Book Review: Nitt Witt Hill by Sebas­t­ian Gib­son

Nitt Witt Hill by Sebas­t­ian Gib­son is a polit­i­cal satire which brings for­ward the absur­di­ties of today’s pol­i­tics. Unfor­tu­nately we call these absur­di­ties “news.”

The book is told by Mark, a polit­i­cal con­sul­tant who goes by the name of Mark Twain – Twain being his beloved dog.

The Exec­u­tive and Leg­isla­tive branches of our gov­ern­ment are los­ing their minds. New polit­i­cal par­ties form, the Nitt Witts (far right —  "Elect a Nitt Witt and see what some real Nitt Witts can do in Wash­ing­ton."), the Clowns ("Isn't it time we had some real Turkeys in office instead of those Clowns?"), the Turkeys and more.

Our fear­less lead­ers have come to the con­clu­sion that the metal in bras is one of the causes of inter­fer­ence in air­craft nav­i­ga­tion and out­law bras on air­planes and their sale. Mark and Twain try to make sense of this sit­u­a­tion, but is there any sense to be made?

Sebas­t­ian Gib­son sets the mood for Nitt Witt Hill right on the first page with a warn­ing from famed author, critic, and polit­i­cal satirist Mark Twain:

“Per­sons attempt­ing to find a motive in this nar­ra­tive will be pros­e­cuted; per­sons attempt­ing to find a moral in it will be ban­ished; per­sons attempt­ing to find a plot in it will be shot.”

In Nitt Witt Hill (named after Nitt Witt Ridge in Cal­i­for­nia), Mr. Gib­son leaves no polit­i­cal wing safe, he high­lights the absur­dity, cor­rup­tion and idiocy of the polit­i­cal class (yes, class). While the sit­u­a­tions in this books are twisted, they are also, unfor­tu­nately, sadly accurate.

I have long main­tained that the politi­cian's first job, as they see it, is to get re-elected. In order to so they must use the divide-and-conquer strat­egy. The polit­i­cal class takes issues which are unim­por­tant yet divi­sive (abor­tion, gay mar­riage, etc.) and makes the elec­tions about those instead of the impor­tant, albeit bor­ing, issues (econ­omy, unem­ploy­ment, etc.).

The sheeple swal­low this up as those issues were the Torah brought down from Mt. Sinai and the polit­i­cal class, who are busy fin­ger point­ing, pass­ing laws to enrich their friends and think “long term” means the next elec­tion have no con­se­quences to their actions (most of them get their jobs back).

This book reminded me of:

Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Mark Twain by Mark Twain
Tan­gled Webs: How False State­ments are Under­min­ing Amer­ica by James B. Stewart

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Article Author: ManOfLaBook.com

A father, husband, avid reader, blogger, software engineer & wood worker who is known the world over as a man of many interests and to his wife as “an idiot”.

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