The American Political Book

All books have a half-life, but political books seem to have the shortest half-lives.

I reached this conclusion upon deciding not to read grand magister of American journalism Bob Woodward's latest installment in the "Why Trump Sucks" book series (reports on which have been dominating my news feed for the past year or so), Fear. Part of this is simply that I need no reminder that the current commander-in-chief is an illiterate, reactive oaf. This is pretty fucking self-evident. And part of the reason that I don't pay attention to my news feed anymore is that I need no further reminders of this, nor do I have much patience for the various encomia to only marginally less repulsive figures (looking at you, Comey).

But political books have, by and large, always been awful, given that they are usually designed to either rouse up the base or address hyper-specific moments rather than engage in the sort of deep, long-term analysis and study of historical, cultural, social, economic, environmental, and indeed political trends that make up any kind of real look at the world in which we live. They seem to come into two types.

- Type 1: The Airport Bookstore Version

This version seemed to be omnipresent in the Bush years, both in its liberal versions (such as those by well-meaning amphibian Michael Moore) and its conservative versions (by Sean Hannity or any other American flag lapel-pinned slug-humans who blather on about freedom while happily taking it in the ass from whatever loathsome authoritarian comes their way). You know the type, with the picture of the smiling pundit on the glossy cover and the supposedly incendiary title, jeremiad prose, and lots of floating-block insets of text with glib asides that make the whole damn thing look like “Talking Points for Dummies,” ideal for the sort of reader who buys books not because they enjoy reading but because it was written by their favorite cable news talking head.

- Type 2: The Insider's Approach

These books usually have a plain-ish cover and a tasteful font, I guess to indicate that these are Real Books, and quite often have forewords by US senators. Extensively footnoted and decorated with fleurons at the beginning of each chapter, these are longer-form versions of the sorts of articles that appear in the Atlantic or National Review that address specific policy issues, and extrapolate to reach the conclusion that resolving this one particular issue will, in some way, fix everything. The authors are largely DC types for whom the lanyard is the equivalent of a teardrop tattooed under the eye, and who spend a lot of time talking about “healing America's political divide,” whatever that means.

What connects the two, other than the subject matter, is their intellectual myopia. By failing to examine the breadth of history or ask the necessary and uncomfortable deep questions about the nature of the discourse which we conduct, what we are left with are the hollow cheers and boos of the political class at one very specific moment in time, and they are painfully out of date within months of their release.

But this is to be expected, given the denigrated nature of the public sphere (although “denigrated” makes it sound like there was a golden age, which there wasn't, and if you don't believe me, read Dwight MacDonald's “Masscult and Midcult,” a thorough skewering of the middlebrow faves of the 1950s). Blowhards and Ted-talkers like Jordan Peterson, Thomas Friedman, or David Brooks have the right appearance of authority (elderly white men in suits, frequently bespectacled) and the right jargon to be anointed as serious intellectuals by a public that has, by and large, never bothered to understand the humanities and social sciences in any meaningful way. Sure, there's a lot of very justified frustration nowadays with the rise of Internet conspiracy theories and clickbait journalism, but so many of the same people who get in a tizzy about these things are just as likely to be taken in by these fucking hucksters.

For a long time, I felt the need to keep up with these things in the spirit of being an informed citizen. But then again, I don't go to Marvel movies because, no matter how big a part they are of the dialogue at large, I don't care about how the magic man feels sad even though he's magic. And likewise, I don't care to read some commentator's painfully oversincere takes on the past week and what it means for America.

But when I read a book by David Foster Wallace or Thomas Pynchon or Joan Didion, then everything becomes crystalline, and it does so because, while very much of a time, it is ruthless in its analysis. Or if I do want to read something explicitly political, I'll have a look at any article in the Jacobin, which in one issue contains more wisdom, insight, and analysis than the complete oeuvre of a mediocrity like Chris Hedges or Bill Maher.

And therein, I think, layeth the path to liberation. Not in any political sense, mind you, but psychically. To be both more able to comprehend the world around me more clearly and to engage in a more meaningful dialogue, I have to turn off the white noise, and while the world is not necessarily any prettier, it is freer of artifice. And damn, the clouds are nice this afternoon.