Weapons of mass delusion : when the Republican Party lost its mind

Author

Robert Draper

Call Number

• 324.2734 D766 (CEN, OSH)

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Publication Information

New York : Penguin Press, 2022.

Physical Description

xvi, 384 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Summary

"The disturbing eyewitness account of how a new generation of Republicans-led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Madison Cawthorn-far from moving on from Trump, have taken the politics of hysteria to even greater extremes, bringing American democracy to the very edge of reason The violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021 was a terrible day for American democracy, but at least, many people dared hope that, after it was over, the fever would then be broken, Trump's absurd and relentless set of lies about the stealing of the 2020 election made unspeakable. That is not what happened. Instead, shockingly, 'the big steal' has increasingly become dogma among an ever-higher percentage of American Republicans. What happened to the Republican Party, and America, during the Trump presidency is a story we more or less think we know. What has happened to the party since, it turns out, is even more disturbing. That is the story Robert Draper tells here. Through his extraordinarily intrepid reporting on the ground across the country, Draper chronicles the road from January 6th to the 2022 midterms among the Republican base and in the US Congress, as Marjorie Taylor Greene and her ilk have come to shape their party's terms of engagement to an extent that would have been unimaginable even ten years ago. He brings to life the efforts of a dwindling group of Republicans who are willing to push back against the falsehoods, in the face of a group of ascendent demagogues who are merrily weaponizing them. With a base whipped up into a perpetual frenzy of outrage by conspiracy theories-not just about "the big steal", but about COVID and vaccines, Antifa and BLM and George Soros and the Rothschilds and President Obama and on and on and on-the forces of reason within the GOP are on the defensive, to put it mildly. The leadership of the anti-Trump resistance among Republicans in Congress has cooperated extensively with the author; the book also benefits greatly from reporting conducted in Texas, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, and other bellwether states in the country of the mind one might call Conspiracyland. Robert Draper has been a wise, fearless, and fair-minded chronicler of the American political scene for over 25 years. He has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. He has never seen it this ugly. Ultimately, this book tells the story of a fearful test of our ability, as a country, to hold together a system of government grounded in truth and the rule of law. It's difficult to imagine a book that could underscore the stakes of the 2022 midterm elections more powerfully"--

Notes

Includes index.

Contents

• The dentist-patriot
• Insurrection
• Truth and the West Terrace
• "Harder than anyone"
• The art of the lie
• The enabler
• Clio and the chairwoman
• "I find it very interesting"
• The gallery group
• Arc of the crazy
• Incitement
• "A thousand pounds of rubbish"
• "I'm literally you"
• The fall of the house of Cheney
• Bête noire
• Bad company
• The big lie, in perpetuity
• The leviathan lie
• McConnell
• The blue
• The bowl
• To be unserious
• A Twitter holiday
• The killing lie
• The big lie, spreading
• The Patriot Wing
• At the fairgrounds
• "The most dangerous man in Congress"
• Fake audits
• Death cult
• State of the union
• The unwinding.