timcee

This is my second Matt Taibbi book and I was as entertained as I was with Griftopia. He takes both the religious right/fundamentalists in Texas to task by going undercover and reporting what happens at all weekend seminars and what's preached in the church. At the same time he goes back and forth to DC and NY, sitting in the congressional press pit, and getting into arguments with 9-11 Truthers, whom he enraged with a throw away ad hominem line in one of his pieces for Rolling Stone. As disturbing as some of the things the fundamentalists he was with believe, they come off as the more rational when pitted against the Truthers. Not so much with what they conclude but they have real difficulties in their lives and are reaching out and interacting and are basically in group therapy... sadly, it ends in talking in tongues and vomitting demons into paper bags (no, I am not joking), but for the most part when he interviews them following fiery sermons about kickstarting end times and the wilder militaristic ideas, most people said 'amen' and promptly forgot the specifics, because they have more pressing personal problems. The Truthers basically have the same need for social interaction, but seem to have even less capacity for critical reasoning and more faith in paranoid irrational scenarios of end times than the most deeply indoctrinated of the folks who believe in Revelations. A good fun read with surprisingly empathetic portrayals of people who until now I regarded as hopeless nut jobs.

2022-11-14 13:52