This Right Here Is Some Really Stupid Isht

Is Birtherism suddenly respectable in the media's eyes?

Well you know what else is? Hatred and hysteria directed at one of the world's actual religions of peace.

So here now comes Christian Nation, an alt-history thriller about McCain/Palin's 2008 victory, and how President Palin then turned the country into a Christian theocracy because Mama Grizzly.

Published by apparently a real publisher and stuff, W.W. Norton.

Isn't it odd how the left can freely indulge its stupidest paranoias and hysterias and count themselves clever for doing so but if a single old woman on the right says "He's a Muslim" about Barack Obama it tars the entire movement?

Note, by the way, that old woman was just an old woman who showed up at a rally. This is a book that a real company decided was darned good and worth investing a fair amount of money in to publish.

So, this is the description of this, um, work:

Christian Nation is a work of speculative political fiction, arising from the counterfactual of a McCain/Palin victory in 2008 followed soon after by McCain’s sudden death and Sarah Palin’s ascension to the presidency.

When the book opens, eight years have passed since the Holy War ended in victory for the fundamentalist Christian forces. Americans live in bondage to a comprehensive authoritarian law called The Blessing, enforced by a totally integrated digital world known as the Purity Web. The Narrator, Greg, whose best friend led the opposition to the theocratic movement, is brought to a secret abandoned cabin in upstate New York and told to remember and write.

The Christian right made no secret of its decades-long quest for political power, and did not hide what they would do if they got that power. Greg writes: “They said what they would do, and we did not listen. Then they did what they said they would do.” Struggling with perspective and memory, the memoirist recounts the country’s long slow descent to religious authoritarianism, propelled by economic distress, a second major terrorist attack, and the fanatical ambitions of an extremist evangelical minority.

Living out their 20’s and 30’s against the backdrop of dramatic political change, Greg recounts how he (a Wall Street lawyer), his girlfriend Emilie (a New York investment banker) and his best friend Sanjay (a gay Indian-American internet entrepreneur) react and interact as the country slowly slips toward theocracy. The three struggle with the tension between personal ambition and moral responsibility, and the memoirist ultimately finds that he must make a choice.

Readers will find themselves haunted by the question his shadowy hosts demand that Greg answer in the book, echoing Hannah Arendt’s struggle to explain the origins of totalitarianism in the 20th century: “What happened, why did it happen, how could it have happened?”

If you scan down the site, you'll see that the New York Post is quoted as calling the book "Required Reading..."

They did say that. Sort of. The New York Post's book column on books is itself called Required Reading, and they mentioned the book briefly (and neutrally, it's not even a review, just a "this happened" mention) so, technically I guess, any book mentioned there is ergo "Required Reading."

After all, it was mentioned in Required Reading. Count it.

This is like Goodreads just mentioning that your book exists and then slapping this on the cover:

"Goodread..."

-- Goodreads

But there are a lot of people who love, love love this book. The idiot from the American Federation of Atheists or whatever --you the guy, the guy in glasses, has only one thing to ever say. Someone from the ACLU, someone from the FEC.

What the media crucifies random idiots for saying on the right, the left's actual paid leadership can say without any rebuke.

So, what do you guys think? I suppose I could review it.

I don't know though. Someone said the book "actually gave [her] nightmares." I don't want nightmares. This sounds like very scary stuff.

Although maybe the book was just mentioned on the "It Actually Gave Me Nightmares" book-blog.

Incidentally, as Instapundit might say: They told me that if I voted for McCain the United States would become a creepy security state, balanced precariously between paranoia and incompetence, and they were right!

posted by Ace at 03:53 PM

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