Tag: Con

When the Clock Broke Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s [Audiobook]


Free Download When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0CKM3F6T9 | 2024 | 15 hours and 17 minutes | M4B@64 kbps | 445 MB
Author: John Ganz
Narrator: Eric Jason Martin

A lively, revelatory look back at the convulsions at the end of the Reagan era-and their dark legacy today. With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated, and U.S. power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a "kinder, gentler America." Instead, it was a period of rising anger and domestic turmoil, anticipating the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today. In When the Clock Broke, the acclaimed political writer John Ganz tells the story of America’s late-century discontents. Ranging from upheavals in Crown Heights and Los Angeles to the advent of David Duke and the heartland survivalists, the broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh, and the bitter disputes between neoconservatives and the "paleo-con" right, Ganz immerses us in a time when what Philip Roth called the "indigenous American berserk" took new and ever-wilder forms. In the 1992 campaign, Pat Buchanan’s and Ross Perot’s insurgent populist bids upended the political establishment, all while Americans struggled through recession, alarm about racial and social change, the specter of a new power in Asia, and the end of Cold War-era political norms. Conspiracy theories surged, and intellectuals and activists strove to understand the "Middle American Radicals" whose alienation fueled new causes. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton appeared to forge a new, vital center, though it would not hold for long. In a rollicking, eye-opening book, Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of a new and more turbulent America.

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The Longest Con How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism [Audiobook]


Free Download The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0D8D1LMKK | 2024 | 10 hours and 55 minutes | M4B@128 kbps | 607 MB
Author: Joe Conason
Narrator: Steve Marvel

The Longest Con tells the fascinating story of the partisan con artists who have corrupted conservative politics in our time, creating a toxic phenomenon that culminated in the election of Donald Trump, a bumptious fraud whose checkered career and tawdry retinue, including his presidential cabinet, have featured almost every variety of scam. But long before he appeared, Trump’s path to power was blazed by the motley horde of swindlers and quacks who preceded him. From the "professional anti-communists" (whose tactics even J. Edgar Hoover despised) to the "populist" grifters of the Tea Party movement and the religious charlatans of the "prosperity gospel" (who provided a pious front for Trump), the right-wing ripoff has remained remarkably consistent, even as personalities change and new technologies emerge: Stir up anger and resentment, demonize political opponents, promise vengeance, and collect donations from the gullible. It’s a highly lucrative game that any unscrupulous charlatan can play, as many have-and they are named in this book. In an unsparing and often comic narrative, Joe Conason explores the right’s long, steep descent into a movement whose principal aim is not to protect freedom or defend the Constitution, but merely to line the pockets of pretenders and blowhards whose malevolent tactics now endanger the nation.

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