The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire by Matt Taibbi (PDF)

Description

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 HEARTLANDRolling Stone’sMatt 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 reality and 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.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I enjoy reading about US politics, because it reflects more or less what is happening in Australia. Sure the topics are different and mostly I’m comparing summaries or biased opinion pieces (from the US) with everyday mundane stuff that (sadly) feels like it doesn’t involve me (from Australia). And that is exactly what this book is about.Well, not about US vs America, but rather how there is no real choice in terms of who you vote for because at the end of the day they people “in power” are funded by the people in power, and those fund either party just about the same. Or to put it another way, the government is, if not for sale, for rent. The other part of this book is about how we respond to this, or conversely how we interpret one of these to be the lesser or greater evil. What’s interesting is that Taibbi actually presents his case, and his examples extremely well.While reading this, I came across the term “gonzo journalism” which wikipedia’s definition means is the style of this book. I had read

⭐before and rather liked it, and its style had appealed to me (though again, this is not a scholarly work), which had put me onto this book. And again it doesn’t disappoint. It makes the book readable and conveys an element of this being “real”.Something that I thought was also interesting is that at the start of the book Taibbi mentions that he was down about where is career and style had lead him, though after this book I think he should feel rather proud.So about the book, it ends in about 2007 with the paperback edition having a extra epilogue written in 2008. This is before the Tea Parties and Barack Obama winning the election, and really it steers away from the Republican or Democrat parties in all but he most base or stereo typical values, which is why it remains so accessible and applicable even in Australia. The primary topics dealt with are about religion (fundamentalist Christian) and the 9/11 truth movement, all in view of how they relate to politics and vice versa. In the process Taibbi goes to church and discusses with truthers and chronicles the experience in light of its effect on him but also in light of the other individuals.The read is great, easy going and strangely eye opening, it certainly makes you think about your own experiences. For such a short book, and written in the style it is, it is surprising how broad the topics covered are and how well they are examined.Clearly the book is a little dated, though I don’t think this should be seen as a current affairs issue of a certain year, but rather as a global issue to be understood, possibly in light of the political climate at the time of writing, though as he argues, not much is really changing, except maybe it is getting worse. Irrespective, it is a great read and possess excellent depth.

⭐Not Tiabbi’s best. Tiabbi might have written a more commercial, more generally accessible book by foregoing condescending and occasionally vulgar attributions about the filthy scum he writes about. My thinking is Tiabbi is well aware seasoning uncontestable facts with personal value statements is off-putting to the literal but marginally literate “good boys” and “good girls” America’s gifted and talented education programs began turning out in huge numbers in the late 1970s. I salute Tiabbi for writing off people who might have become Nazis in a different time and place.The Great Derangement describes in part what comes after a nation turns to propaganda at the expense of reason. America has become a nation of emotionalists stampeded from pillar to post by borderline criminals in high places. Again, The Great Derangement is not in the same world as Tiabbi’s best work, but it is good enough.The subject matter is disheartening. It is not difficult for me to excuse desultory writing about desultory subjects. Tiabbi is not the only person making a very good living disdaining Americans lost in tropes (see: finance, government). From the postmodern chimera that is multiculturalism, to the reactionary abyss free markets represent, plenty of derangement is out there.If you walk away from The Great Derangement wondering “why”, welcome to the ten percent of Americans literate enough to be part of a 21st Century Age of Reason. Still, don’t hold your breath waiting. America’s least fortunate are not UN-fortunate enough to rise in their own interest. Nothing is going to change any time soon.As proved by the bailouts of 2008 and 2009 and lack of prosecutions of criminal elements whose abuses of public trust caused the crash of 2008, almost all Americans positioned to make a difference like Deranged America better than they liked the America that led the industrial world out of a depression and was the deciding factor in two world wars.

⭐I confess to being something of a fan of Matt Taibbbi’s writing. In his blogs, his pieces for `Rolling Stone’ Magazine (of which he is now editor) and his numerous TV appearances he never fails to entertain as he reveals some of the truly astounding levels of corruption in the badly dysfunctional process of US Government, and the way moneyed lobbyists buy legislators with campaign donations in order to gain special favours. Taibbi’s public stance against the criminal practices on Wall Street which almost bankrupted the world’s economy, and his open support for the `Occupy Wall Street’ protestors, has revealed an understanding of the complexities of the banking scandal way beyond the knowledge-level of most `economics journalists’ in the mainstream media. All this is done with clear, lucid explanations and a biting humour to sweeten the medicine.`The Great Derangement’ is Taibbi’s 2007 book describing how the corruption of the American political process on Capitol Hill has now degenerated to the point where many citizens simply don’t understand what is going on or how the system really works, because big business lobby groups and the congressmen and senators who work to forward their interests bury the process of getting what they want in procedural complexity largely hidden from public scrutiny. As a reaction to this sham, large sections of American society have become so disconnected from the political process that they retreat into either fundamentalist end-times religious movements led by far-right political cheerleaders, or ignorant delusional conspiracy theories about the government either knowing about or organizing a vast conspiracy behind the Salafi-Islamist attacks on NYC & Washington DC in September 2001. Taibbi reveals these differing flavours of mass idiocy to be essentially the same phenomenon; a useful distraction which serves the interests of the prevailing administration and their various paymasters, in the case of the `truthers’ by leading them away pied-piper style into delusional paradigms where they waste their energies and have no effect on the political process, and in the case of the end-times evangelical churches by – among other things – delivering a powerful political lobby for the neo-con right wing and indirectly for the hard-line policies of the State of Israel.Through detailed examinations into the daily business of government, Taibbi patiently and forensically dissects the manipulative and dishonest practices at the heart of the legislative process. By way of illustration, Taibbi focuses on bill HR 3893 championed by Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX). For public consumption, the bill is supposed to champion the rights of the consumer and make available cheaper gasoline and heating oil to the cash-strapped and destitute survivors of Hurricane Katrina. In reality, we are shown with great skill and in great detail how the more arcane procedures of Congress are exploited to repeal provisions of the Clean Air Act and so relieve polluters from annoying legislation which curbs toxic emissions. The price of gas remains unaffected by the new law and oil-company profits continue to roll in: political cynicism in action. In a later chapter, Taibbi illustrates how the congressional budget is constructed to ensure political paymasters from industry are rewarded by the complex process of `earmarking’ which, if you have little knowledge of these arcane procedures, may come as an unwelcome revelation as to the degree of corruption in the broken political system.The saddest (and funniest) chapters are those where Taibbi adopts the undercover persona `Matt Collins’ and joins the Cornerstone Evangelical Church in Texas to discover for himself how such institutions operate. Chapter 3 `The Longest Three Days of my Life’ details an `Encounter Weekend’ at the Church which becomes progressively laugh-out-loud funny as Matt is slowly taken over by his alter-ego and gets swept along by a process organized with military precision, a textbook example of how to generate `group-think.’ However, Matt also feels empathy for other attendees who befriend him; we sympathise with their plight as they try to fill the void of their broken lives with new religion which offers them family-belonging, certainty and salvation. Largely abandoned by the political class, a new `family’ is embraced with religious zeal and belief that `the rapture’ will take them to Heaven. The casting-out-of-demons ceremony (“I cast out the demon of the intellect…I cast out the demon of anal fissures…I cast out the demon of astrology…of philosophy”) is beyond comic absurdity – especially to the 21st century sensibilities of a European reader.Chapter 4 `The Derangement at War’ sees the author in Iraq, where he goes out on patrol with a US Army platoon in Bagdhad. The pointlessness and financial profligacy of US policy in Iraq is brought into sharp focus, as the well-meaning but ineffectual young recruits go about their duties but are in reality no more than Aunt-Sally targets for insurgents. Says Taibbi:”Sometime later, when I’d find myself in Texas with ex-military preacher Phil Fortenberry – talking about enemy aircraft and arterial breaches with somewhat older men and women, many of them ex-soldiers moved on to a different but no less confusing stage of life – I wondered if the Army, with its same tireless belief in American can-doism and its same sit-in-a-circle get-to-know-you rituals, doesn’t prepare some of these kids for future encounter weekends” (p97).Two chapters of the book deal with Taibbi’s encounters with 9/11 `truthers’ and `the derangement of the American left.’ Initially a small bunch of `truthers’ picket his NYC office in protest at a comment about their `movement’ in a blog (Taibbi called them “clinically insane”), and subsequently deluge his email inbox with obscenities and hate-mail. Later, Taibbi attends some `troofer’ meetings incognito, and we see here the same kind of dysfunctional, delusional disconnect with any kind of meaningful reality as earlier revealed in the Cornerstone Church meetings. If you have ever been exposed to the deranged rantings of a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, these chapters are well worth the price of admission:”The movement is distinguished by a kind of defiant unfamiliarity with the actual character of America’s ruling class. In 9/11 truth lore, the people who staff the White House, the security agencies, the Pentagon, and groups like PNAC and the Council on Foreign Relations are imagined to be a monolithic, united class of dastardly, swashbuckling risk-takers with permanent hard-ons for `Bourne Supremacy’-style `false flag’ operations, instead of the mundanely greedy, risk-averse, backstabbing, lawn-tending, half clever suburban golfers they are in real life…”The truly sad thing about the 9/11 Truth Movement is that it’s based on the wildly erroneous proposition that our leaders would ever be frightened enough of public opinion to feel the need to pull off this kind of stunt before acting in a place like Afghanistan of Iraq. At its heart, 9/11 Truth is a conceit, a narcissistic pipe dream for a dingbat, sheeplike population that is pleased to imagine itself dangerous and ungovernable…the adherents flatter themselves with fantasies about a ruling class obsessed with keeping the terrible truth from the watchful, exacting eye of the people…whereas the real conspiracy of power in America is right out in the open and always has been, only nobody cares…” (p189-191) – and so on.For all the merits of `The Great Derangement’ – and there are many – one can’t help but feel Taibbi might have given us an even better book; a punchier, more coherent essay about the current state of the political landscape in the USA. Editing is good but not exemplary, there are no illustrations or photos, and the argument is made in episodic cameos from pulling together loosely connected strands. These minor shortcomings might simply be down to the author’s journalistic credentials as editor/author of magazine articles; book-writing is a slightly different skill-set.Matt Taibbi is still young. Let’s hope he continues to fight the good fight, and offer us more of his intelligent, scathing, right-on-the-money insights in the future.

⭐ich bewerte keine Bücher mehr. Nachdem ich zahllose Rezensionen hier auf Amazon gelesen habe, weiß ich, dass sie alle so subjektiv sind, dass sie nicht als objektive Bewertung taugen. Lest und bildet Euch Eure Meinung selbst!I need it . Nice quality and sturdy. Good quality with low price. It is very fast delivery. It’s awesome, Works great and has a sturdy cord.

⭐Amazing book!

⭐Taibbi commendably takes his journalist spotlight off the corrupt actors on Washington’s center stage, and instead investigates the most disaffected ordinary Americans. But to do so he goes undercover, posing as a believer in far right-wing Christian-Zionism, or far-left 9/11 conspiracy theories. He basically plays Borat, inventing oddball past experiences to play his part, and letting the unsuspecting locals make fools of themselves for the camera. Later Taibbi gives his real opinions of what idiots they are, and asks what America is coming to.Only slowly does Taibbi’s basic compassion for these people rise to the fore. These are people, he reasons, both conservatives and liberals, who feel so conned by the political rip-off system that they can’t tell who to trust. And maybe, Taibbi suspects, part of the con has been to get them to blame and hate each other.–author of Correcting Jesus

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