Sarah Posner

This is a tough one to review.

Like many others, I have a hard time understanding my Evangelical friends who wholeheartedly support Donald Trump. They see him as a flawed man, but still being used by God to do wonderful things much like King David in the Old Testament.

I see Trump as completely lacking a moral compass.

Posner does a wonderful job showing the history of the roots of far right movement in the US. Trump is not a political aberration, but the result of many years of dissatisfaction, as the conservative right slowly creeps farther and farther into radical right territory.

This one needs to be read by everyone living in the fraught US political situation today, or those who see antidemocracic movements on their own countries.

In writing this review, I can see I need to read it a second time, slowly, making notes. Because although I can follow the author’s history and arguments, I still don’t understand the whys of those who believe Trump is a redeemer.… (lisätietoja)

Nothing observers of Trump's ascendance will find new and published prior to Trump's 2020 defeat with its concomitant (and ungoing call for) insurrection. What sets this book apart is its roll call of political and ('so called,' in my estimation) religious leaders who cant dangerously (and unapologetically) to the undemocratic right to grasp and maintain personal power. Chief among them throughout is conservative political activist Paul Weyrich whose 1980 observation that "I don't want everybody to vote....As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down" besets us as a nation now and illustrates the decades' long campaign to uncouple the United States from democratic norms. It is this long game that makes Posner's book so terrifying.… (lisätietoja)