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The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire

Book by Matt Taibbi · 7 quotes · Current Events, Extremism, Polarization

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The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire Quotes

“Washington politicians basically view the People as a capricious and dangerous enemy, a dumb mob whose only interesting quality happens to be their power to take away politicians' jobs... When the government sees its people as the enemy, sooner or later that feeling gets to be mutual. And that's when the real weirdness begins.”

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Book:The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
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“No voter wants to believe he doesn’t really matter, so he buys into the idea that there are two substantively different parties frantically competing for his attention, the ideological fate of the country hanging on his decision every few years. It flatters the average citizen to think that way. The reality is that the dominant characteristic of our political system is the unchanging nature of the political consensus—while the two parties agree about most all of the important things, they disagree violently about the inconsequential stuff, providing the fodder and the drama for an endless political “struggle” that plays itself out in entertaining fashion every couple of years.”

ExtremismPolarizationPolitics Observation
Book:The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
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“The similarities between both of these groups were striking and should be clear to anyone who reads this book. Both groups were and are defined primarily by an unshakable belief in the inhumanity of their enemies on the other side; the Christians seldom distinguished between Islamic terrorism and, say, Al Gore–style environmentalism, while the Truthers easily believed that reporters for the Washington Post, the president, and the front-line operators of NORAD were equally capable of murdering masses of ordinary New York financial-sector employees. Abandoned by the political center, both groups ascribed unblinkingly to a militant, us-against-them worldview, where only their own could be trusted. What made them distinctly American was that, while actually the victims of an obvious, unhidden conspiracy of corrupt political power, they chose to battle bugbears that were completely idiotic, fanciful, and imaginary”

ExtremismPolarizationPolitics Observation
Book:The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
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“At the tail end of the Reagan years the Democratic Party, with the aid of Clinton/Gore–led groups like the Democratic Leadership Council, presented us with a new kind of “business-friendly” Democrat, one who voted the right way on choice and minority rights but was “willing to work with business” on such matters as free trade, deregulation, privatization, government spending, and personal debt. Such a Democrat, we were told, could win: we’d be giving up a thing or two in terms of workers’ rights and other matters, but at least Roe v. Wade would be safe for now.”

PoliticsSocial IssuesDemocratsCentrism
Book:The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
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“I was a lapsing Christian, but in what direction was I lapsing? To nowhere, to nothingness. As absurd as the church was, it was an improvement over my actual life because there was at least a pretense of meaning there. Back in New York, I was just eating and taking up space, a depraved postmodern creature on the job, carrying pebbles up the media anthill.”

PoliticsCurrent EventsPolitical CommentaryPolitical Opinion
Book:The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
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“... Americans were now supposed to make their own sense of the world. There was no dependable authority left to turn to, no life raft in the increasingly perilous informational sea. This coincided with an age when Americans now needed to understand more of the world than ever before. A factory worker in suburban Ohio now needed to understand the cultures of places like Bangalore and Beijing if he wanted to know why he'd lost his job. Which, incidentally, he probably had. Now broke, or under severe financial pressure, with no community leaders, no community, no news he can trust, Joe American has to turn on the Internet and tell himself a story that makes sense to him. What story is he going to tell?”

PopulismCurrent EventsPolitical CommentaryPolitical Opinion
Book:The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
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