The show’s creators identify as Republican and argue that the far right wing and the far left wing are essentially equivalent, and their studied neutrality is “a neat trap, which certainly does not sound like indoctrination at all,” she writes. Her essay on the nihilistic cool of “South Park” is particularly astute, if also witty (libertarians are “Republicans with sunglasses,” she observes). Some of these pieces are funny (West calls celebrity chef Guy Fieri “a human flip-flop”), and others mine a more serious vein of observation. And the book takes memorable aim at Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness empire, as well as the entire Adam Sandler cinematic oeuvre. Too much of her best writing is about pop culture, after all. West, a Seattle writer who contributes to the New York Times’ opinion section, isn’t satisfied sticking to politics. As West points out in the book’s introduction, the Obama years may not have been perfect, but many then shared a sense of “palpable momentum, an undeniable feeling that progress had the upper hand.” Then came the 2016 election, when, as she writes, “white American voters and the electoral college and a few Russian troll farms shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.” The biggest danger facing us right now, she suggests, is not Trump the individual but Trumpism - “a dangerous obsession with distraction, obfuscation, and just plain dishonesty.
Hope isn’t in abundant supply these days.
0 kommentar(er)
