The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi [0]
Title Page
Introduction
ONE. Born Again
TWO. Congressional Interlude I, or Inside the Halls of Derangement
THREE. The Longest Three Days of My Life
FOUR. Baghdad Interlude, or The Derangement at War
FIVE. Discover the Difference
SIX. Congressional Interlude II, or Democrats Seize the Reins of the Derangement
SEVEN. Bible Study
EIGHT. Conspiracy Interlude I, or 9/11 and the Derangement of Truth
NINE. Peak Experience
TEN. Conspiracy Interlude II, or The Derangement of the American Left
ELEVEN. Practice, Practice, Practice
TWELVE. Conspiracy Interlude III, or The Derangement of the Peace Movement
THIRTEEN. The End
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Matt Taibbi
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
THIS BOOK came into being by means of a ridiculously long and tortuous series of editor-writer discussions, grotesque literary failures, nervous collapses, abrupt about-faces, cop-outs, lies, and other types of grossly unprofessional behavior. And what’s most funny about it is that it ended more or less where it started—as a long examination of where the American public’s head is in advance of the 2008 elections, forged in a crucible of flailing, masturbatory nihilism.
I was originally contacted shortly after the release of my last book, Spanking the Donkey, not by Spiegel and Grau (which didn’t exist at the time), but by Crown, another Random House imprint, in the person of editor Chris Jackson. If I remember correctly, what he wanted was some sort of taxonomic survey of the worst people in American politics and culture—a rogues’ gallery, put together in handy reference form, which would be full of various insults and vituperation. At the time I was a little depressed about the number of requests I was getting from editors to whale on people in print and was somewhat afraid that I was going to be buttonholed, professionally, into a role as a kind of lefty/alternative hatchet man—a liberal Ann Coulter. It didn’t help that I was secretly afraid that this very thing was my only salable skill in the American media market.
So I wormed my way out of that idea and somehow sold the good people at Crown on a new, more “serious” subject, one more befitting my status as a “serious” political commentator. This would be an essay of monstrous import about the fake left/right, blue-state/red-state conflict that, I’d hoped to argue, was a fraud being consciously perpetrated on the public by a cultural conspiracy with the outrageously pretentious name “The Thinkophancy.” I made it about eleven thousand words into that effort before realizing that even I had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. I vividly remember my last read-through of that text; I literally squirmed in shame. I knew that if I were to finish such a book and actually see it published, I’d be covering Inuit volleyball in Alaska before the release of the 2007 spring list.
So I junked that idea and did yet another about-face, this time selling Chris on a year-long diary of Congress in action. By then I’d done a long piece about Congress for Rolling Stone and had been somewhat shocked to see how our government really operates. Having lived outside of the United States for most of my adult life, I was really a neophyte when it came to understanding the mechanics of American power. But after spending a great deal of time on the Hill, I began to develop a theory about American politics as a kind of closed loop of inside players, an oligarchy of commercial interests who ran Washington in conjunction with their hired hands in Congress as a closed shop.
The lawmaking process had evolved over time in such a way that almost all of the important decisions could be made behind closed doors by a few key players in both houses, without debate or discussion and certainly without any real input from the voting public. I was amazed to see that Congress spent most of its daylight hours naming post offices and passing resolutions to honor sports teams, while the important stuff it did—like gut the Clean Air Act as an “emergency” response to Hurricane