#anne nelson

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[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/science-in-the-time-of-the-pandemic/

Science In The Time Of The Pandemic

If the coronavirus is a hoax, as some preachers claim, I must admire the people who engineered it.  Over 30,000 casualties in this country, not to mention the 160,000 deaths worldwide. To accomplish this task takes more staging than one of Andrew Webber’s musicals.  So far, no one has claimed God is punishing any particular group. The coronavirus doesn’t appear to play favorites. True, the pandemic arrives at an awkward time, just prior to the 2020 elections. Certainly, it has played havoc with Donald Trump’s golden economy, causing some Republicans to mutter that Democrats are eager to foment more disaster by keeping the country closed for business. To be honest, the political objectives forged by a coalition of Republicans and Evangelicals do seem about to evaporate. That must come as a disappointment because, in  Trump’s scant 4 years in the White House, the group has made great strides. A majority of conservative judges sit on the Supreme Court  and similar appointments are on the way for the lower courts. Betsy Davos is lauded for her efforts to dismantle public education and divert public tax dollars to religious schools.  In addition, the President has successfully branded the liberal press as purveyors of fake news in the minds of many. To help the message along, wealthy conservatives have purchased independent media outlets in the south and rural heartland of America. In her recent book, Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, Anne Nelson aligns the dots to explain how Republicans and the religious right got to be so cozy. It happened before Trump. The moment came in 1970 when the conservative wing of the Southern Baptist Church took control of the leadership. By 1981, they’d gained enough strength to form the Council for National Policy (CNP).  CPN isn’t an official affiliate of the church but it is an umbrella group pulled together by some of the church’s most influential members.  What the two entities, Republicans and Southern Baptists, shared was a distrust of the federal government, a sentiment which, Nelson speculates in the case of the latter, carried over from the Civil War when the church defended states’ rights with regard to slavery. Of note, too, was that some of these southern territories were oil-rich– Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas, for example. That CNP and the industry should join hands against federal interference was as natural as prayer. Unfortunately, the virus has become a roadblock for conservative ambitions. They’d assume their power would grow with the nation’s fortunes. They’d become so rich and powerful, in fact, they abandoned any pretense of working with liberals. The environment, the rise of poverty in American, the existence of racial injustice? These were pebbles along the road as they marched toward a divine oligarchy. With so high a calling, they were inclined to dismiss academics, scientists and social thinkers who warned the country was splitting apart.  If it was, their plan was to purchase the half that served them best and allow the rest to wither.   Unfortunately, ambitions have no meaning to a virus. To defeat it requires knowledge. That’s why the elites are becoming the new voices of authority: epidemiologists, virologists, doctors, and nurses–people who can do more than pray.  They can heal. It takes a virus, apparently, to challenge old ways of thinking. As a result, some people have begun to question the words they’ve heard from the pulpits and from politicians, men, and women who would rather save their economy and their power than save their own flesh and blood. How, I wonder, do these oligarchs who once decried Obamacare as a program that would lead to death panels justify their current indifference?   The dawning light that flows through this pandemic war may, I hope, provide lasting enlightenment to us all. Perhaps we will be reborn to a new tolerance.  And why shouldn’t that happen? As we witness the suffering of families–husband’s, wives, or grandparents left to cling to life on ventilators, uppermost in everyone’s mind is the question of expertise. Do these caregivers know what they are doing? It appears that they do as lives are being saved. If this raging pandemic teaches us anything, it is that we should value knowledge and that differences in beliefs, race or lifestyles pale by comparison. If that revelation stays with us, then I’m inclined to think that in the midst of suffering, we’ll have salvaged a blessing.

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'Shadow Network' Offers A Lesson On The American Right's Mastery Of Politics

Anne Nelson links "the manpower and media of the Christian right," "finances of Western plutocrats," and "strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives" via the Council for National Policy.

Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right by Anne Nelson https://amzn.to/2pmi7ai 

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Friday Finds 5-8-2009

Here are my finds this week!

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

I found this book from Cerebral Girl's blog. I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who’ve long forgotten her. The Kill Club is a macabre secret society obsessed with notorious crimes. When they locate Libby and pump her for details–proof they hope may free Ben–Libby hatches a plan to profit off her tragic history. For a fee, she’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club . . . and maybe she’ll admit her testimony wasn’t so solid after all. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the narrative flashes back to January 2, 1985. The events of that day are relayed through the eyes of Libby’s doomed family members–including Ben, a loner whose rage over his shiftless father and their failing farm have driven him into a disturbing friendship with the new girl in town. Piece by piece, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started–on the run from a killer.

The Likeness by Tana French

I found this one through Shelf Awareness. The haunting follow up to the Edgar Award–winning debut In the Woods Tana French astonished critics and readers alike with her mesmerizing debut novel, In the Woods. Now both French and Detective Cassie Maddox return to unravel a case even more sinister and enigmatic than the first. Six months after the events of In the Woods, an urgent telephone call beckons Cassie to a grisly crime scene. The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used. Suddenly, Cassie must discover not only who killed this girl, but, more importantly, who is this girl? A disturbing tale of shifting identities, The Likeness firmly establishes Tana French as an important voice in suspense fiction.

Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler by Anne Nelson

Found in my monthly BOMC guide. In this unforgettable book, distinguished author Anne Nelson shares one of the most shocking and inspiring–and least chronicled–stories of domestic resistance to the Nazi regime. The Rote Kapelle, or Red Orchestra, was the Gestapo’s name for an intrepid band of German artists, intellectuals, and bureaucrats (almost half of them women) who battled treacherous odds to unveil the brutal secrets of their fascist employers and oppressors. Based on years of research, featuring new information, and culled from exclusive interviews, Red Orchestra documents this riveting story through the eyes of Greta Kuckhoff, a German working mother. Fighting for an education in 1920s Berlin but frustrated by her country’s economic instability and academic sexism, Kuckhoff ventured to America, where she immersed herself in jazz, Walt Disney movies, and the first stirrings of the New Deal. When she returned to her homeland, she watched with anguish as it descended into a totalitarian society that relegated her friends to exile and detention, an environment in which political extremism evoked an extreme response. Greta and others in her circle were appalled by Nazi anti-Semitism and took action on many fronts to support their Jewish friends and neighbors. As the war raged and Nazi abuses grew in ferocity and reach, resistance was the only possible avenue for Greta and her compatriots. These included Arvid Harnack–the German friend she met in Wisconsin–who collected anti-Nazi intelligence while working for their Economic Ministry; Arvid’s wife, Mildred, who emigrated to her husband’s native country to become the only American woman executedby Hitler; Harro Schulze-Boysen, the glamorous Luftwaffe intelligence officer who smuggled anti-Nazi information to allies abroad; his wife, Libertas, a social butterfly who coaxed favors from an unsuspecting Göring; John Sieg, a railroad worker from Detroit who publicized Nazi atrocities from a Communist underground printing press; and Greta Kuckhoff’s husband, Adam, a theatrical colleague of Brecht’s who found employment in Goebbels’s propaganda unit in order to undermine the regime. For many members of the Red Orchestra, these audacious acts of courage resulted in their tragic and untimely end. These unsung individuals are portrayed here with startling and sympathetic power. As suspenseful as a thriller, Red Orchestra is a brilliant account of ordinary yet bold citizens who were willing to sacrifice everything to topple the Third Reich.

All the Living by C.E. Morgan

I found this in my monthly BOMC guide. An astonishing novel that seizes the heart, and sets age-old conflicts against modern life. All the Living has the timeless quality of a parable, evoking a time and place with such beauty and power that it is unforgettable. It’s a hot, dry summer and a young woman travels to Kentucky with her lover, Orren, to the isolated tobacco farm he has inherited after his family dies in a terrible accident. As he works through the drought, Aloma struggles to find her way in a combative, erotically charged relationship with this taciturn man. Her growing friendship with a local charismatic preacher further complicates her sense of lonely dissatisfaction as she grapples with the eternal question of whether it is better to fight for freedom or submit to desire. Excerpt: At first she could see his figure only as a dark shape and the sun firing on the watch on his right arm as he turned the wheel. Then when he was finally before her, braking and leaning in slightly under the shade of the visor to pull the keys from the ignition, she found the broad contours of his face and the color of his skin, much browner than the last time she had seen him, the day after the funeral three weeks ago when he came down to the school and sat beside her and set a question to her. He said, You’ll come up? And she said, Yes, yes. And it don’t matter if it’s all out of order like it is? And she shook her head and took his blanched face in her hands and kissed him, and that had struck her later as an odd reversal, he usually being the one to reach out and pull her to him.

What great books did you find this week?? Stop over at Should Be Reading and share yours!