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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Xenophobia
Minor: Gun violence, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Violence, Mass/school shootings, Murder, Pregnancy, Cultural appropriation
a deeper and broader dive into contemporary America than This Brilliant Darkness which means yes, it deserves the National Book Award finalist status but i (just barely) prefer his previous book.
This book was scary in a lot of ways but the writing is straight forward and enjoyable. It paints a good picture of the issue and helped me understand a lot of people who are distant to me in miles and in thought.
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
I liked the book’s last chapter the most, confirming for me the type of history I find most resonant. Despite sharlet’s patience and quality reporting, I’m still confused by what brings people to become Trumpers or gun toting Christians. His last chapter on the Robeson and the Weavers reminds me that the racism and irrationality that so much of America is enthrall with is actually our historical norm. How do we build on the moments of hope and inclusion?
challenging
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
“ … my story is really about … how and why some of us believe some of what we’re believing lately” p240
Disturbing.
Book is bookended by sections on Harry Belafonte at the beginning and The Weavers (mainly Lee Hays) at the ending. Both activists and outspoken for civil rights.
The center (and bulk) of the book is about religion (fundamental evangelicism), Trump, Jan 6, and a road trip across America. Author sees facism present in the US now. There are glimmers of hope in the journey (some young people protesting after Roe was overturned). There’s much more trauma than hope though (toddlers with guns, preachers who claim to be Christian yet state they disregard the message of the cross).
Be cautious when reading if these topics are rough for you.
I found it worthwhile to read to have a bit more idea about how some of these right-wingers think.
Glad I read it but absolutely not going to reread!
Disturbing.
Book is bookended by sections on Harry Belafonte at the beginning and The Weavers (mainly Lee Hays) at the ending. Both activists and outspoken for civil rights.
The center (and bulk) of the book is about religion (fundamental evangelicism), Trump, Jan 6, and a road trip across America. Author sees facism present in the US now. There are glimmers of hope in the journey (some young people protesting after Roe was overturned). There’s much more trauma than hope though (toddlers with guns, preachers who claim to be Christian yet state they disregard the message of the cross).
Be cautious when reading if these topics are rough for you.
I found it worthwhile to read to have a bit more idea about how some of these right-wingers think.
Glad I read it but absolutely not going to reread!
‘…this book is written from the middle of something, a season of coming apart.’
What is happening in America? In this book, Jeff Sharlet takes a journey across America to try to understand what has happened over the past decade. As a non-American, I admit to tuning in and out of American politics, of noting the differences between the political systems in Australia and America, of being alarmed by the excesses of presidential elections. And then Donald Trump was elected. I started paying closer attention. This is an unsettling read. In his Prelude, Jeff Sharlet writes:
‘Many of the stories that follow are about performances of Whiteness, the delusions with which it disguises and reveals itself. There is a difference, though, between delusion and imagination—that’s the hope of this book. I’ve tried to pull a thread of imagination through these pages, to notice moments of generosity, small solidarities, genuine wit, actual funny, real sorrow and love. Although this book is “about” a period of dissolution the documentary filmmaker Jeffrey Ruoff has described as “the Trumpocene”, it’s anchored against the undertow of these times at its beginning and ending by such stories—of real sorrow and love—from other days of struggle. They are portraits of singers, [Harry Belafonte and Lee Hays] their best songs forgotten or worn smooth by time and seemingly safe. Such is the effect of the undertow, which too often pulls our voices beneath. The losses these chapters chart are just as real as those of the pages in between, and deeper. But so, too, is the care for one another to which the songs these singers sang once summoned us.’
The journey starts with the January 6 insurrection, with the death of Ashli Babitt who, in Jeff Sharlett’s words, ‘was a fool who pursued her own death. And yet, many of us might say the same of ourselves. The peril in which the country finds itself now is not natural; it is in the broadest sense of our own American making.’
The journey continues across America, observing men ‘of God’ who cite Scripture and prepare for civil war.
“Drought, great heat, will be upon the land!” Pastor Hank cries. Yes, Lord, says the man beside me, as if grateful for this renaming of the sizzle outside as not “climate crisis” but confirmation of the divine. That’s how prophecy works. More diagnosis than prognosis. More description than soothsaying. It can be a means of deception or perception, or both at the same time.’
And there are the QAnon (and other) conspiracy theories, exhorting preparation for a second American revolution. So much white noise, so little analysis. Trump, with his Make America Great Again catchcry is perfectly poised to fan the flames and ride the hysteria.
‘Rob called January 6 a false flag – a hoax, staged – even though he was there. I’d been listening to the January 6 hearings, but who else had? Nobody I’d met on the road. Everybody seemed to know someone who’d participated (or, like Rob, had participated, and yet no-one believed it’d really happened. If, as F. Scott Fitzgerald suggested, “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function”, such cognitive dissonance is the awful genius of our ecstatically disinformed age.’
What does the future hold? Trump is a lightning rod for disaffection, for those of the Far Right. He is unlikely to meet expectations or deliver improvement in what may well be to be a second Trumpocene Age, given the American Presidential election later this year.
This is an unsettling and disturbing read, made worse by the fact that conspiracy theories multiply and spread in the current global environment while objective analysis seems muted. While some manifestations seem uniquely American, I can take no comfort from that. What does the future hold?
‘The past, like the future, remains unfixed, unsettled.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith