Back in the 1980s, writer Florence King began her essay “Democrazy” by recounting a scene from the 1946 Japanese war trials. At one point, the former propaganda minister, Shumei Okawa, leaped to his feet and cried out: “I hate United States! It is democrazy!”

That unintended pun is the theme for King’s piece, which appears in her book “ Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye .” That same theme – the craziness of democracy and its foibles – can be found throughout King’s other essays, all written with a wit that makes a razor seem dull.

To read King’s 40-year-old criticisms of American democrazy is disheartening but amusing because time and technology have led our society and politics far deeper into the bowels of the looney bin. Her Reagan-era acerbic complaints about American culture are the

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