#Jeff Sharlet

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The Center Cannot Hold

A kaleidoscopic journey through a divided country

By Elizabeth D. Samet | March 1, 2023

Jeff Sharlet’s new book, The Undertow, plunged me into a vertiginous fever-dream. It induced a physiological response similar to the one I experienced while reading Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Both books are mood-altering, mind-altering odysseys; both set forth visions of a weird and roiling body politic. Didion’s title invokes an earlier account of disintegration, W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” to frame its anatomy of American chaos in the 1960s. “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,” Yeats wrote in 1919. “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,” he wonders in the poem’s final lines, “Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” This is the question hovering behind Sharlet’s essay collection, which spans a period of approximately 10 years, ending in 2021—an era he describes, borrowing filmmaker Jeffrey Ruoff’s coinage, as “the Trumpocene.”

On finishing “The Undertow,” I realized the degree to which the revelatory terrors of Didion’s American surreal are mercifully muted for me because I am not old enough to have known them at first hand. But I live in Sharlet’s America, a world of apocalyptic pulsings and unnatural peril made all the more visceral by the author’s capacity for ventriloquizing the grief, rage, delusion, racism, misogyny, and bad-faith histrionics that he encounters on his journeys across the United States. The river of bile on which Sharlet fights to stay afloat courses from one end of the country to the other. He ushers us into the front yards and houses of radicalized private citizens, draws us into a conference for angry members of the “manosphere,” sweeps us from the violence of the Capitol steps on January 6 to the conspiratorial depths of QAnon. He immerses us in political rallies and megachurch services, which often sound very much the same in their embrace of a prosperity gospel derived from Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). The same association between faith and material success that makes the “church of Trump” appealing to so many infuses some of the actual churches Sharlet visits.

A consummate long-form journalist and a professor of creative writing at Dartmouth College, Sharlet is also the author of several books, including “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” (2008) and “C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy” (2010), which together formed the basis of a Netflix documentary series. The evangelical Christian communities that Sharlet explored in those works feature in The Undertow as ecstatic, often paranoid, and usually armed. The book alludes to the long, sometimes violent history of American evangelism that stretches back to the Puritans—a history eloquently traversed several years ago by another intrepid journalist, Frances FitzGerald, in The Evangelicals (2017). Figures like Jonathan Edwards and John Brown make cameos in Sharlet’s book, but its focus is, emphatically, on the now. “The Undertow”, Sharlet advises readers, “is written from the middle of something, a season of coming apart.

”Sharlet is a kind of anthropologist of the Trumpocene, and the richness of his dispatches derives from his ability to inhabit a broad range of sensibilities and psychologies. Camping out in the “funk” of Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park in 2011, for example, he tries to account for the oddness of the Occupy movement. “Occupations were literally about re-filling a hollowed-out public sphere with an actual public of breathing bodies,” he writes. The protesters made headlines, even as their agenda remained somewhat unclear. They were, he concludes, holy fools: they offered poetry instead of platforms and spoke “not truth to power but imagination to things as they are.”

Despite this interlude, Sharlet is interested primarily in the imagination of the right. In his telling, it assumes more sinister expression as cant, violent fantasy, and vengeful prayer, which combine to create an “alternate reality” bolstered by “the juxtaposition of the verifiable and the absurd, each vouching for the other.” The Steal, Pizzagate, the deep state, red-pilling, the Great Replacement Theory, the satanic Clintons—these are the “feverish dreams” coursing, in their various permutations, through the book. These are the descendants of dreams, Sharlet insists, that have been “twisting through the American mind since the beginning.”

Sharlet, who has attended services in all manner of places—“megachurches and chapels and compounds and covens”—visits several in The Undertow. An early essay features Miami’s slick, celebrity-linked VOUS Church, “born on an Oxygen reality show featuring beaches, bikinis, and screaming fans, called Rich in Faith.” Sharlet’s handlers are friendly, keen that he have “fun,” but he finds only emptiness: a gospel of “style and good feeling.” Later, he attends the more “militant” and considerably less hospitable West Omaha Baptist Church, where Pastor Hank singles him out as a journalist purveying lies: “Your sin will find you out.” What finds him out first, when he is talking with some worshippers in the parking lot after the service, is an obviously armed security guard and an usher, who persuades Sharlet to leave with a threatening question: “How do you know I don’t have a gun?” The incident raises Sharlet’s blood pressure and brings into focus the autobiographical story that threads through his narrative. He reveals that he has had two heart attacks, and so the heartsickness of the body politic finds its physical analogue and somber echo in the heart disease of its chronicler, as he is dragged, and we with him, into the undertow of a distinctively American kind of sorrow and hysteria.

In “The Undertow”’s title essay, Sharlet takes up the case of Ashli Babbitt, the January 6 rioter killed by a Capitol Police officer. For some, Babbitt has become a martyr, a harbinger, the “first casualty” of the “slow civil war” to which the book’s subtitle calls our attention. Her death, together with the swirling fictions about it that have now replaced the facts, becomes the emblem of a Yeatsian center that “cannot hold.” Yet the book’s first and final essays offer a counterpoint to the processes of disintegration and drowning in the portraits of two musicians and political activists: Harry Belafonte and Lee Hays (a founder of the folk group The Weavers). Sharlet restores the voices of these singers, whose “best songs” have been “forgotten or worn smooth and seemingly safe by time.” Rescuing their music from the distortions of history, he reveals these artists in all their lyrical splendor as mourners, elegists. Sharlet sees these men—one Black, the other white—as heroic singers of “a kind of secret code of resistance” to lies, delusions, and Trumpian “vulgarity masquerading as candor,” as well as to the violence such rhetoric summons.

Remember grieving Orpheus, torn limb from limb by the frenzied bacchantes, his head carried along the river, still afloat and singing. Nothing could drown out that voice.

Elizabeth D. Samet is a professor of English at West Point. Her latest book is Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness.

[iirulancorrino]

Journalist Jeff Sharlet’s recent book The Undertow starts with a very moving, very powerful essay about Harry Belafonte. The book as a whole varies in quality but I would recommend it on the strength of this alone, especially now that Belafonte is no longer with us. 

[kp777]

‘I see this as a global fascist moment’: author Jeff Sharlet on interviewing far-right Americans

[redshift-13]

https://twitter.com/JeffSharlet/status/1541816135141711875

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627793834/theenigmaofclarencethomas

[tweetingukpolitics]

[dipnotski]

Jeff Sharlet – The Family (2023)

Amerikan Hıristiyanlığının bir kesiminin nasıl tehlikeli bir yola girdiğini gözler önüne seren çok iyi bir çalışma. Aynı isimli Netflix belgeseline kaynaklık eden Jeff Sharlet’in ‘The Family’ kitabı, Hıristiyan köktendinci, gizli bir topluluğun izini sürüyor. Amerikan iktidarının kalbinde ve dünyanın pek çok noktasında ruhani bir savaş sürdüren söz konusu Aile’yi ifşa eden Sharlet, kongre…

[princelysome]

Read it all in one sitting if you can, as the somewhat stream-of-consciousness style proves difficult to pick up and put down intermittently. That said, it's a thought-provoking read, but you may likely be disturbed by the story the author has to tell.

[garudabluffs]

The Undertow Scenes from a Slow Civil War

“The Undertow”: Author Jeff Sharlet on Trump, the Far Right & the Growing Threat of Fascism in U.S.

April 06, 2023 LISTEN READ MORE Transcript https://www.democracynow.org/2023/4/6/jeff_sharlet_the_undertow

[vague-humanoid]

Author Jeff Sharlet has spent years interviewing conservatives and found many unassuming Americans are ready and eager for violence against their political enemies.

Sharlet's latest book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, is the result of more than a dozen years of reporting on the religious right, compiling numerous interviews conducted throughout the Midwest and Great Plains, and he's more worried than ever about the possibility of civil war, reported The Guardian.

"I’ve been writing about the right for a long time," he told the newspaper. "I’m always interested in the margins of things that tell us about what’s happening at the center. An undertow is a metaphor for that, for the force that’s been pulling us to this place for a long time. If you’d asked me 10 years ago if I ever thought another civil war would be possible in the United States, I would have said no. But to think so [now] is to not understand that the right in America is as dangerous as it is."

He cited a "nice-looking" family he met near Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who seemed like "ordinary" conservatives, as the newspaper described them, but harbored bloodthirsty fantasies rooted in extreme conservative politics.

"[The father said] he had a 'Let’s go Brandon' sticker because he didn’t want to swear around his son," Sharlet said. "They’re a middle-class dad and mom. They were always gun people, but not a lot of guns. Now they’re up to 36, now they are arming up. The father had always been anti-abortion. But now it was like a dream had moved into his and his wife’s mind. He described, in incredibly violent detail, the process of abortion. Then he described, in incredibly violent detail, the punishment he thought he and others were going to give to abortion doctors. They were ready for executions." 

"It’s astonishing there hasn’t been more violence," Sharlet added. "I think we’ve had a shield from that violence for a long time and now that shield … I sound like Jerry Falwell saying the hand of God is being removed from America."

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

How the cray-cray took hold in Wisconsin. 

Jeff Sharlet: I went back twice to find out what the coffin meant, but though cars came and went in the driveway, nobody ever answered the door. Halloween in June, or a sign? Kitsch, or a warning? I’d been driving for a week, since the first night of the January 6 hearings, listening to them on the radio as I counted the flags. Not the American ones but the Trump ones. Trump 2024, two years ahead of time; and the red, white, and blue of the Confederacy, the yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden. There are so many now. 

There’s new folk art too: handpainted “Fuck Biden” placards, homemade “Let’s Go Brandon” billboards, and DIY “Never Forget Benghazi” banners. The cities and towns still ripple with rainbow pride, their numbers are greater, but on many country roads the ugly emblems tick by like mile markers. What was the coffin though? I was visiting friends in Cecil, Wisconsin, when we drove past it. They let me out to make a picture. “Careful,” they said, and, “We’ll come back for you,” because they didn’t want to linger. They sped away, leaving me in the green light. I made my picture. I waited. I read on my phone, on Twitter, that Wisconsin Republicans had blocked an effort to repeal a dormant 1849 law making any abortion—including for rape or incest—a felony. My friends returned, we fled. The next morning, the ruling came down: Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe v. Wade, and Wisconsin became the only “blue” state in which abortion is now effectively illegal.   

In 1973—the same year the US Supreme Court decided 7–2 that Norma McCorvey, “Jane Roe,” had a constitutional “right to privacy” that included reproductive freedom—tennis champion Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the televised “Battle of the Sexes.” Richard Nixon declared, “I am not a crook.” Henry Kissinger won a Nobel Peace Prize. Also in 1973, a book appeared called Wisconsin Death Trip. It began as a staple-bound pamphlet and as a book became an unlikely mirror of its moment, even as it depicted the last 15 years of the previous century. History’s like that, sometimes, our faith in the forward motion of chronology suddenly evaporating. Death Trip was, on the surface, a benign album of seemingly ordinary photographs—portraits, patriotic displays, happy youth—from one small town in Wisconsin, Black River Falls, during the last decade of the 19th century. Interspersed are excerpts from the town newspaper, the Black River Falls Badger State Banner, and whispers from a “town gossip.” 

In 1973, a year of crises as varied and vast as those of this year, most white Americans still imagined the previous century as an idyll, apart from a brief interruption for civil war, fought for reasons they thought “romantic.” Virtuous country life, bustling urban industry. American greatness. The Banner spoke other truths. Epidemic disease, whole families consumed; diphtheria, the formation in the throat of a “false membrane”; “astonishing bank failure”; “incendiaries,” arsonists who loved to watch things burn; “vigilance committees”; “the private made public”; a woman, once a “model wife and mother,” who roamed the state smashing windows; soul after soul, remanded to the asylum; so many suicides; a woman who died “from a criminal operation performed upon herself” after she failed to find a doctor with the courage to help her. There was beauty in the book too, even in its carefully arranged photographs of dead infants. That’s what you did then, when your baby died. If you had the money, you hired the town photographer to make the infant’s picture, tucked into a little coffin with flowers, eyes tenderly brushed closed.

[azspot]

One of the mistakes people make is they say, ‘Well, this doesn’t look like European fascism in 1936.’ Well, because it’s American fascism in 2024.

Jeff Sharlet

[dancing-mylife-away]

thank you @leothil for the unofficial tag bc i will take any opportunity to talk about books 😂 so here are 9 books i want to read this year!

a body of work: dancing to the edge and back by david hallberg. i've literally owned this book since the week it came out in 2017 but i still haven't read it 😅 idk why bc david hallberg is one of my all-time favorite ballet dancers so hopefully 2024 will be the year i finally read his memoir

illusions of camelot by peter boal. another ballet memoir that will hopefully come out in paperback this year so i can buy it. he's the current artistic director of PNB and former principal at NYCB (i think he was one of the last dancers selected for the company by balanchine) so anyway ballet books are My Thing

before you found me by michael robotham. the 4th cyrus haven book which has been my favorite mystery/suspense series since the first book came out

deus x by stephen mack jones. the 4th august snow book which is another suspense/thriller series i really enjoy

the second chance year by melissa wiesner

pointe of pride by chloe angyal. the sequel to pas de don't which was one of my favorite romance books i read last year. and angyal is a former ballet dancer so the ballet parts of the book are extremely accurate and well-written

the berry pickers by amanda peters

the undertow: scenes from a slow civil war by jeff sharlet

some shall break by ellie marney. the sequel to none shall sleep which i read a few years ago and loved!

tagging @crosbytoews @hockeyunfortunately @jackreichel @mistmarauder @murphybedard @endandblossom and anyone else who wants to do this!

[maria-de-salinas]

May I ask for your answers to #'s 3, 5, and 13 for the end-of-year book ask game?

Thank you!!

3. What were your top five books of the year?

Sylvester by Georgette Heyer. An indomitable, flawed, and delightful heroine; a duke who put his heart in a steel trap; deep emotions expressed in the single smallest gestures; rollicking misadventures; and the most meticulous recreation of Regency England you'll ever read. This book has everything.

The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet. A journey through America, from Trump rallies to dive bars to a church in California where the crosses are replaced with swords. Not an easy read emotionally, but it's haunting, personal, elegiac, slightly hopeful, and beautifully written.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susannah Clarke. A fresh and original take on magic, fairies that are both dark and whimsical, and enormous depth, all amidst a very real time and place in history (England and France during the Napoleonic wars) that's gorgeously re-created. Every time I pick it up is a treat.

Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett (Discworld.) This is only the second Discworld novel that I've read and I'm sure I'll read some that are even more brilliant but it's so good on so many levels.

The Wild Remedy by Emma Mitchell. A month-by-month diary of finding solace from depression and anxiety through nature, with sketches, photographs, beautiful description of animals and landscapes, and deep, raw honesty. Reading this is like having a kind, non-judgmental friend walking with you through the woods.

5. What genre did you read most of?

Hmm...I did dip into lots of other genres this year, especially fantasy, but probably non-fiction. History, politics, biographies.

13. What were your least favourite books of the year?

Confession time: I embraced my inner lemming and got my hands on a copy of Prince Harry's memoir Spare. Suffice it to say I've learned things about frostbitten appendages that I really didn't need to know.

[sataniccapitalist]

[gravalicious]

“In theory, artists shocking the bourgeoisie is an old story. ​“This sort of thing has been seen before,” says John Ganz, author of a forthcoming book on political volatility in the early 1990s. ​“A certain cultural elite thinking the transgression and vulgarity of fascism or right-wing populism is amusing and upsets all the right people. When Celine published his crazy antisemitic rant in the ​’30s, lots of French intellectuals thought he must be being ironic: ​‘This is such a wonderful provocation of middle-class sensibilities and hypocrisy.’” But, Ganz continues, ​“The problem is they also have to keep coming up with stuff to be provocative.” In a 2017 article, political scientist Joseph E. Lowndes tells a cautionary tale about Telos, a once-Marxist journal founded in the 1960s that, by the 1990s, had become home to far-right thinkers who provided the intellectual backbone for the alt-right. Frustrated by their sense that all forms of dissent were co-opted and neutralized by capitalism, Telos’ editors had searched farther and farther afield for movements that truly challenged social norms. Much of what they found was on the nationalist, racist Right.”

Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet - Losing the Plot: The “Leftists” Who Turn Right (2023)