Author Jeff Sharlet has spent years interviewing conservatives and found many unassuming Americans are ready and eager for violence against their political enemies.Sharlet's latest book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, is the result of more than a dozen years of reporting on the religiou...
Author Jeff Sharlet has spent years interviewing conservatives and found many unassuming Americans are ready and eager for violence against their political enemies.
Sharlet’s latest book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, is the result of more than a dozen years of reporting on the religious right, compiling numerous interviews conducted throughout the Midwest and Great Plains, and he’s more worried than ever about the possibility of civil war, reported The Guardian.
“I’ve been writing about the right for a long time,” he told the newspaper. “I’m always interested in the margins of things that tell us about what’s happening at the center. An undertow is a metaphor for that, for the force that’s been pulling us to this place for a long time. If you’d asked me 10 years ago if I ever thought another civil war would be possible in the United States, I would have said no. But to think so [now] is to not understand that the right in America is as dangerous as it is.”
He cited a “nice-looking” family he met near Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who seemed like “ordinary” conservatives, as the newspaper described them, but harbored bloodthirsty fantasies rooted in extreme conservative politics.
“[The father said] he had a ‘Let’s go Brandon’ sticker because he didn’t want to swear around his son,” Sharlet said. “They’re a middle-class dad and mom. They were always gun people, but not a lot of guns. Now they’re up to 36, now they are arming up. The father had always been anti-abortion. But now it was like a dream had moved into his and his wife’s mind. He described, in incredibly violent detail, the process of abortion. Then he described, in incredibly violent detail, the punishment he thought he and others were going to give to abortion doctors. They were ready for executions.“
“It’s astonishing there hasn’t been more violence,” Sharlet added. “I think we’ve had a shield from that violence for a long time and now that shield … I sound like Jerry Falwell saying the hand of God is being removed from America.”
hope any liberal who sees this realizes that, while we don’t want to be eager for violence, or ready for executions, we do need to be ready for violence, and not to simply be on the recieving end, ‘turning the other cheek’ or w/e. as it stands, if a ‘civil war’ breaks out, it’s incredibly unlikely that there will be state support against far right violence, at least not in any sustained manner, as the far right has long been a large if not dominant portion of military and police forces.
and if libs read this and still think ‘violence is not the answer’ and ‘we just need to reach out and create dialogue’, let me borrow from your beloved racist teddy roosevelt and say you should ‘speak softly, and carry a big stick’.
