A provocative, pointed challenge to all Americans to dig harder for the truth.
A sharp dissection of a culture of lies, secrets, and conspiracies—including “the original conspiracy theory: American exceptionalism.”
Even paranoiacs have enemies. In the case of current citizens of the U.S., the enemies are countless, as demonstrated by Kendzior, author of Hiding in Plain Sight and The View From Flyover Country. By the author’s account, the GOP is one, and particularly Republicans in state legislatures who insist that their states are naturally “red” when, in fact, almost everywhere is purple—“like a bruise.” Alas, Kendzior notes, Americans are gullible people: A week after the 2020 election, only 3% of the population believed that Donald Trump had won, but a year after, “only 58 percent of Americans—and only 21 percent of Republicans—still believed that Biden was the legitimate president.” In such an environment, it’s small wonder that conspiracy theories are in wide circulation. Some of them are bizarre enough to seem almost parodies—e.g., “Pizzagate.” Others, by Kendzior’s account, have stronger legs. For example, we still don’t know all the facts about 9/11, particularly when it comes to Saudi Arabia’s involvement, and the leaders of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol have yet to be brought to justice. In a corrupt culture of lies (think of the thousands Trump sputtered), chain reactions fire wildly. Since we mistrust authority but yield to power, it’s the loudest voice in the room that wins, no matter how ridiculous the matter in question might be. Take QAnon’s assertion that only Trump could save us from a pedophile ring, when in fact allegations of pedophilia have long surrounded him. Kendzior’s indignation can sometimes wax a touch too righteous, as when she snipes at Anthony Fauci for his supposedly overweening self-regard. Nonetheless, her incisive account of a society in a death spiral, beset by “simultaneous revivals of the worst of the American past,” is endlessly compelling.
A provocative, pointed challenge to all Americans to dig harder for the truth.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-21072-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.
In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence, Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608224
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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