The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American EmpireBy Matt Taibbi
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.
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.
Matt Taibbi’s book does an excellent job of portraying America honestly in our tremendously skewed post-9/11 world. Just as Alain Resnais’ “Night and Fog” was the first film to capture Auschwitz after the Holocaust, Matt Taibbi documents a new and strange America that has gone unnoticed by the mainstream media (perhaps because it’s a byproduct of it). Taibbi does all of this with humor, wit and bravery (I wouldn’t set foot in a John Hagee mega-church if you paid me). Overall, it’s poignant and hilarious and incredibly relevant to the America we live in.
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