A (Very) Brief Guidebook for Democrats

Weighing in at 139 words--including the words “chapter” and the numbers that come after them--Rebuilding America: The Democratic Strategy is a book of substance over syllogism. This newest addition to the digest of self-published diatribes on American politics makes courageous headway into the fledgling field of postmodern political discourse, though readers are likely to find it ultimately unsatisfying.

In a short dedication, authors John and Gabriel Haseitel, brothers and self-ordained mainstream media experts, devote their text to the Democratic Party in an invective against the party’s activists in Hollywood and their “fake documentaries.” (We would quote at greater length here, but fair-use guidelines  are vague in cases where one sentence represents over 25 percent of the text.)

Following the dedication are 200 pages of blank white paper, broken into 12 chapters.
Critics will likely be tempted to paint this book as a gag gift among self-satisfied Republicans. (For those who don’t want to cough up the $18.69 for the book,  there’s a similar copy in the paper tray of the copy machine.) While probably accurate, such an opinion ignores the tapestry of intellectual influences, alluded to in the text but never cited. One is reminded, for example, of the great French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, who once imagined a scenario  in which a friend, Pierre, is late to a meeting with him at a cafe: “Pierre absent haunts this cafe and is the condition of its self-nihilating organization.”

One can divine some clue as to the Haseitels’ priorities and agendas from the book’s real estate. While they devote a whopping 20 blank pages to the subject of “Secure Retirement” (Chapter 7), they graze over the subject of “Honest Government” in a mere 12 pages of white (Chapter 12). Economic growth receives only 13 blank pages, and “Election Reform” gets 19.

The brothers could not be reached for comment.

--Chris Wilson