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for his superhuman patience throughout the embarrassingly long ordeal that was this book. Without his stoic bravery in the face of my general assholeness, this book would never have been published. Thanks also to his assistant, Mya Spalter, who spent countless hours trying to find me when I was hiding from Chris, and also to the many members of Spiegel & Grau’s publicity and marketing team—and also, of course, to Celina Spiegel and Julie Grau themselves, who showed tremendous confidence in the project throughout.

I would also like to thank my editors at Rolling Stone, Will Dana, Eric Bates, and Jann Wenner, for having patience with me while I wrote this book. Naturally, thanks should also be extended to my agent, Lydia Wills at Paradigm, who has frequently had to hold both of my hands during his process.

Thanks also to my friends and family for their continued encouragement and support, in particular my mother, Veronica Whelan, who nearly went off the road many times talking to me on the phone throughout this period.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and a columnist for RollingStone.com. He’s the author of two essay collections, Spanking the Donkey and Smells Like Dead Elephants. He lives in New York City.

ALSO BY MATT TAIBBI

Spanking the Donkey:

Dispatches from the Dumb Season

Smells Like Dead Elephants:

Dispatches from a Rotting Empire

WITH MARK AMES

The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia

PUBLISHED BY SPIEGEL & GRAU

Copyright © 2008 by Matt Taibbi

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.spiegelandgrau.com

SPIEGEL & GRAU is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

The names of certain individuals in The Great Derangement have been changed in order to protect their privacy.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Taibbi, Matt.

The great derangement : a terrifying true story of war, politics, and religion at the twilight of the American empire/Matt Taibbi.—1st ed.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-385-52570-1

1. United States—Politics and government—2001– 2. United States—Description and travel. 3. Political culture—United States. 4. Taibbi, Matt—Travel. 5. United States. Congress—Decision making. 6. Iraq war, 2003—Personal narratives, American. 7. Left-wing extremists—United States. 8. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001—Causes. 9. Big churches—Texas—San Antonio. 10. End of the world—Social aspects—Texas—San Antonio. I. Title.

E902.T345 2008

973.93—dc22

2007043204

v1.0

FOOTNOTES

*1These substitute speakers, incidentally, are called Speakers pro tempore, and most every day in Congress begins with the reading of a note from Hastert nominating this or that Republican colleague to act in his stead—one of the first rules of the modern Congress being that the primary actors of the House almost always have something better to do than actually show up on the floor.

Return to text.

*2Congresswoman Jane Harman on January 4: “We have already spent at least $400 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan. But only about 9 percent of those funds were approved through the normal appropriations process.

“The rest was passed in ‘Emergency Supplemental’ appropriation bills not subject to budget caps or the normal congressional oversight process. These supplementals—because their numbers do not appear on the budgetary bottom line—allow the White House to pretend it is maintaining a semblance of fiscal discipline. But our deficits are already spiraling out of control and there is no way to bring the budget into balance without taking the staggering war costs into account.

“The Bush Administration has claimed emergency spending is necessary because the costs of a protracted war on terror are not known. Nonsense. Both the Korean and the Vietnam wars were almost entirely financed through the regular appropriations process—not emergency supplementals.

“The White House will soon ask for over $100 billion in new