Kill Switch

The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

De: Adam Jentleson

Narrado por: P.J. Ochlan

An insider's account of how politicians representing a radical minority of Americans are using "the greatest deliberative body in the world" to hijack our democracy.

Every major decision governing our diverse, majority-female, and increasingly liberal country bears the stamp of the US Senate, yet the Senate allows an almost exclusively White, predominantly male, and radically conservative minority of the American electorate to impose its will on the rest of us. How did we get to this point?

In Kill Switch, Adam Jentleson argues that shifting demographics alone cannot explain how Mitch McConnell harnessed the Senate and turned it into a powerful weapon of minority rule. As Jentleson shows, since the 1950s, a free-flowing body of relative equals has devolved into a rigidly hierarchical, polarized institution, with both Democrats and Republicans to blame. The current GOP has merely used the methods pioneered by its predecessors though to newly extreme ends. In a work for fans of How Democracies Die and even Master of the Senate, Jentleson makes clear that, without a reevaluation of Senate practices - starting with ending the filibuster - we face the prospect of permanent minority rule in America.

©2021 Adam Jentleson (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

important story

important story if you do not know it, but we must go further and abolish the Senate entirely

I never realized there was even this much to learn about the Senate.

Great read, well organized, broken down into easily understood sections. Great book. I listened to it in one day.

Fascinating

I really enjoyed this book. Learned a lot. If you have an interest in history, governance, and / or understanding the sh*tshow that is today’s senate, this is for you. Did not love the narrator though. His voice was grating. The book skipped a lot, too.

The filibuster must go

Left leaning but with great historical perspective of how the filibuster came to be. Highly recommend for anyone.

Filled with surprisingly interesting stories

As a political junky, I assumed I'd like this book. The surprise was the quantity of really interesting and well told stories.