He explains: A political imaginary involves going beyond and challenging current capabilities, inhibitions, and constraints regarding power and its proper limits and improper uses.
What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.
[21] Under managed democracy, the electorate is prevented from having a significant impact on policies adopted by the state because of the opinion construction and manipulation carried out by means of technology, social science, contracts and corporate subsidies.
[29][30] Warren also adds caveats arguing that the part of the book published in 1960 has less relevance in the 21st century, that the new portion of the book makes some leaps in subordinating the positions of historical figures to support his thesis, and that Wolin dismisses too many of the democratic advances in recent years as ultimately serving the elites slowly concentrating power.
[31] Arolda Elbasani, in her review of Democracy Incorporated, finds Wolin's description of the US having some tendencies towards inverted totalitarianism as compelling but "rather exaggerated" and using some historical choices she calls "bewildering".
[32] In a review of Wolin's Democracy Incorporated in Truthdig, political scientist and author Chalmers Johnson wrote that the book is a "devastating critique" of the contemporary government of the United States—including the way it has changed in recent years and the actions that "must" be undertaken "if it is not to disappear into history along with its classic totalitarian predecessors: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia".
[33] Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers expressed the following view:[34] We are living in a time of Inverted Totalitarianism, in which the tools used to maintain the status quo are much more subtle and technologically advanced ...
These include propaganda and major media outlets that hide the real news about conditions at home and our activities around the world behind distractions [...] Another tool is to create insecurity in the population so that people are unwilling to speak out and take risks for fear of losing their jobs [...] Changes in college education also silence dissent [...] Adjunct professors [...] are less willing to teach topics that are viewed as controversial.
[2][36][25][37] Every natural resource and living being is commodified and exploited by large corporations to the point of collapse as excess consumerism and sensationalism lull and manipulate the citizenry into surrendering their liberties and their participation in government.