How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency".
Is available to pre-order, at a substantial discount, at amazon.com
The release date is June 26. Get it now, if you want it, and help drive up the attention.
What the book is about, in Glenn's own words from Salon.
Excerpts below the fold.
The central purpose of the book is to examine what has happened to the United States for the last six years under the Bush presidency. That is the "Bush legacy" -- our national character and national identity have been fundamentally degraded, our moral standing and credibility in the world eroded to previously unthinkable depths, our government engaged in the very behavior which, for decades, we have collectively deplored, our trust in America's governmental and journalistic institutions reduced virtually to zero, and our country placed on a plainly unsustainable course as a result of the militarized, imperial role we are choosing to play in the world.
(bold is mine)
You should read the whole thing, again, at salon
I haven't read the book, but I'm going to pre-order it. Glenn's priorities in this book seem to strive to get to the heart of the depressing state of America caused by the Bush cabal's absolute faith of black and white, pure good vs. pure evil (Bush's brain tells him that he's on the side of the Angels, by the way).
The crux of the book seems to be that America (and especially the adorned Bush cabal) are good and right in every sense of the word, no matter what. It doesn't matter what our policies are, or the results they bring, they were right and are right, because we commit them.
We can never be wrong, only the evildoers can be EVIL and wrong.
No competing considerations, no rational arguments, no counter-balancing objectives, not even constraints of reality or resources, can compete with the moral imperative of this mission. The mission of destroying Evil trumps all.
And naturally, of course, that leads to the infallibility of Bush and America. We can do no wrong in our stand against evil!!
And the converse then also falls comfortably into place: those who seek to destroy Evil -- whether it be America, or President Bush, or the right-wing political faction that has supported the Bush presidency -- are, by definition, the embodiment of Good.
So, America can do no wrong; torture, rendition, pre-emptive wars, the use white phosphorous, "father and son forced to do acts together", you get the idea.
This is the "moral reasoning" which led us to invade and indefinitely occupy Iraq, to vest previously unimaginable power in the President, to allow our country to become symbolized by orange-jumpsuit-clad, shackled and leashed detainees locked away and brutally maltreated in lawless prisons around the world, and which has brought us to the brink of still new wars in the Middle East, most alarmingly with Iran. It is this reasoning which has rendered our country virtually unrecognizable, and has placed us on a course which simply cannot be sustained.
We have a long way to go in reversing this disasterous Presidency. This book seems to lay out well what went wrong, and how we are going to have to fix it. First, we, as a country, need to understand just how badly we are off track and why. This is going to be a tough because many Americans still accept the idea that we are inherently good, therefore can do no wrong, while the terrorists and Muslims are inherently bad, therefore they can do no right.
Understanding the legacy of the Bush presidency, then, is not merely a matter of historical interest. The challenge America confronts -- attempting to contain and then reverse the damage to our country from the last six years -- can be met only if we acknowledge what has happened and vigorously debate the questions which we must confront. First and foremost, that entails a candid debate about our increasingly militaristic role in the Middle East and generally in the world; how we are perceived and why we are perceived that way; and whether, as a result of the last six years under George Bush, we have truly been a force for Good in the world -- questions that have been all but suppressed by our guardians of mainstream discourse
I encourage you to read the whole article. It is not a book review, as it is written by the author, but it's driving home a very important point which most of us know, we ARE NOT inherently always on the right side simply because we are Americans.