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A review by trywii
Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War by Peachy Keenan
1.0
*There’s extended commentary and citations in the highlights*
I don’t think I’ve ever read any book more steeped in 4chan lingo and conspiracy theories.
I obviously came in expecting conservative values and right-wing talking points, but I was left completely baffled by the level of fantastical hypotheticals and the sense of entitlement to other people’s lives.
Several times, I had to stop and google terms vague and unfamiliar to me, only for the rabbit hole to lead to layers of fantasy nonsense (New World Order, ‘I will not eat bugs’, ‘The Longhouse’, etc).
None of the ‘Evil minorities are taking over the world and forcing your children to be super soldiers in the Woke Wars’ is grounded in reality, nor is it relevant to childrearing and homemaking. The only people who would see all these terms and genuinely believe them to be true wouldn’t need a book that just reaffirms what they read in their facebook groups, and anyone *outside* these hyper-niche circles are going to be completely lost.
A glaring flaw in the author’s argument is *why* people are choosing not to be parents. She almost gets it: she acknowledges once or twice that the largest issue is that of income and economics, and that if you can’t afford rent/healthcare/food/child care, why would you *want* a kid in the mix? But she doesn’t call out against the unfair systems under capitalism, no, because this too is somehow Feminism’s fault. Yup. Feminists (like seemingly all women in the author’s mind) are shrill, evil, conniving, hyper-sexual yet asexual bats that have done no good and ruined anything. Sure. Ignoring that many feminists themselves are mothers and wives but sure, yeah, evil feminists control the flow of economy directly from their phones.
There’s also the insistent *need* from the author to constantly put down any and all minorities. Every paragraph is punctuated with a tired quip about pronouns or protesting, whether or not it’s relevant to what she was saying.
Towards the end of the book, there’s a ‘Aw I don’t hate you, I only pity you, I will pray for you <3’, which is so backhanded when you take into account that for over 300 pages, she’s been calling anyone who isn’t a WASP every horrific thing in the book excluding slurs. Victims of assault, struggling mothers, people who’ve suffered negative side effects from medications, and those working from paycheck-to-paycheck aren’t safe from the childish and cruel ‘jokes’ and mockery.
I think the most egregious offense is a tie between blaming women for the assaults/rape they may have suffered, mocking people for physical traits they were born with, and gloating that if one of her kids came out as lgbt that she would shove them back into the closet door and promptly lock it.
Truly, I haven’t read a book so viscerally mean-spirited and cruel. The author’s ability to put everyone and anyone else down as a means to elevate her own beliefs and ideologies is abhorrent, and it’s laughable for her to claim her religious path somehow makes all of this ‘righteous’.
The way she talks about having children as ‘maxxing’, holding Elon Musk of all people as a good example for what men should achieve in terms of progenies, and treating having a dozen kids as something everyone and anyone should strive for tells me all I need to know: Kids aren’t individuals, they are a currency to the author, and she wants you to get rich quick.
Completely bizarre and baffling book. The only positive outline of reading this is knowing how fringe this is, and how few people will care to read it AND take it to heart.
I don’t think I’ve ever read any book more steeped in 4chan lingo and conspiracy theories.
I obviously came in expecting conservative values and right-wing talking points, but I was left completely baffled by the level of fantastical hypotheticals and the sense of entitlement to other people’s lives.
Several times, I had to stop and google terms vague and unfamiliar to me, only for the rabbit hole to lead to layers of fantasy nonsense (New World Order, ‘I will not eat bugs’, ‘The Longhouse’, etc).
None of the ‘Evil minorities are taking over the world and forcing your children to be super soldiers in the Woke Wars’ is grounded in reality, nor is it relevant to childrearing and homemaking. The only people who would see all these terms and genuinely believe them to be true wouldn’t need a book that just reaffirms what they read in their facebook groups, and anyone *outside* these hyper-niche circles are going to be completely lost.
A glaring flaw in the author’s argument is *why* people are choosing not to be parents. She almost gets it: she acknowledges once or twice that the largest issue is that of income and economics, and that if you can’t afford rent/healthcare/food/child care, why would you *want* a kid in the mix? But she doesn’t call out against the unfair systems under capitalism, no, because this too is somehow Feminism’s fault. Yup. Feminists (like seemingly all women in the author’s mind) are shrill, evil, conniving, hyper-sexual yet asexual bats that have done no good and ruined anything. Sure. Ignoring that many feminists themselves are mothers and wives but sure, yeah, evil feminists control the flow of economy directly from their phones.
There’s also the insistent *need* from the author to constantly put down any and all minorities. Every paragraph is punctuated with a tired quip about pronouns or protesting, whether or not it’s relevant to what she was saying.
Towards the end of the book, there’s a ‘Aw I don’t hate you, I only pity you, I will pray for you <3’, which is so backhanded when you take into account that for over 300 pages, she’s been calling anyone who isn’t a WASP every horrific thing in the book excluding slurs. Victims of assault, struggling mothers, people who’ve suffered negative side effects from medications, and those working from paycheck-to-paycheck aren’t safe from the childish and cruel ‘jokes’ and mockery.
I think the most egregious offense is a tie between blaming women for the assaults/rape they may have suffered, mocking people for physical traits they were born with, and gloating that if one of her kids came out as lgbt that she would shove them back into the closet door and promptly lock it.
Truly, I haven’t read a book so viscerally mean-spirited and cruel. The author’s ability to put everyone and anyone else down as a means to elevate her own beliefs and ideologies is abhorrent, and it’s laughable for her to claim her religious path somehow makes all of this ‘righteous’.
The way she talks about having children as ‘maxxing’, holding Elon Musk of all people as a good example for what men should achieve in terms of progenies, and treating having a dozen kids as something everyone and anyone should strive for tells me all I need to know: Kids aren’t individuals, they are a currency to the author, and she wants you to get rich quick.
Completely bizarre and baffling book. The only positive outline of reading this is knowing how fringe this is, and how few people will care to read it AND take it to heart.