Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party
by Max Blumenthal
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Book Summary Information
Author: Max BlumenthalEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2009-09-08
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Nation Books
Book Reviews of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party
Book Review: Looking in The Republican Underwear Drawer
Summary: 5 Stars
Although this book was a fun read - I am addicted to the shenanigans, goings on, associations and quotes of the extreme conservatives that have hijacked the secular Republican party. It is always fun to learn more about James Dobson for example, who is squarely highlighted in Max Blementhal's book. If you're politically inclined and tend toward progressivism and secular humanism, you'll adore the dirt that the author has uncovered. I am not naive enough to believe everything I read in it of course (though desperately I would love to!), but he does present some interesting connections that a thoughtful, objective and investigative person can find the truth on her own.
My main interest in the extreme right of the Republican party, however, goes further than pointing the finger at their peccadillos - for years I have been fascinated with how they think since it's so unlike my own. How can someone be so vehmently racist, virulently homophobic; how can the Republican party not want what seems to be best for the planet, for the future of humanity, for civil rights for all men and women? Blumenthal begins to enlighten us, or at least give us some threads to follow. Throughout the text, he alludes to Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom (which I have yet to read). Fromm's works investigated the mind of those who to prefer authoritarian regimes or prefer to submit to an authoritarian government and he found that in many cases, they were abused as children (I have yet to uncover more facts than the one sentence I'd come across about how, in Madrassahs the boys (who become terrorists)are often sexually abused by the imams - true or not?) I think a criticism of Blumenthal could be that he weaves this premise throughout his book to make us think that the Christian Reconstructionist movement has been fomented by a group of leaders who have been abused as children. It cannot be taken at face value of course, but it is certainly one piece of information that can be studied as I continue to try to figure out why it is that the Christian Right perceive the world so differently than I do.
I recommend this book to any thoughtful person - there may be errors and it may contain some degree of leftist spewing - no matter. Blumenthal gives us plenty of fodder to investigate and cogitate upon.
Summary of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party
Over the last year, award-winning journalist and videographer Max Blumenthal has been behind some of the most sensational (and funniest) exposes of Republican machinations. Whether it was his revelation that Sarah Palin was "anointed" by a Kenyan priest famous for casting out witches, or his confronting Republican congressional leaders and John McCain's family at the GOP convention about the party's opposition to sex education (and hence, the rise in teen pregnancies like that of Palin's daughter), or his expose of the eccentric multimillionaire theocrat behind California's Prop 8 anti-gay marriage initaive, Blumenthal has become one of the most important and most constantly cited journalists on how fringe movements are becoming the Republican Party mainstream.Republican Gomorrah is a bestiary of dysfunction, scandal and sordidmess from the dark heart of the forces that now have a leash on the party. It shows how those forces are the ones that establishment Republicans-like John McCain-have to bow to if they have any hope of running for President. It shows that Sarah Palin was the logical choice of a party in the control of theocrats. But more that just an expose, Republican Gomorrah shows that many of the movement's leading figures have more in common than just the power they command within conservative ranks. Their personal lives have been stained by crisis and scandal: depression, mental illness, extra-marital affairs, struggles with homosexual urges, heavy medication, addiction to pornography, serial domestic abuse, and even murder. Inspired by the work of psychologists Erich Fromm, who asserted that the fear of freedom propels anxiety-ridden people into authoritarian settings, Blumenthal explains in a compelling narrative how a culture of personal crisis has defined the radical right, transforming the nature of the Republican Party for the next generation and setting the stage for the future of American politics.
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