Aaron Weiss

Jason's signature style is as always extremely wordy, and wobbles the line between academic and pop-political language. Where a sentence would suffice you'll have a page. This has the benefit of making sure you don't miss what his point is - he'll tell you more than once, and he's fond of using multiple analogies to try getting the idea across. There are 2 main claims against Democracy: 1) Voters are bad at voting 2) Being involved in politics in any way makes us worse as individuals and as societies The first is obviously a major point, but is unoriginal. The second is an important point that I'd like to see more grapple with, especially those pushing for activism of any form. Another important point that Jason keeps coming back to is the powerlessness of the individual in a democracy, and the unimportance of the individual vote. I believe this book could've been much stronger if it had been more focused, and had spent more time on the negative effects on us a society and the implications. Jason's personal political biases show up in his books often and obviously, but they don't impact the actual thrusts of his arguments and they don't seriously flaw the writing. I recommend skimming his work for the 'interesting bits'.