Electronic Republican

Mariann G. Wizard spent twelve years adapting the Rider-Waite to American political headlines: Reagan as Emperor, Nixon as Death, the arcana recast as the republic's own pageant across eighty cards. Political tarot is a genuine folk genre, every era produces some, and this deck's value has only compounded: satire dates into documentation, and a Reagan-era political arcana now reads as a time capsule of what the headlines held sacred and damned. The twelve-year gestation shows in the completeness; this is sustained commentary, not a novelty sheet, the assignments argued card by card. Satirical decks read best as their own genre, commentary first, divination as the delivery device. It suits political-history collectors, satire connoisseurs, Americana shelves, and readers who enjoy arguing with a deck's editorial choices, which is the intended use. The apolitical will find no neutral corner here, and the deck, honest partisan that it is, never offered one.