Anyone with a reasonable grasp of US history won't find much that is surprising in the first half of the book. Castaneda makes a lot of generalizations about forces that have shaped US history and the way these trends have been perceived by a variety of foreign observers. Those who are expecting a lot of American bashing here will probably bs surprised; Castaneda is a sympathetic observer; indeed, he is perhaps prone to be overly critical of some of the foreign observers who might have been a little snarky but actually proved to be pretty accurate in their assessment of US weaknesses.

The second half, however, is what makes this book valuable. This is where Castaneda turns to an analysis of the current political gridlock in the US, its causal factors, and whether there is anything that can be done about it. Unlike the somewhat meandering nature of the first part of the book, the analysis in the second half is laser-focused and relentless. The take-away is really simple: politically, the US is fucked. This probably isn't news to anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past decade. But the trajectory of Castaneda's analysis is even more disturbing: there isn't any realistic way the US can fix its political system. It is saddled with a legacy political structure designed to protect the interests of a moneyed and propertied class of a former era; demographically and culturally the US is now a very different place, and the influence of the traditional elites and those who benefitted from their patronage (white males, basically) are fighting a desperate rearguard action. The US Constitution, its amendment structure, the flawed electoral mapping system, the mechanisms that select the people who control the electoral maps. . .all of these are forming a perfect storm which means that while the US is effectively gridlocked in meaningfully addressing any of its real problem, the gridlock will continue because it actually maintains the power of those who benefitted from the old power system.

Castaneda is ruthlessly efficient in laying all this out. But what is really interesting is that he can't seem to follow this through to its logical conclusion. Instead, we are treated to a kind of "well, the US has survived this long, it will probably be able to fix this problem. The end!" But there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in his own analysis that provides any basis for such a conclusion. It is a fascinating example of an author desperately running from the power of their own logic. ( )