At times I found Chris Hedges' American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America to be alternately tedious and obvious, but by the end it turned scary. I did, however, dog-ear a lot of pages so let's see what all I thought about while reading it.
1) "… the Christian Right and radical Islamists, although locked in a holy war, increasingly mirror each other. They share the same obsessions. They do not tolerate other forms of belief or disbelief. They are at war with artistic and cultural expression. They seek to silence the media. They call for the subjugation of women. They promote severe sexual repression, and they seek to express themselves through violence." (page 24) All right. Maybe the book gets scary before the end. But are any of the above statements a surprise to anyone already looking askance at the direction some Christian churches are taking? (NOTE TO SCOUTGAL: neither the book nor I claim the above is true for all Christian churches, only those far right ones who are nibbling away at American freedoms. Besides, as we'll see later, these guys don't even consider the Catholic Church to be a Christian church.)
2) "The use of elaborate spectacle to channel and shape the passions of mass followers is a staple of totalitarian movements. … They give to adherents a permissiveness, a rhetorical license to engage in acts of violence that are normally taboo in a democratic society. It becomes permissible to hate." (page 34) SARCASM ALERT: Yeah. Let's give American people another reason to break through our already tattered veneer of civilized behavior.
3) "Hypermasculinity becomes a way to compensate, especially when the unspoken truth is that Christian men are required to have a personal, loving relationship with a male deity and surrender their will to a male-dominated authoritarian church." (page 83) Interesting concept, particularly in connection with 1) the advice that parents "spank their children with 'sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely'" (page 85) or 2) an explanation that "the use of control or force is also designed to raise unquestioning and fearful children, children who as adults will not be tempted to challenge powerful male figures" (page 90) or 3) the Christian Right's stance on homosexuality.
OOPS!!! Now I have to stop this review. Why? I started to save it and discovered another file called American fascists. Seems I've read and reviewed this one before. (No wonder so much of it seemed obvious.) And to think I started my book diary and reviews to keep from rereading books. Obviously the system has suffered a major malfunction. Well, the reviews will continue, but right now I better head into the bathroom and scrape a lot of egg off my face.
