I idly picked up this slim book—tract? broadside?—at the local bookstore while waiting for my daughter to browse all the new graphic novels. This quick read is probably more potent now than it was upon its original publication in May 2017. The premise: many Americans living in the age of Trump the primary candidate, Trump the Republican nominee, and Trump the President *rightly* feel unmoored from reality. How could we [liberals] so badly misunderstand our fellow Americans? be surprised that our government can be so quickly dismantled? How do we know what’s actually happening when “truth isn’t truth” and everyone has their own facts and the media is too often complicit in furthering political narratives?
Great f*cking questions. Veteran journalist and interviewer Gladstone leads us nimbly through relevant history, psychology, neuroscience, and her own experience on the way to finding answers. Short short: we are all living in our own realities, all the time, and it is only with great effort that we can start to comprehend things outside of it. I can’t say that I feel more optimistic about this whole American experiment but I do feel better about my ability to navigate it.
There’s a particularly fabulous breakdown of Trump’s tweets: his go-to templates, what information he encodes, how he beats the same damn drum over and over again—and why it’s so effective. I’ll do myself a favor and step out the way of his constant barrage of intentional lies and distortions; the professional journalists I pay (New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Mother Jones) can interpret them for me.