The great derangement

Remarkably prescient for when it was written, 2 presidential terms ago, the derangement, extreme polarization of mutually hating factions, has only gotten worse. Dialog is impossible because we're not all playing with the same set of facts.

Why has this occurred? Taibbi thinks it's because we've been manipulated and lied to and have reached the breaking point. This is clearly a big part of it, but I see the problem as deeper. I think a second factor is that we've become more multi-cultural which means that we don't start from the same background assumptions. The previous agreements were based on the dominance of an economically successful White male imperialist point of view. The elected president was everybody's president, not just the leader of a party. When he (and it was surely a 'he') gave a State of the Union address, there was no place for a rebuttal as if it were merely a point of view.

Disagreements were like family arguments and the family was hierarchical All lives mattered in theory and no one was pointing out that in practice, some lives did not and they were often Black. People believed in progress so if thing weren't right, they were moving in that direction.

The internet is another reason for the different sets of facts. Anyone can publish an opinion now.
People arguing points give urls as backup but they are merely links pointing to other links. Even our encyclopedia of facts is crowd sourced.

Education requires agreement on what are the facts and colleges are now seen as partisan. The economy is such that a degree won't guarantee you a job. Education is now seen as a form of elitism, the American version of China's cultural revolution.

Maybe this is all a good thing. Maybe in a true democracy, no one would ever agree with anyone else. Maybe the libertarian utopia sees us all as competing special interest groups.

But even libertarians want to eliminate force and fraud and Taibbi points out that just how much of those two there are.

Read this book for an inside view of what congress really does every day. Read it to appreciate what it's like to be a "Christian." Read it to see Bernie Sanders in action long before he became a presidential hopeful. Also, Taibbi really knows how to turn a phrase. You could peruse the quotes section.

Wow, what a scary, hilarious and depressing book this was! Veteran Rolling Stone political reporter Matt Taibbi visits two extreme sides of today's political "debate", a Christian Evangelist church in Texas and the wingnuts of the "Truth 9/11" squad, who maintain the whole Sept. 11 terrorist attack was really a government plot. A plot for what, no one seems quite clear, but a plot nonetheless.

His visit to the fire and brimstone evangelical mega-church in Texas is, of course, the scariest to this atheist. To imagine people buy into this far right wing talk of the apocalypse, brought on by Hillary Clinton (who really is the devil incarnate for these folks), is a truly depressing thought. Fine, have your religion if you need it, but show a little skepticism for these trumped up claims bellowed from the preacher man. There are some simply bust-a-gut laughing sections here, as he brings a liberalism and a truly cynical view to the scene.

He's equally tough on the Truth 9/11 group. In fact, one of the funniest sections of the book is his "transcript" of a meeting of the cabal lead by The Dark One himself, Dick Cheney and the rest of the leading neocons, as they figure out the plans for the 9/11 plot. It is so laughably an accurate account of how things must have happened if even a portion of their conspiracy theories are right that it makes it clear how far fetched it all really is. Yet, astoundingly, something like 40% believe some or all of these theories.

He intersperses these two stories with truly depressing chapters on how things currently are in Congress. The book actually goes past the 2006 Democrat uprising yet describes a "business as usual" attitude among our Congress critters. It's a very bleak, dark and depressing look at the politics of power and just how much it is to just stay in power and get money from lobbies. The main thrust of the 9/11 Truthers is that the whole plot was to change public opinion, but reading these other chapters makes you believe that they don't care about public opinion in the slightest.

I wish I still had the book on me so I could quote a few of the more outrageously cynical and humorous paragraphs. But Taibbi also does a very good job at trying to figure out what makes these people tick. What is it about big time religion that attracts folks? He works hard at humanizing them even if he can't believe what he is seeing sometimes. He understands both groups attempts at getting black and white answers in this very grey and confusing world. He makes the point that the 9/11 are just making their own version of the "truth", as today's news/marketers can't be trusted to do it for them.

A very good read, but ultimately very depressing. All the more so given the slow rate of change with the current administration, and the business as usual of both Congress and appointed leaders like Larry Summers, who has been in the pocket of big finance for years and yet is Obama's chief economic advisor.

Sigh. Now I'm depressed all over again.