toggle_fow's reviews
1010 reviews

This book was helpful.

It's all the things you already know you should be doing/not doing, but presented in a counter-intuitive way that gives you a fresh perspective on long-held unhelpful thought habits. That may seem gimmicky, but for me, a person who hates the smarmy "health, wellness, and gratitude" aesthetic that internet influencer culture seems to be relentlessly touting, it was useful.

I know that holding onto anger hurts only me, and I know that a poor-me attitude leads nowhere, etc. but Paterson's structure and mirror-image approach helped me look at several things in a new way. Also, as an actual psychologist and not just a well-connected New York City writer, his understanding of how to actually help people seemed deeper to me than that of most self-help happiness gurus.

This is like half a suicidal memoir, and half a journalistic investigation into suicide from biological, societal, and systematic perspectives.

Just gotta say, if you're feeling suicidal, probably don't read this book. I didn't find it "triggering," per se, since I am not suicidal, but reading it definitely made two or three days that otherwise would have been completely normal, functioning days into weird, dim, unhappy days.

I expected this book to be about depression, which it kind of is. But it's more about suicide and suicidal ideation, specifically. The journalism on the topic is interesting. I have never personally interacted with the institutions of mental health or psychotropic medication, and reading about how disjointed the whole system is was eye-opening. I also had totally believed the "serotonin" explanation of how SSRIs work, and had no idea that people still straight up do not understand what's going on in the brain regarding this or any other mental condition. Crazy.

Equally crazy is that she works for Reuters now despite what seemed to be a work history record rife with depression-induced demerits and outright holes. She must be one heck of a reporter.

This book was a scary, informative read.

His thesis, learned from years of counseling abusive men, is that they don't abuse because they were abused as children, or because a previous girlfriend hurt them, or because they're drug or alcohol addicts, etc etc... but because they genuinely believe that they deserve to get their way in a relationship, and any other result is actually an offense against them.

I have to give this book five stars because I have never once heard that before, and this book is already old, so I know it's not a brand-new concept.

It sounded almost crazy when he started out saying that addressing "anger problems" has no effect on abuse, and addressing addiction has no effect on abuse. Really? Is that possible? But then: "Feelings do not govern abusive or controlling behavior; beliefs, values, and habits are the driving forces." Like, okay, wow. He's right. Complete with illustrative anecdotes from his real-life counseling experience, he paints a horribly convincing picture over the course of the book showing that abusers abuse because they truly believe they are justified in doing so.

He does generalize the heck out of gender differences, which I would say is the most major way the book comes off as a little dated.

His definition of abuse requires the abused person to be terrified, threatened, or controlled by the abusive action; because of that, he throws nearly all situations in which a woman might be abusing her male partner out of the definition, since a man can't hardly be frightened by a woman hitting him, right? He also warns that nearly all men who claim to have been abused by their female partner are actually the abuser and just twisting the situation to garner sympathy.

It's impossible to deny that the overwhelming majority of abuse does come from men, from almost any statistic you might consult, but I do think that generalizing as firmly and as broadly as he does is dangerous. Of course there are minority situations in which a perfectly normal man might be terrified or controlled by an abusive wife, and discounting even that possibility is just cruel, given the widespread mockery and disbelief that men who truly have been abused encounter anyway.

Overall, most of this book is aimed toward giving the abused partner tools to understand what is happening to them, but he devotes some sections to advice for concerned relatives and friends, and professionals in the court and mental health systems as well. There is a lot here that I didn't know, and a lot that I probably never would have figured out on my own. Well worth the read.

There aren't that many moments in history that are SO pivotal and SO frustrating that they tempt me to dedicate the rest of my life to inventing time travel, but this is one of them.

The title of this book is a summary in and of itself. It covers the time from the end of WWI and the Paris Peace Conference into the 1930s, and chronicles in great detail the solid decade of Sisyphean attempts by Arabs to wrest any scrap of self-determination away from the European powers.

Some popular histories cover topics that are so abundantly researched, known, and talked about that you could essentially learn what's in the book by searching the web yourself. This book is not like that. Professor Thompson clearly spent years digging up half-forgotten sources. Some of the early history was familiar to me (Balfour declaration/Hussein-McMahon Correspondence/Sykes-Picot/the King-Crane Commission) but as soon as we left behind the European negotiations, the book delved into things I had barely any awareness of.

For example, a quick google of Rashid Rida turns up a ton of writing on his religious ideas, but barely anything about how he was once the president of Syria. The chronicle of constitutional debates in the Syrian Congress is interesting enough itself to justify the book. Every stage of Faisal and the Arab Nationalists' campaign and every political gambit is recorded, down to who he met with on what day in Paris. I'm glad I know Robert de Caix's name, now, so that I can curse it. The book drags a little at some points, but my primary emotion was impotent rage rather than boredom.

Now, we look back on WWI with nearly pure cynicism. Sure, the Germans started it, but everyone was gunning for that war. Any attempt to cast a morally "good" versus "bad" side sort of falls flat under the shadow of WWII, compared to which all WWI participants are just states acting according to their interests in a pretty understandable way. We know that the between-war years were not great. We know that they were racist as heck, and still racing upward toward peak racism. We know that economies around the world were about to take a near-fatal hit. We know that colonialism was still alive and flourishing, and that no one had the necessary power and will to make the League of Nations anything but a failed experiment.

In contrast, the rhetoric of the WWI victors was firmly cast in the triumph of modern freedom and self-determination over archaic, old-world despotism. Woodrow Wilson really thought he could make the League of Nations work. For most of the players, though, the freedom and justice and rule of law was just wallpaper over the age-old rule of might makes right that had (has?) always governed international politics.

We know all that. But at the time, they didn't.

Even if the Syrian Arabs had known from the start that freedom is taken, not given, they would have had a rough time. A big problem for them throughout the entire independence effort was that they literally could not, physically, get out to trade or communicate with the rest of the world, given their geographical position. It takes a confluence of factors to make a successful revolution, and I'm not sure they would have succeeded even if they went full-throttle for that option from the beginning.

But it is heartbreaking to watch Faisal and all the other nationalist leaders work so hard to build an inclusive, democratic state. They genuinely believed that if they were just politically smart enough, if they just built a good enough state, if their people were united and their country well-administered, that the Europeans would grant them their independence and welcome them into the international community. Why would they believe something like that?? Because that's what the Europeans said. There was just enough real belief in the new liberal international order, just enough genuine, supportive Westerners like Lawrence of Arabia and Charles Crane, to snooker the future of the Middle East.

The French and the British come off horribly, here. This is one historical period where America wasn't the one ruining everything in the Middle East. But the behavior of the European colonial powers is unfortunately not just a shameful past. You could write the same story about Iran, with America cast as the British. The hypocritical tendency of the French and British to deliberately suppress any burgeoning democracy and instead install corrupt or incapable kings, is something that we still love to do today.

After all, what's easier to control, a whole nation's popular opinion, or one single guy who loves money and power? And yet, this short-term solution begun almost a hundred years ago, has created or exacerbated problems that led to how many millions of deaths in the Middle East, from then until now? How much would it be worth, now, to have a stable, powerful, democratic ally in the Middle East, with a hundred-year history of liberal institutions and civil society? Still, it's hard to see any modern power being able or courageous enough to act differently.

Overall, a very interesting and horrible book. To the victor go the spoils.

This book is a brief introduction to the Enneagram.

It includes a test to help you find your type, overviews of each of the 9 types, and breakdowns of how each type relates to every other type in work, home, and relationship contexts. That's pretty much the whole book.

I would say the majority of the book is taken up in sections explaining how type two and type five get along at work, how type two and type six get along at work, how type two and type seven-- all the way through the many permutations. This is mildly helpful, but only if you know your friends', coworkers', and relatives' Enneagram numbers. The overall introduction of the system at the beginning is more a definition of terms than anything else.

This book saves you the work of clicking through seventeen web pages to find what you're looking for, but in reality it gives you the same exact information you could find online. If you're looking for anything more in-depth than a quiz and a brief profile, I would avoid paying money for this book and instead look elsewhere.

The experience of reading this book was fundamentally disturbing, despite its "happy ending," and I'm not sure why. It might have been the author's ethereal symbolism and constantly drawing every tiny, innocuous moment from the past into a divine, supernatural web that had profound secret meanings for her and her son. It really felt, for some reason, like a book I could not trust.

The author loves her son. That comes through clearly. Sometimes she sounds very much like an average Christian mom with her instinctive revulsion from texting acronyms ("yo, ima, city words") to saying "if I were a swearing type of girl" and then sort-of-but-not-really writing down swears. Sometimes she sounds like Joan of Arc, seeing visions and God's messages in dreams. I am not at all surprised that she writes poetry.

I tried to "practice not judging," like she says, but I did not succeed. It is not something I am good at doing, even though I keep trying. I don't understand. I don't think I will ever understand.

I picked up this book expecting to hear about the dangers of allowing American cultural values to draw Christians' focus away from the gospel and onto worldly controversies and concerns. Instead, this book is about how Christians need to focus more on worldly concerns.

After another look at the title and blurb, I'm not sure why I thought this was going to be a Christian book, except that I got it from the religion section on NetGalley. I suppose it is, technically, a Christian book, in that it is engaged in a brutal wrestling match with the author's religious upbringing and self-image, mentions the Holy Spirit quite a bit, and does use Biblical stories as metaphors.

However, I would say that it's more of a spiritual book rather than a Christian one. Though certainly very present among Christian communities, the cultural values with which Mayfield is fighting a battle to the death (several of them mentioned in the book title) will be familiar to any American of almost any background.

Her clarion call to lift up the weak, work alongside the marginalized, and weep with the oppressed is religiously indiscriminate, and a widely-recognized moral value among people who don't believe in any higher power at all. Her convictions are outwardly draped in the robes of Jesus, but activists of all stripes should be able to nod along with her zeal to dismantle power structures and radically engage with privilege.

If you can't tell, I'm deeply divided on how to rate this book.

On the one hand, Jesus didn't come to offer salvation to mankind, actually. Apparently, he came to change earthly economics to be more fair!

I don't want to simplify or distort Mayfield's argument in order to create a straw man to criticize, because it is far more complex than what I just said. But. After reading the book I think I can confidently state that she genuinely feels that the central message of Jesus and the Bible in general is that God wants all of us to fix as many earthly problems for as much of humanity as we possibly can. Here is a quote:

"What we want is the imagination to believe in heaven coming down to earth, in God's will being done to our neighbors, to shalom being experienced by those who have and are suffering the most. And this will not happen until we change the systems that actually created and uphold the way the United States works, the way America actually is, and until we own it as our own."

Here is another:

"I will never be happy until every single person in the world is safe, happy, and flourishing. I was both pleased and miserable at my core longing. I was pleased because it spoke to a spark of the divine in me because I do believe that this is God's dream for the world. I think this is what shalom is, what the Kingdom of God makes possible. But I was also miserable because until the kingdom comes in full, until we are in the new creation, this isn't a reality."

I am not sure what kind of pre- or post-Millennial theology Mayfield ascribes to, but it is clear that she believes in some kind of new creation where Jesus reigns on a physical earth renewed and restored to pre-Fall perfected bliss. However, she also seems convicted that true morality for a Christian (or anyone) is singlehandedly prying the fatally flawed and explicitly doomed earth back into pre-Fall bliss through sheer elbow grease, force of will, and moral anguish.

There seems to be a great tension in her heart, and two magnetic poles between which she wobbles in agony. She sees and acknowledges her own savior complex, her own perfectionism, control issues, and struggle with a works-based mentality in the book, yet she still seems trapped by them. She sees her constant sadness and outrage at the unjust state of the world as a virtue, and happiness as a failure, a sign of apathy and moral weakness. Yet she also talks about learning to take joy in every small moment from her multicultural refugee friends, and acknowledges that sorrow is only helpful when you come to the other side of the psalm and reaffirm hope in God's love and goodness.

While Jesus is mentioned a lot in this book, Mayfield recounts a memory of a vision/dream she had while drugged up in the hospital after almost dying: she feasted in heaven around a table with Rohingya refugees and heard a voice implied to be that of God saying, "In heaven, you will feast with those who have suffered the most on earth."

This message, in some ways, is directly from the Bible. In the sermon on the mount. In the first chapter of James. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. In 1 Corinthians 1, where Paul says, "For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God."

Mayfield sees this with crystal clarity. However, the entire chapter before the part I quoted shows that Paul is talking not about the virtue of being poor, but the virtue of being humble enough to accept the message of Christ crucified when all the highly-esteemed parts of the world we live in see it as foolishness. Where is Jesus in Mayfield's vision? She mentions his name a lot, but where is He? To her, salvation seems to come not through Jesus, but through the moral righteousness of being poor, being oppressed, and being sad. All those looking for a messiah in the time of Jesus were also looking for him to "dismantle oppressive hierarchies," and they were mistaken.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. He said, My kingdom is not of this world.

I can't affirm the soundness in any perspective that doesn't put Jesus at the center of salvation, of life, of everything we do.

However, I said I was conflicted. On the OTHER hand, Mayfield makes a whole lot of very important and convicting points that I think a lot of the American Christian establishment could benefit from taking a long, hard look at. Here is a sampling:

• The American virtue of autonomy. This is one that doesn't occur to me as often as some of the others, but was instantly convicting. I know that generally Western and especially American culture puts a lot of space between people. From how far away we stand when talking to people, to how far away our houses are from each other, to how close our family units tend to be, ours is a culture of individual over the group. I grew up knowing the names of one or two of my neighbors at the most and seeing them maybe once every five years during odd situations; this seems normal to me, but the majority of people in the world don't live this way.

Almost all non-Western people, the vast majority of world population, live in communities where neighbors know each other, where different generations of families live in the same house, where your business is everyone's business and everyone's is yours. As someone who loves to use the self-checkout at the grocery store to avoid human interaction as much as possible, this sounds borderline terrifying, but this is the kind of culture to which Jesus came. These are the kind of cultures to which the gospel was first preached.

Christians know we are ambassadors for Christ's message, but what does it say that one of the anecdotes about sharing Christ that I most commonly hear is about a 3-minute passing conversation with a grocery clerk? We are not to be of the world, but how can we share Christ if we are not in the world. Withdrawing further and further from close community relationships can only hurt our ability to show God's love to the world, and about that Mayfield is absolutely right.

• America as Rome. "There is nothing in Scripture, nothing in Jesus, that says my proud and terrible and interesting country is particularly blessed, has some special favor, has some special reason for existence," Mayfield says. Most of us have probably run into a sermon or a curriculum in which the United States is presented as the modern Israel, the Chosen Nation of the Christian era. Mayfield argues that, instead, the US is more like Rome or Babylon -- the powerful empire of the era, casting a shadow of spiritual error and physical suffering in which the people of God must live.

"We were founded as a Christian nation!" so many people say. There's probably some sense in which that is true, but it doesn't matter for any one of us individually. "Be sure that it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham." (Gal 3:7) The new Israel is those of all nations who follow God, not those who were born within a specific political boundary drawn on a map.

• Generosity. As a dyed-in-the-wool skinflint from day one, this is a hard one for me, but I think this is one of the best and strongest points included in this book. Mayfield talks about how we as a culture pursue affluence, and even positive practices widely encouraged like living within our means, investing wisely, and good financial management can be spiritually destructive if we start relying on ourselves and thinking we are in control. She talks about a time when she didn't give to a panhandler, saying, "If I was listening to the Spirit I would have given... believing that I had a role in providing for others just as I trusted that my own needs would be provided for."

That kind of mindset, exemplified by Mayfield's stories of her refugee friends who think nothing of giving even when they have little, like the widow with her mite or the church in Macedonia, is utterly alien to me. I have plenty, and still shudder at the thought of giving any away just in case the worst happens and I need it later. As a Christian, that's not how I should think. Consider the lilies of the field, after all. But I don't. I like to rely on myself, and only rely on God when I have no other recourse. A completely backwards relationship.

I have rarely heard a sermon on the Rich Young Ruler that didn't spend half its time disclaiming that being rich is okay, God never says being rich is wrong, as long as your priorities are right. That's not at all anywhere near the point of the encounter, and I think it speaks to a tendency to hoard that is shared by more than myself. Christians are told to "labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need." I think this is something we don't talk about enough, and that I needed to hear.

• Worldly success as the reward of virtue, and worldly struggles as a punishment for some moral failure. Even those who speak with contempt of the prosperity gospel can get tricked into holding this assumption, because it is one of the base elements of American culture and almost impossible to escape. We are told that if you work hard, you will succeed. Therefore, what are we to think about people who don't succeed? Well, they must not have worked hard.

It's a simple, intuitive arithmetic that's reinforced by much of our culture. Especially upper middle class white culture. And it leaves out half the story, while completely ignoring what the Bible says. "For some, the good news of the American Dream feels like bad news," says Mayfield. "I live in neighborhoods where I see the evidence of it everywhere: payday loan companies and fast food joints abound, but there are no green parks or community centers or apartments that are affordable."

I think she makes a powerful point using "good news" and "American Dream" in the same sentence like that, because they are not at all the same, and we make a grave mistake with possibly far-reaching consequences when we conflate them. God does not promise that wealth follows righteousness, so judging those who don't achieve it as if they somehow proved unworthy should sound ridiculous to any Christian.

• American evangelical paranoia with losing the culture war. Mayfield says that white Evangelicals who panic at the thought of becoming a minority in their own country are thinking empire thoughts. The Church is meant to be a remnant, a people set apart, wanderers in a land not our own. Not an empire. I think the point she makes about those in power fearing to lose it is a poignant one, and for Christians a dangerous one, since the last shall be first and the first shall be last. If our peace of mind comes from our position of cultural dominance and can be shaken so easily, we can hardly be trusting in God.

This book was terrifying, as losing control of your mind usually is.

It is written in parallel, the author's memories of the psychiatric ward laid in between bits and pieces of the rest of her life story. At the beginning it feels a bit plodding, taking in a stranger's stories of her childhood and wondering why you should care, but as you get to know the author and her loved ones you can't help but feel the dread and powerlessness of her eventual psychiatric break.

This book had some decent things to say.

Its thesis is that most people have values and an identity that encompass great, important things like "family" and "community" and "kindness," but that throughout our daily lives most people find themselves acting in ways that are inconsistent with those values. (Neglecting relationships, making choices based on fear of what others will think, snapping at spouse or children.) In the moment, the choice that is instinctively comfortable will not make us comfortable in the long term.

Continuously choosing short-term validation (overeating for comfort, overbooking yourself) will only lead to increasing dissatisfaction and trouble in the long term, as we stray further and further from what our actual values (a healthy lifestyle, doing your best at every task you undertake) might be. The author advocates "Embracing Uncomfortable" and making the hard choices in the short term, to give yourself a long-term existence that is more peaceful and authentic.

This book is written by someone who is a Christian, though it took me several suspicious chapters to find actual proof of that, but in a broad enough way to encompass people of any (or no) faith. I was just kind of relieved that it wasn't based on Zen.

Aside from that, the author is one of the "type-A, always overbooked, struggles to say 'no' to anything" sort of people who often seem to write self-help books. This is not me at all. My favorite word is "no." So that's always a little interesting; I always have to apply everything the author says by reflecting it into the mirror of my mind's eye and understanding it backwards. She also uses the words authenticity and community ALL. THE. TIME. which is always a red flag. (Take meditative walks in the city!! Leave the door of your inner city apartment open to foster community feeling!!!)

Despite this, she has some big points. The primary strategies offered were:

• KNOWING YOUR VALUES AND KEEPING THEM OFTEN BEFORE YOU (A few chapters on the process of discovering your own values. Can't be true to them if you don't know what they are.)

• PAUSING (Taking "intentional" time to pause and reset yourself, making sure that you're not letting the power of instinct take you off the path you want to be on and towards corner-cutting short-term comfort. AKA meditation? AKA mindfulness?)

• RADICAL ACCEPTANCE (The process of accepting instead of fighting tooth and nail with your own emotions and circumstances, the first step in being able to make changes.)

These were all right, but I found her overall truths to be more helpful than the strategies.

Her points about having to "accept that fear will always be a part of your life" and "picture what moving forward in spite of your fear would look like" were call outs specifically to me. And, of course, her central point that mindless instinct seeks comfort like water flowing downhill, and leads away from the real goals we are trying to achieve. There was a lot in here that I took to apply to my constant battle with eating healthy, but anyone with an uncontrolled behavior that they want to change, but haven't been able to yet, would likely benefit from the clarity laid out in this book.

I know a lot of very serious Christians who scoff at the mention of Trump's name.

But that's not unusual -- he's a thrice-married serial philanderer, liar, and cheater from the seamy world of porn stars, casinos, and reality TV. What could be more off-putting to a group of people who have continually rejected even the blandest candidates for the fatal crimes of being not committed and not Christian enough?

What is unusual is that I know a LOT MORE very serious Christians who voted for him, and continue to praise him, and will vote for him again.

Where is this coming from? Establishment types like John McCain and Romney, and even candidates on the more extreme side of "family values" like Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum were throwaways, but this guy is the one? For dedicated culture warriors who have bemoaned for decades our culture's slide toward rampant immorality and decadent selfishness to back Trump, who practically idealizes that trend in one person, seems like the height of hypocrisy.

I was hoping this book would delve into this baffling phenomenon, and help me understand. It... sort of did, and sort of didn't.

Because it's a little difficult to find, here is the author's thesis up front:

His 'base' is not an accident of his unconventional foray into politics, or a quirk of this particular political moment. The vast majority of white evangelicals are all in with Trump because he has given them political power and allowed them to carry out a Christian supremacist agenda, inextricably intertwined with his administration's white nationalist agenda.

The first chapter or two go right to the heart of the thing with a matter-of-fact exploration of the "religious" figures Trump surrounds himself with. I have spent the last four years looking away from politics and generally wincing, so most of this was new to me. I had wondered, when stories like the Paula White "satanic pregnancy" speech break, where he was getting all these insane people; it makes sense that they're all prosperity gospel televangelists.

The nature of televangelists is to be snake oil salesmen, and turn defrauding the vulnerable into something praiseworthy. It's a good gig, too -- in what other business can you blatantly enrich yourself off the backs of others and claim it's a sign of your faith? It makes perfect sense how Trump would fall in with these people, since they are cut from the same cloth.

As the author says:

Trump has succeeded in captivating white evangelical voters not just because he has befriended certain high-level leaders in the evangelical world. He has succeeded because there is virtually no leader in the evangelical world he wouldn't welcome by his side--as long as that leader pledged allegiance to him.

Sickening, but probably true. These hucksters are perfectly willing to hail him as the divinely anointed savior of America, and he is perfectly willing to be called so. A match made in heaven, and then on the ground all the middle-aged women get to share poorly-made meme graphics on Facebook praising Trump for having prayer meetings in the White House.

Most will be too afraid to repost the truth. Share if you're praying for our leader!!!

This book overall is written in a flat style that reads, in some places, more like a dense list of names and facts than anything else. Still, it starts off strong, tying Trump and the televangelists together with undeniable insight. Next, the book turns its focus to the other piece of the puzzle: the alt-right. Its portrait of the mixed coterie of old guard political racists, veterans of the segregation fights, and the young up-and-coming neo-fascists tired of the oppression of "political correctness" and filled with a deep anxiety about their place in the world is stirring and scary.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is one of the most powerful political trends lately, and probably the biggest thing all of Trump's base would agree on. It's clear how both the "white pride" of the alt-right and the anti-Islamic, anti-Mexican (sometimes anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish) feelings of the white evangelical voters stem from the same place: fear of losing power.

After the first chapter covering the alt-right, though... the book gets even denser. I waded deeper and deeper into the soup of political history, hoping that eventually the framework of a tight argument would become clear. But it didn't. The author relates, essentially, the story of the rise of the modern conservative political establishment. She excavates its roots in pro-segregation activism, claims they never cared about abortion as much as they say, dives into NGO after NGO, think tank after think tank, journalism and activism over the decades since the sixties -- all this to paint a picture of the powerful right-wing apparatus that stood ready to drive into action, reshaping the government in its own image, as soon as anyone was brave or stupid enough to give them the chance.

Trump was that someone, the author claims, and it's not even about Trump. Going back to the thesis laid out in the epilogue, it's about the power.

I haven't even touched on the chapters about the right wing's global affinity for nationalist strongmen, which were interesting (if a little bit mind-numbingly thorough.) This author is an experienced journalist and considered an expert on the religious right. She clearly has spent decades marinating in these particular circles, which is interesting because she seems to have absolutely no regard for any of their beliefs.

This book is not an argument about whether anything claimed about Trump or his followers is true or not true. Trump's racism and lies are presupposed facts. The undercover Planned Parenthood videos are "deceptive." Religious freedom is a crock argument put forward today by the same conservatives and for the same reasons as they wielded it against racial integration of schools.

"Religion, though, is just a cover for the endgame," says the author.

But is it? Certainly, she makes an excellent case that at the national level, anyone arguing religion is just doing it because it serves their rhetorical purposes. I do believe her that it's all about the power. But on the ground, in our homes? Is the everyday white evangelical voter watching the news and thinking to himself "I'm so glad all this 'God' claptrap is putting us back in power so that we can destroy democratic institutions around the globe." Not the ones I know.

I'm still mostly mystified as to what these people ARE thinking. So, while I got quite the political history education from this book, unfortunately I didn't accomplish my goal.

I might have to do my own research and then write my own book. Some things I can tell you already. There is an amount of genuine fear of legal persecution. There is a vast amount of genuine moral outrage at issues like abortion. There is an amount of blended nationalistic-anxiety-racism-nostalgia about what inevitable demographic changes will mean. And the author was absolutely right about one thing:

IT IS ALL. ABOUT. THE SUPREME COURT.