After the devastating electoral loss last November, the Democratic Party seems to be settling on a handful of explanations. One, given a recent notable push by James Carville, who re-ups his Bill Clinton-era “It’s the economy, stupid.” Inflation was hurting people, they weren’t seeing the benefits of the supposedly great economy they were being told was happening, and they punished the Democrats at the polls. Another popular explanation is based on cultural ideas: too many Americans were tired of being told what they should believe by those woke coastal elites, and so they punished the Democrats at the polls.
In her forthcoming book Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy (February 18th and available for preorder), author Katherine Stewart makes a good case that all that is misdirection. The presumed voter anger over the economy and the culture wars is window-dressing disguising the real problem: money and greed. Specifically, a small group of self-interested very wealthy people who have decided it is in their economic interest to undermine democracy and who are actively working to make that happen.
It’s not that there does not exist true anxiety and anger among the 90% who have seen their share of national income shrink as massive wealth has flowed to the top over the past decades. But for the wealthy, this situation suits them just fine—they’ve got theirs and are getting more all the time—and even better, the anxiety and anger are great tools to use to distract and manipulate voters. A true democracy of voters is a threat to the wealthy, and a powerful subset of them are actively working to extinguish that threat. It is a movement that created Trump and his MAGA followers, but it is a movement that will outlast them as well, and. in the author’s words, “feast on the carcass of the Republican Party.”
A big part of this anti-democracy movement is rooted in the church. The author details the many far-right religious organizations that receive funds from wealthy backers. For example, Pepsi heir James B. Lindsey and his wife Joan Holt Lindsey, have through their James and Joan Lindsey Family Foundation have donated seven-figure sums every year to many Christian nationalist, climate denialist and other far-right entities. During the Biden presidency, they poured over one million dollars into a new organization, Faith Wins, which is dedicated to using pastors to make sure their congregations turned out to vote for Trump (often urging them to vote early to avoid having their vote stolen on Election Day.) Faith Wins is also dedicated to the anti-democratic movement, preaching the Big Lie of the stolen 2020 election and pushing voter suppression initiatives to protect “election integrity” against the assault of the godless left. Ms. Stewart writes: ”The desired end state of Christian nationalism today is neither to win a majority nor to secure a seat at the table in a pluralistic democracy but to entrench minority rule under the facade of democracy.”
These religious groups pound into the hearts and minds of their congregations the twin ideas that a) this is a cataclysmic battle against a demonic, evil godless liberalism that means to take control of the world, and b) that Christians are the victims of powerful persecution meant to drive them into the shadows. (Note that any quotes in this review are from the advance review copy, and the final book may differ—especially given the results last November, which I suspect may have made the author do some last minute edits!)
It is important to add that, whatever their ultimate causes, both the catastrophism and the persecution complex find expressions more frequently in status or cultural anxieties that in economic anxieties. “Compared to cultural factors, economic factors were significantly less strong predictors of support for Trump in 2016, according to [Robert] Jones. “Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan tapped anxieties that were less about jobs and economic mobility but more about a deep sense of protecting a white Christian America from what they perceive to be a foreign and corrupting influence.”
The Robert Jones in the above quote is author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: and the Path to a Shared American Future and a founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PPRI), which has conducted recent studies showing that 85% of people who subscribe to Christian nationalist ideals believe that “discrimination against white people is at least as big a problem as discrimination against minorities,” and that three-quarters of Republicans and Trump voters believe the same about discrimination against Christians.
The book also shows that while protestant evangelical groups get a lot of the press in examinations of the religions right, the Catholic Church also plays a big role. American Catholics are split into two political blocks; in the 2020 election they split 52-48 for Biden. Catholicism itself has a split between the progressive wing that arose in the 1960s and advocates for economic and social justice, and an increasingly ultra-conservative wing. The biggest difference between the two ideas is the wealth of who backs them. There is not a lot of big funding behind the liberal wing, but there is enormous money behind the conservative wing, funding a widespread and powerful ecosystem of Christian nationalist organizations and media outlets.
The author points out that there are six Catholic Supreme Court Justices, and five of them have been groomed to power by the conservative power brokers. (Sotomayor is the one exception.) She details some of the beliefs espoused by one of Justice Gorsuch’s mentors, John Finnis, former professor of law and legal philosophy at both Oxford and Notre Dame Universities. Among the ideas Finnis has espoused are diatribes against homosexuality (comparing it to bestiality), non-marital intercourse, that there is “no important distinction in essential moral worthlessness” between masturbation and prostitution, and that even marital sex can be an abomination if it has “gone so far that one’s sex acts, even if they are in fact with one’s spouse, are a kind of adultery.”
Suffice it to say that throughout the book you will find profoundly misogynist beliefs among the Christian Nationalist right. The author points out that they have become so convinced of the rising primacy of the movement to take away the rights of women that some of its leaders have indeed begun to speak openly of taking away their right to vote.
But despite the supposed basis in religion of these groups, the wealthy who fund, direct and use them are not necessarily interested in religion. Many of these wealthy benefactors are agnostic, beholden solely to the church of money. Some may be true believers of this corrupted view of Christianity and morality, but more just see Christian Nationalism as a tool to sway the populace into accepting the undermining of democracy. If there is a ray of hope to be found in this, it is that these relationships between the groups and their wealthy backers are in many cases extreme marriages of convenience, and their inevitable warring among themselves may contain the seeds of their demise.
Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy delves into many other ecosystems of the far right, from the book-banning Moms for Liberty to the the creators of Project 2025. In all of them, author Katherine Stewart unveils the money hidden behind all of these supposedly homegrown moral enterprises, and the unified goal of the billionaire funders in shutting down are democratic freedom. It’s a solid, well-written book, filled with fascinating and horrifying characters, and is a vital resource in helping to fight back in the days ahead. In her final chapter, she admits that her “survey of antidemocratic reaction in the United States is bound to provoke alarm and perhaps a feeling of hopelessness.” Nevertheless, she tries to end on a hopeful note and to try and point the way to regaining our country.
Meeting the present challenge won’t be easy, and there is no guarantee of success. Still, those who hope for progress can take comfort in the knowledge that the facts are on our side. In this brief afterword, I want to draw attention to six principal findings reported in this book, and which should be of interest to a pro-democratic movement:
- We are the majority.
- They are divided.
- The separation of church ans state is a good idea—and we should try it.
- Extreme levels of material inequality are eroding democracy
- Knowledge is power.
- Organization matters.
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THIS WEEK’S NOTABLE NEW NONFICTION
- It Takes Chutzpah: How to Fight Fearlessly for Progressive Change, by Ron Wyden. US Senator Ron Wyden is widely praised for coming up with sensible-sounding ideas no one else had thought of and making the counter-intuitive political alliances that prove helpful in passing bills. In It Takes Chutzpah, he offers a progressive leader’s manifesto for being a courageous warrior during turbulent times.
“Chutzpah” is a Yiddish word that describes a trait that many Jews consider in-born. Ron explores chutzpah’s long history and many interpretations and reclaims the word chutzpah for a new American generation, showing how it can be used for good to reclaim idealism and enact positive change. He shares “Ron’s 12 Rules of Chutzpah” that enable any individual or group to achieve their objectives. “During his time in Washington, Sen. Ron Wyden has picked fights with Big Oil, insurance giants, greedy billionaires, and the surveillance state, while finding ways to make real change for working Americans in a deeply divided Senate. That is only possible with wisdom, patience, and a whole lot of coraje.”—Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
- American Oasis: Finding the Future in the Cities of the Southwest, by Kyle Paoletta. Albuquerque. Phoenix. Tucson. El Paso. Las Vegas. Iconic American cities surrounded by desert and rust. Teeming metropolises that seem to exist independently of the seemingly inhospitable and arid landscape that surrounds them, belying the rich insight they offer into American stories of migration, industry, bloodshed, and rebirth.
Charting a geographic path through America's largest and hottest deserts, acclaimed journalist Kyle Paoletta maps the past and future of these cities, and the many other settlements from rural town to urban sprawl that make up the region that has come to be called “the American Southwest.” Weaving together the stories of immigrants and indigenous populations, American Oasis pulls back the layers of settlement, sediment, habit, and effect that successive empires have left on the region, from the Athapascan, Diné, Tewa, Apache, and Comanche, to the Spanish, Mexican, and, finally, American. "A deeply engaging work—superbly written and powerfully researched—American Oasis is destined to play an important role in debates about the future of arid climate survival and the built environment."—Raquel Gutiérrez, author of Brown Neon
- Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground, by Kurt Gray. We all care about protecting ourselves and the vulnerable. Conflict arises, however, when we have different perceptions of harm. We get outraged when we disagree about who the “real” victim is, whether we’re talking about political issues, fights with our in-laws, or arguments on the playground.
In this fascinating and insightful tour of our moral minds, Gray tackles popular myths that prevent us from understanding ourselves and those around us. While it is commonly believed that our ancestors were apex predators, Gray argues that for the majority of our evolutionary history, humans were more hunted than hunter. This explains why our minds are hard-wired to perceive threats, and provides surprising insights on the scientific origins of our values and beliefs. Though we might think ourselves driven by objective reasoning, Gray unveils new research that finds our moral judgments are based on gut feelings rather than rational thought, and presents a compelling reminder that we are more alike than we might think. “Outrage has become our culture’s poorly chosen wallpaper: it’s ugly, everywhere, and all we can do is get used to it. In this brilliant book, Kurt Gray challenges us to think differently. A leader in the science of morality, Gray convincingly paints a new picture of outrage, as a response to harm. This new lens can revolutionize our perception of conflict and what we can do about it. Human care has been contorted into anger and even hatred, but by applying more curiosity, we can rediscover common values.”—Jamil Zaki, author of Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness
- A More Perfect Party: The Night Shirley Chisholm and Diahann Carroll Reshaped Politics, by Juanita Tolliver. In 1972, New York Representative Shirley Chisholm broke the ice in American politics when she became the first Black woman to run for president of the United States. Chisholm left behind a coalition-building model personified by a once-in-an-era Hollywood party hosted by legendary actress and singer Diahann Carroll, and attended by the likes of Huey P. Newton, Barbara Lee, Berry Gordy, David Frost, Flip Wilson, Goldie Hawn and others.
Chisholm worked the crowd of movie stars, media moguls, music executives and activists gathered at Carroll’s opulent Beverly Hills home, forging relationships with laughter as she urged guests to unify behind her campaign. With the feminist movement on the rise and eighteen- to twenty-year-olds voting for the first time in American history, the Democratic Party and the nation were on the cusp of long-overdue change.
Zooming in on one party attendee per chapter, A More Perfect Party brings this whimsical event out of the margins of history to demonstrate that there is an opportunity for all of us to fight for a better nation and return power to the people. "Effective campaigns bring people together, and progress usually requires that we see each other as fully human and valuable; Tolliver explores those themes through the 1972 Democratic Party, and one dazzling, historic, literal party — with lessons that echo in today’s debates about liberalism, diversity and of course, winning.”—Ari Melber, host of MSNBC’s The Beat and MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent
- The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North, by Michelle Adams. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement’s struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why?
In The Containment, the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools—and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution. Adams chronicles the devoted activists who tried to uplift Detroit's students amid the upheavals of riots, Black power, and white flight—and how their efforts led to federal judge Stephen Roth’s landmark order to achieve racial balance by tearing down the walls separating the city and its suburbs. The “metropolitan remedy” could have remade the landscape of racial justice. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the suburbs could not be a part of the effort to integrate—and thus upheld the inequalities that remain in place today. “It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the federal courts were committed to the pursuit of racial justice. In her mesmerizing new book, Michelle Adams re-creates the landmark case that shattered that commitment. The Containment is a history you have to read to understand the nation we’ve become.” —Kevin Boyle, National Book Award–winning author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
- I Am Nobody's Slave: How Uncovering My Family's History Set Me Free, by Lee Hawkins.
To their suburban Minnesotan neighbors, the Hawkinses were an ideal American family, embodying strength and success. However, behind closed doors, they faced the legacy of enslavement and apartheid. Lee Hawkins, Sr. often exhibited rage, leaving his children anxious and curious about his protective view of the world. Thirty years later, his son uncovered the reasons for his father’s anxiety and occasional violence. Through research, he discovered violent deaths in his family for every generation since slavery, mostly due to white-on-Black murders, and how white enslavers impacted the family’s customs.
Hawkins explores the role of racism-triggered childhood trauma and chronic stress in shortening his ancestors' lives, using genetic testing, reporting, and historical data to craft a moving family portrait. This book shows how genealogical research can educate and heal Americans of all races, revealing through their story the story of America—a journey of struggle, resilience, and the heavy cost of ultimate success. “Hawkins’s memoir is deeply reflective and transparent about his personal story and family history, sharing the love, restrictions, violence, and trauma he experienced throughout his life as a Black man living in a post–civil rights movement world. This work is vitally important and essential to understanding the magnitude of the impact of racism and violence.” — Library Journal
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Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn’t, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies, by Michael Albertus. For millennia, land has been a symbol of wealth and privilege. But the true power of land ownership is even greater than we might think. In Land Power, political scientist Michael Albertus shows that who owns the land determines whether a society will be equal or unequal, whether it will develop or decline, and whether it will safeguard or sacrifice its environment. Drawing on a career’s worth of original research and on-the-ground fieldwork, Albertus shows that choices about who owns the land have locked in poverty, sexism, racism, and climate crisis—and that what we do with the land today can change our collective fate.
Global in scope, Land Power argues that saving civilization must begin with the earth under our feet. “‘Land’—Four simple letters. Four enormous impacts: on racial divides, gender inequality, the struggle for development, and our precarious environment. In this powerful and compelling book, Michael Albertus re-invents how to think about that most simple but profound force shaping our lives—the ground beneath us.”—Ben Ansell, author of Why Politics Fails
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Wiseguys and the White House: Gangsters, Presidents, and the Deals They Made, by Eric Dezenhall. From Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Richard Nixon to Joseph R. Biden, the mob has done presidential dirty work, including attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, harass America’s enemies, and put our chief executives in office.
Wiseguys and the White House documents when mobsters and presidents have traded favors—and double-crossed each other, including:
- The deal cut with Lucky Luciano to protect the waterfront during World War II.
- How the Chicago Outfit (and Frank Sinatra) got one Kennedy elected, only to be pursued by another.
- How LBJ and the FBI used a mob hitman to hunt down the killers of Civil Rights activists in Mississippi
- Reagan’s association with Lew Wasserman, the powerful and influential Hollywood mogul
- Trump's blatant ties to construction and gambling cartels
- Biden’s early links to “the Irishman” Frank Sheeran, the labor union official and enforcer for Jimmy Hoffa and Russell Bufalino. "Mobsters and presidents? The ties aren't just in pulp fiction. Eric Dezenhall tracks down the startling deals and deceptions that both sides might prefer to keep secret--from FDR to JFK to Trump." — Susan Page, New York Times bestselling author of Madam Speaker
- An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence, by Zeinab Badawi. For too long, Africa’s history has been dominated by western narratives of slavery and colonialism, or simply ignored. Now, Zeinab Badawi sets the record straight. In this fascinating book, Badawi guides us through Africa’s spectacular history—from the very origins of our species, through ancient civilizations and medieval empires with remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence. Visiting more than thirty African countries to interview countless historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and local storytellers, she unearths buried histories from across the continent and gives Africa its rightful place in our global story. “This is a book we have needed: a clear account of the fascinating history of Africa from an African perspective. I learned something on every page. It will leave everyone who reads it better informed and more thoughtful about the vast opportunity that can now be found in a continent we have often misunderstood.” — William Hague, author of William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner
- The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World, by
Hal Brands. We often think of the modern era as the age of American power. In reality, we’re living in a long, violent Eurasian century. That giant, resource-rich landmass possesses the bulk of the global population, industrial might, and potential military power; it touches all four of the great oceans. Eurasia is a strategic prize without equal—which is why the world has been roiled, reshaped, and nearly destroyed by clashes over the supercontinent.
Since the early twentieth century, autocratic powers—from Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II to the Soviet Union—have aspired for dominance by seizing commanding positions in the world’s strategic heartland. Offshore sea powers, namely the United Kingdom and America, have sought to make the world safe for democracy by keeping Eurasia in balance. America’s rivalries with China, Russia, and Iran are the next round in this geopolitical game. If this new authoritarian axis succeeds in enacting a radically revised international order, America and other democracies will be vulnerable and insecure.
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A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins, by Gareth Harney. When Gareth Harney was first handed a Roman coin by his father as a child, he became entranced by its beauty, and its unique ability to connect us with the distant past. He soon learned that the Romans saw coins as far more than just currency—these were metal canvases on which they immortalized their sacred gods, mighty emperors, towering monuments, and brutal battles of conquest. Revealed in those intricate designs struck in gold, silver, and bronze was the epic story of the Roman Empire. “Fast paced and vivid…makes more than a millennium of Roman history tangible, telling the story of the empire’s rise and fall through the thing that backed it all - cold hard cash. The coins in these pages funded wars, paid debts, and bought bread, but they also defined factions, declared beliefs, and forged the enduring images of some of history’s greatest men.” —Honor Cargill-Martin, author of Messalina
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Hope: The Autobiography, by Pope Francis. Hope is the first autobiography in history ever to be published by a Pope. Pope Francis originally intended this exceptional book to appear only after his death, but the needs of our times and the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope have moved him to make this precious legacy available now. Written over six years, this complete autobiography starts in the early years of the twentieth century, with Pope Francis’s Italian roots and his ancestors’ courageous migration to Latin America, continuing through his childhood, the enthusiasms and preoccupations of his youth, his vocation, adult life, and the whole of his papacy up to the present day.
In recounting his memories with intimate narrative force (not forgetting his own personal passions), Pope Francis deals unsparingly with some of the crucial moments of his papacy and writes candidly, fearlessly, and prophetically about some of the most important and controversial questions of our present times: war and peace (including the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East), migration, environmental crisis, social policy, the position of women, sexuality, technological developments, the future of the Church and of religion in general. The book is enhanced by remarkable photographs, including private and unpublished material made personally available by Pope Francis himself.
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House of Huawei: The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company, by Eva Dou. On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world’s most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing. This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the US-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the global spotlight.
In House of Huawei, Washington Post technology reporter Eva Dou pieces together a remarkable portrait of Huawei’s reclusive founder, Ren Zhengfei, and how he built a sprawling corporate empire—one whose rise Western policymakers have become increasingly obsessed with halting. Based on wide-ranging interviews and painstaking archival research, House of Huawei dissects the global web of power, money, influence, surveillance, bloodshed, and national glory that Huawei helped to build—and that has also ensnared it.
- Aflame: Learning from Silence, by Pico Iyer. Pico Iyer has made more than one hundred retreats over the past three decades to a small Benedictine hermitage high above the sea in Big Sur, California. He’s not a Christian—or a member of any religious group—but his life has been transformed by these periods of time spent in silence. That silence reminds him of what is essential and awakens a joy that nothing can efface. It’s not just freedom from distraction and noise and rush: it’s a reminder of some deeper truths he misplaced along the way.
In Aflame, Iyer connects with inner stillness and joy in his many seasons at the monastery, even as his life is going through constant change: a house burns down, a parent dies, a daughter is diagnosed with cancer. He shares the revelations he experiences, alongside wisdom from other nonmonastics who have learned from adversity and inwardness. And most profoundly, he shows how solitude can be a training in community and companionship. “Reading Aflame may help many to lead lives of greater compassion and deeper peace of mind.” —His Holiness the Dalai Lama
- Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life, by Agnes Callard. Socrates has been hiding in plain sight. We call him the father of Western philosophy, but what exactly are his philosophical views? In Open Socrates, acclaimed philosopher Agnes Callard recovers the radical move at the center of Socrates’ thought, and shows why it is still the way to a good life.
Callard draws our attention to Socrates’ startling discovery that we don’t know how to ask ourselves the most important questions—about how we should live, and how we might change. Before a person even has a chance to reflect, their bodily desires or the forces of social conformity have already answered on their behalf. To ask the most important questions, we need help. Callard argues that the true ambition of the famous “Socratic method” is to reveal what one human being can be to another. You can use another person in many ways—for survival, for pleasure, for comfort—but you are engaging them to the fullest when you call on them to help answer your questions and challenge your answers. "Agnes Callard has a remarkable gift for making ancient philosophy feel modern, urgent, and electrifyingly alive. In her hands, Socrates and Plato aren’t distant figures but conversation partners pushing us to think through the deepest and most important questions of our lives." — Ian Leslie, author of How to Disagree
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