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Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire (Revised)
Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire (Revised) | Matt Taibbi
5 posts | 5 read | 6 to read
A REVELATORY AND DARKLY COMIC ADVENTURE THROUGH A NATION ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN--FROM THE HALLS OF CONGRESS TO THE BASES OF BAGHDAD TO THE APOCALYPTIC CHURCHES OF THE HEARTLAND Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi set out to describe the nature of George Bush's America in the post-9/11 era and ended up vomiting demons in an evangelical church in Texas, riding the streets of Baghdad in an American convoy to nowhere, searching for phantom fighter jets in Congress, and falling into the rabbit hole of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Matt discovered in his travels across the country that the resilient blue state/red state narrative of American politics had become irrelevant. A large and growing chunk of the American population was so turned off--or radicalized--by electoral chicanery, a spineless news media, and the increasingly blatant lies from our leaders (they hate us for our freedom) that they abandoned the political mainstream altogether. They joined what he calls The Great Derangement. Taibbi tells the story of this new American madness by inserting himself into four defining American subcultures: The Military, where he finds himself mired in the grotesque black comedy of the American occupation of Iraq; The System, where he follows the money-slicked path of legislation in Congress; The Resistance, where he doubles as chief public antagonist and undercover member of the passionately bonkers 9/11 Truth Movement; and The Church, where he infiltrates a politically influential apocalyptic mega-ministry in Texas and enters the lives of its desperate congregants. Together these four interwoven adventures paint a portrait of a nation dangerously out of touch with realityand desperately searching for answers in all the wrong places. Funny, smart, and a little bit heartbreaking, The Great Derangement is an audaciously reported, sobering, and illuminating portrait of America at the end of the Bush era.
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The_Penniless_Author
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Pickpick

I've always enjoyed Taibbi's takedowns of Wall St. Here he sets his sights much higher, chronicling what he sees as America's psychic collapse, a national nervous breakdown of sorts, accompanied by a rise in conspiratorial thinking. It's worth noting that this book was published in 2008 and is based on observations covering the 2006 midterm elections, long before Trump and the great cultural divide of present.

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keithmalek

He pulled up a chair, spun it around to sit with the chair back facing forward, plopped down, and started barking at me in the frenzied, heavily accented English of a German film student sent to the emergency room for a meth overdose.

tournevis You know, I don't take issue with the subject matter of this book, which is really important, but I really take huge issue with the title that misappropriates the name of my people's forced expulsion from their own homes and country under British military rule, for the shock value of describing what's happening in your country's government. That irks me. A lot. No your fault. But the author's, who probably didn't care. 7y
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keithmalek

I suppose on some level I was regretting the description of these nice people as clinically insane, but that's the thing about the Internet--there's an awful lot of white-hot insanity out there that is written by people who seem quite normal once they look up from their computer screens.

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keithmalek

When the government sees it's people as the enemy, sooner or later that feeling gets to be mutual.

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GoneFishing

To be robbed and betrayed by a fiendish underground conspiracy, or by the earthly agents of Satan, is at least a romantic sort of plight - it suggests at least a grand Hollywood-ready confrontation between good and evil - but to be coldly ripped off over and over again by a bunch of bloodless, second-rate schmoes, schmoes you chose, you elected, is not something anyone will take much pleasure in bragging about.

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