THE ENGAGEMENT: America's Quarter Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage & PROUD BOYS AND THE WHITE ETHNOSTATE: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination

PROUD BOYS AND THE WHITE ETHNOSTATE: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination
ALEXANDRA MINNA STERN
Beacon Press
$24.95 hardcover, available now
Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A critical analysis of the intellectual productions of the alt-right—necessary reading for all who seek to counter its appeal and expansion.

The "alt-right" has sadly become a household term. From a loose movement that lurked in the shadows in the early 2000s, it has achieved a level of visibility that has allowed it to expand significantly through America's cultural, political, and digital landscapes. But the alt-right is also mercurial and shape-shifting, encompassing a range of believers and ideas that overlap with white nationalism, white supremacy, and neo-Nazism. It provides a big and porous tent to those who subscribe to varying forms of race and gender-based exclusion.

In Proud Boys and the White Ethno-State, historian Alexandra Stern begins with the premise that alt-right literature, most of which exists online, should be taken seriously as a form of intellectual production that has distinct lineages, assumptions, and objectives. Applying the tools of historical analysis, cultural studies, and other interdisciplinary approaches, she explores its conceptual frameworks, language, and narratives. In doing so, she is able to probe the deeper meanings and underlying constructs, concepts, and frameworks that guide the alt-right and animate its overlapping forms of racism, xenophobia, sexism, and other social hostilities.

Like George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant, Proud Boys and the White Ethno-State is a key tool for combating today's white supremacist ideologies.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: What?! A four-star political review at Christmas?! That...that's not what you do, Sirrah.

Let's say I've still not learned my lesson. Political stuff is very much not what most people I know want to read, at least at this time of year. Y'all should read it because...never mind. No one's going to eat their spinach because I said to.

What I *will* say to the two or three whose noses are as yet unwrinkled and eyes still open is that the author delves deep into the cesspit of this reprehensible "ideology"'s apologetics. She does so without coming across as minatory or dismissive, as I do. She clearly shows what the "reasoning" is behind this claptrap and, being an academic, points out where it's deficient in its grasp.

What makes that so very valuable is that we, the unconvinced but still engaged, don't have to experience the awfulness of a people trying to talk themselves into believing they are Superior. I can barely type that sentence without wanting to laugh while barfing.

Anyway. The point of me reviewing it is to say you definitely would learn a LOT about the January 6th events if you read this; you would understand a lot more clearly why the movement is moving peristaltically through the Body Politic of the US; and your grasp of what is at stake in 2024 will impel you to action in place of apathy.

Learn what you don't know that you don't know.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE ENGAGEMENT: America's Quarter Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage
SASHA ISSENBERG
Pantheon Books (Non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99 Kindle edition, available now

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK FOR 2021!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR - The riveting story of the conflict over same-sex marriage in the United States—the most significant civil rights breakthrough of the new millennium

On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, making same-sex unions legal across the United States. But the road to that momentous decision was much longer than many know. In this definitive account, Sasha Issenberg vividly guides us through same-sex marriage's unexpected path from the unimaginable to the inevitable.

It is a story that begins in Hawaii in 1990, when a rivalry among local activists triggered a sequence of events that forced the state to justify excluding gay couples from marriage. In the White House, one president signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which elevated the matter to a national issue, and his successor tried to write it into the Constitution. Over twenty-five years, the debate played out across the country, from the first legal same-sex weddings in Massachusetts to the epic face-off over California's Proposition 8 and, finally, to the landmark Supreme Court decisions of United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges. From churches to hedge funds, no corner of American life went untouched.

This richly detailed narrative follows the coast-to-coast conflict through courtrooms and war rooms, bedrooms and boardrooms, to shed light on every aspect of a political and legal controversy that divided Americans like no other. Following a cast of characters that includes those who sought their own right to wed, those who fought to protect the traditional definition of marriage, and those who changed their minds about it, The Engagement is certain to become a seminal book on the modern culture wars.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I disagree with the publisher's decision to use the phrase "same-sex marriage" in the sales copy. It's not about the sex organs of the people involved. It's about the equality of access to the benefits of the legal state of marriage to all people who wish to avail themselves of it.

If marriage is a cornerstone of a properly functioning society, then what is the justification for denying access to it to the people who wish to engage in it? If your church doesn't choose to solemnize or recognize marriages between people of different faiths, or skin colors, or the same sex, no one can force you to do so. It's against the law that separates church from state.

Your personal fantasyland has no place in the county clerk's office where marriage licenses are issued.

If that's not how you see it, you're wrong.

This book's almost a thousand pages and there's a LOT to learn in here...the role of activists in changing the public conversation is delightfully thoroughgoing...and there's a lot of good reasons to learn it. What gives me pause is the sheer heft of the tome! I very definitely have a dog in this fight and it was still a serious commitment that I took a long time to fulfill. As the current Supreme Court has shown us, there is no such thing as established law when the scum of the Earth want to resist things changing in ways they're not comfortable with.

Might be time to get your eyes around this well-written and thoroughly sourced and closely argued tale of how Justice was finally served.

The Kindle edition's so cheap and it's SO much easier on your wrists...plus they've made checking endnotes a whole lot simpler in modern Kindles as well. A great bargain!