Senator Stevens uses the threat to become president. When the Muslims actually do start a reign of terror, he cancels all elections and becomes The First American Dictator.

Author: Steven Hart
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813562147
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
One man was tongue-tied and awkward around women, in many ways a mama's boy at heart, although his reputation for thuggery was well earned. The other was a playboy, full of easy charm and ready jokes, his appetite for high living a matter of public record. One man tolerated gangsters and bootleggers as long as they paid their dues to his organization. The other was effectively a gangster himself, so crooked that he hosted a national gathering of America's most ruthless killers. One man never drank alcohol. The other, from all evidence, seldom drank anything else. American Dictators is the dual biography of two of America’s greatest political bosses: Frank Hague and Enoch “Nucky” Johnson. Packed with compelling information and written in an informal, sometimes humorous style, the book shows Hague and Johnson at the peak of their power and the strength of their political machines during the years of Prohibition and the Great Depression. Steven Hart compares how both men used their influence to benefit and punish the local citizenry, amass huge personal fortunes, and sometimes collaborate to trounce their enemies. Similar in their ruthlessness, both men were very different in appearance and temperament. Hague, the mayor of Jersey City, intimidated presidents and wielded unchallenged power for three decades. He never drank and was happily married to his wife for decades. He also allowed gangsters to run bootlegging and illegal gambling operations as long as they paid protection money. Johnson, the political boss of Atlantic City, and the inspiration for the hit HBO series Boardwalk Empire, presided over corruption as well, but for a shorter period of time. He was notorious for his decadent lifestyle. Essentially a gangster himself, Johnson hosted the infamous Atlantic City conference that fostered the growth of organized crime. Both Hague and Johnson shrewdly integrated otherwise disenfranchised groups into their machines and gave them a stake in political power. Yet each failed to adapt to changing demographics and circumstances. In American Dictators, Hart paints a balanced portrait of their accomplishments and their failures.

Author: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 161039044X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Explains the theory of political survival, particularly in cases of dictators and despotic governments, arguing that political leaders seek to stay in power using any means necessary, most commonly by attending to the interests of certain coalitions.

Author: Joseph R. Hartman
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822986493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Joseph Hartman focuses on the public works campaign of Cuban president, and later dictator, Gerardo Machado. Political histories often condemn Machado as a US-puppet dictator, overthrown in a labor revolt and popular revolution in 1933. Architectural histories tend to catalogue his regime’s public works as derivatives of US and European models. Dictator’s Dreamscape reassesses the regime’s public works program as a highly nuanced visual project embedded in centuries-old representations of Cuba alongside wider debates on the nature of art and architecture in general, especially in regards to globalization and the spread of US-style consumerism. The cultural production overseen by Machado gives a fresh and greatly broadened perspective on his regime’s accomplishments, failures, and crimes. The book addresses the regime’s architectural program as a visual and architectonic response to debates over Cuban national identity, US imperialism, and Machado’s own cult of personality.

Author: Hugh M. Hamill
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780806124124
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
All societies have had personalist leaders. There is little dispute, however, that Spanish American caudillos have been more numerous and more pervasive than such leaders in other regions. Further, while the words caudillo and caudillismo are variants of dictator and dictatorship, they have a special resonance that suggests the unique political environment of Spanish America. It can be argued that a caudillo is able to achieve legitimacy within the established value system, whereas a dictator depends primarily on force to sustain power and is, therefore, illegitimate. Definition often depends upon whether one favors or opposes a particular authoritarian leader. In this major revision of the Borzoi Book Dictatorship in Spanish America, editor Hugh Hamill has presented conflicting interpretations of caudillismo in twenty-seven essays written by an international group of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, journalists, and caudillos themselves. The theoretical arguments in Hamill's introduction and the first five chapters are followed by twenty-two chronologically arranged essays on individual caudillos. The selections represent revisionists, apologists, enemies, and even a victim of caudillos. The personalities discussed include the Mexican priest Miguel Hidalgo, the Argentinian gaucho Facundo Quiroga, the Guatemalan Rafael Carrera, the Colombian Rafael Nunez, Mexico's Porfirio Diaz, the Somoza family of Nicaragua, the Dominican "Benefactor" Rafael Trujillo, the Argentinians Juan Peron and his wife Evita, Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner--called "The Tyrannosaur", Chile's Augusto Pinochet, and Cuba's Fidel Castro. The reader emerges with a heightened awareness ofthe almost infinite varieties of caudillismo and of the complex culture in which this controversial Spanish American phenomenon is to be found. Photographs of the caudillos accompany the text.

Author: Paul David Cook
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1462889719
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
A new post-FDR generation of Americans have been taught in our liberal leftist educational system that the 32nd President was an outstanding war strategist and that Stalin ’s Eastern European invasion was inevitable. Nothing could be further from the truth for the historical reality was that FDR was in reality a dangerous egotistical autocratic bumbler who winged it politically, with little global vision, resulting in multiple catastrophic international disasters that would negatively affect the world for generations to come. The FDR I am going to show you is nothing like what you have been programmed to believe. He was not only a compulsive liar and a hypocrite but also very vindictive, often sadistic to the point of displaying a malicious destructive pattern of behavior that bordered on madness. He was often filled with raging hatred against any opponent who dared to question his supremeness or bruise his delicate manic ego. For decades, the American public has been told a packet of lies repeatedly and in time those falsehoods have not only become accepted history we shoveled to our youth as fact until they read this book by design or chance.

Author: David L. Good
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
The literature on political machines of American mayors is rich and varied. Essentially undiscovered, however, is "Orvie," the most flamboyant and original of them all-and, on his home turf, arguably the most powerful. David L. Good describes the public and private life of Orville L. Hubbard, a man whose remarkable political career overlapped the terms of seven presidents. Hubbard was mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, home of the Ford Motor Company, from 1942 to 1978, ranking him as the second-longest-tenured mayor in U.S. history. He became a model for successful suburban leaders, establishing a reputation for outstanding municipal services and low taxes-as well as for the most notorious racist rhetoric north of the Mason-Dixon line. During his reign, Hubbard was compared with nearly all the tyrants of the twentieth century and some before. At his peak of some 350 pounds, Orvie was a blimp-shaped dreadnaught who set up a government in exile in Canada because sheriff's deputies were waiting to arrest him back home; was pictured in the newspapers on his way to the Republican National Convention disguised in a clown mask; and ordered his fire chief to take an axe to the office door of Henry Ford II. Acquitted in a federal civil rights case, Hubbard showed his appreciation to the jury by taking them out to dinner. After the 1967 riots in Detroit, Orvie threatened to "shoot looters on sight." Hubbard took over a town-the town run by the American legend Henry Ford-without a traditional party organization, extensive patronage, or other trappings of a political machine. The "Hubbard machine" was essentially a one-man operation, consisting of Hubbard himself who prevailed on the sheer force of his personality. David L. Good, who reported on Hubbard for eighteen years, bases his book on personal observation, public and private records, and interviews with Hubbard and family members. Although the book reads like the stuff of novels, Orvie: The Dictator of Dearborn is a serious study of one of the most controversial figures in American municipal government.

Author: Javier A. Galván
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476600163
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Throughout the 20th century, the emergence of authoritarian dictatorships in Latin America coincided with periods of social convulsion and economic uncertainty. This book covers 15 dictators representing every decade of the century and geographically from the Caribbean and North and Central and South America. Each chapter covers their personal information (childhood, education, marriage, family...), assumption of power, relationship with the United States, oppression of civilians, and collapse of their regimes. The book also investigates inherent contradictions in U.S. foreign policy: promoting democracy abroad while supporting brutal dictatorships in Latin America. Such analysis requires multiple perspectives and this work embraces an evaluation of the influence of military dictatorships on cultural elements such as art, literature, journalism, music and cinema, while drawing on data from documentary archives, court case files, investigative reports, international treaties, witness testimonies, and personal letters from survivors. The dramatic experiences of courageous individuals who challenged these 15 oppressors are also recounted.