PanPolitico...by the end of the book, it’s hard to escape the nagging feeling that Chapo—the podcast and the book—is, at bottom, an actual, unironic infomercial scheme. They make bank by selling you a candy-coated version of socialism, one that may offend real socialists even more than liberal gruel-peddlers like myself ... The Chapo Guide authors glibly pooh-pooh the postwar Communist threat that drove containment. \'Who cares?\' if the Soviets won the Cold War, they write. \'Pick your dictatorship: Would you have rather lived in Fidel Castro’s Cuba or in any one of the U.S.’s many military junta police states?\' Would they have applied the same logic when the U.S. allied with Stalin to repel Hitler? They were both not just run-of-the-mill dictators, but mass murderers. What’s the diff? ... we get the usual left-wing criticisms of the Barack Obama and Bill Clinton presidencies ... The infomercial socialists of Chapo have exploited the free market expertly, and at least saved themselves from the 9-to-5 prison. There is always a market for easy solutions to complicated problems. The book’s introduction promises to \'offer a vision of a new world—one in which a person can post in the morning, game in the afternoon, and podcast after dinner without ever becoming a poster, gamer or podcaster.\' After reading the book, I know of five who can.
