Explaining America...

I promised some of my friends I'd air my political views on another page, and I shall. But a new book by Chris Hedges, Harvard Divinity School graduate and author, is so important, I think, that even if it smacks of politics a bit , it's worth everyone paying attention.

Just a couple of weeks ago American Facists: The Christian Right and the War on America (New York: The Free Press, 2007) appeared in print. Publishers Weekly calls it a lucid study that "draws striking parallels between 20th-century totalitarian movements and the highly organized, well-funded "dominionist movement," an influential theocratic sect within the country's huge evangelical population.... [He] profiles both former members and true believers, evoking the particular characteristics of this American variant of fascism." Publishers Weekly concludes that this is an "urgent book [that] forcefully illuminates what many across the political spectrum will recognize as a serious and growing threat to the very concept and practice of an open society."



I've not gotten the book yet (just ordered it), but I read Hedge's short essay "The Radical Christian Right is Built on Suburban Dispair" and found it most intriguing. If his analysis is right, and it certainly rang true to my ears, then we're in for interesting times in the coming years. The causes of the suburban dispair he describes and which have given rise to the "dominionist movement" in the Christian Right are in my mind, for many reasons, something we as a nation can ill-afford not to confront and ultimately change.