{"id":29451,"date":"2023-10-28T13:28:38","date_gmt":"2023-10-28T20:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=29451"},"modified":"2023-10-28T13:28:39","modified_gmt":"2023-10-28T20:28:39","slug":"book-the-undertow-scenes-from-a-slow-civil-war-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/10\/28\/book-the-undertow-scenes-from-a-slow-civil-war-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Book: “The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Jeff Sharlet<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies\u2015sometimes realities\u2015of violence. Across the country, men \u201cof God\u201d glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war\u2015a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the Far Right, everything is heightened\u2015love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood. Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community, and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all. Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility. 43 illustrations<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About the author<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Profile<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jeff Sharlet<\/em><\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Jeff Sharlet is the New York Times bestselling author and editor of eight books of creative nonfiction and photography, including The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, The Family\u2014adapted into a Netflix documentary series of the same name hosted by Sharlet\u2014and This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers. Sharlet is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Harper’s, and Rolling Stone, and an editor-at-large for VQR. He has also written for The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Esquire, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, New York, Bookforum, and other publications. His writing on Russia\u2019s anti-LGBTQIA+ crusade earned the National Magazine Award and his writing on anti-LGBTQIA+ campaigns in Uganda earned the Molly National Journalism Prize, the Outright International\u2019s Outspoken Award, and the Americans United Person of the Year Award, among others. He has served as a Nonfiction Panel Chair for the National Book Award and received multiple fellowships from MacDowell. Sharlet is the Frederick Sessions Beebe \u201935 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College. He lives in Vermont, where he is trying to learn the names of plants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War Jeff Sharlet An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade,… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[315,1300],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29451"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29452,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29451\/revisions\/29452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}