{"id":14141,"date":"2020-03-13T11:47:26","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T15:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/book\/insane-clown-president-dispatches-from-the-american-circus\/"},"modified":"2020-03-13T11:47:26","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T15:47:26","slug":"insane-clown-president-dispatches-from-the-american-circus","status":"publish","type":"book","link":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/book\/insane-clown-president-dispatches-from-the-american-circus\/","title":{"rendered":"Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the American Circus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b><i>NEW YORK TIMES<\/i> BESTSELLER &#8211; Dispatches from the 2016 election that provide an eerily prescient take on our democracy&#8217;s uncertain future, by the country&#8217;s most perceptive and fearless political journalist.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>In twenty-five pieces from <i>Rolling Stone<\/i>&#8211;plus two original essays&#8211;Matt Taibbi tells the story of Western civilization&#8217;s very own train wreck, from its tragicomic beginnings to its apocalyptic conclusion. Years before the clown car of candidates was fully loaded, Taibbi grasped the essential themes of the story: the power of spectacle over substance, or even truth; the absence of a shared reality; the nihilistic rebellion of the white working class; the death of the political establishment; and the emergence of a new, explicit form of white nationalism that would destroy what was left of the Kingian dream of a successful pluralistic society.<\/p>\n<p>Taibbi captures, with dead-on, real-time analysis, the failures of the right and the left, from the thwarted Bernie Sanders insurgency to the flawed and aimless Hillary Clinton campaign; the rise of the &#8220;dangerously bright&#8221; alt-right with its wall-loving identity politics and its rapturous view of the &#8220;Racial Holy War&#8221; to come; and the giant fail of a flailing, reactive political media that fed a ravenous news cycle not with reporting on political ideology, but with undigested propaganda served straight from the campaign bubble. At the center of it all stands Donald J. Trump, leading a historic revolt against his own party, &#8220;bloviating and farting his way&#8221; through the campaign, &#8220;saying outrageous things, acting like Hitler one minute and Andrew Dice Clay the next.&#8221; For Taibbi, the stunning rise of Trump marks the apotheosis of the new postfactual movement.<\/p>\n<p>Taibbi frames the reporting with original essays that explore the seismic shift in how we perceive our national institutions, the democratic process, and the future of the country. <i>Insane Clown President<\/i> is not just a postmortem on the collapse and failure of American democracy. It offers the riveting, surreal, unique, and essential experience of seeing the future in hindsight.<\/p>\n<p><b>&#8220;Scathing . . . What keeps the pages turning in this so freshly familiar story line is the vivid observation and original turns of phrase.&#8221;<i>&#8211;San Francisco Chronicle<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER &#8211; Dispatches from the 2016 election that provide an eerily prescient take on our democracy&#8217;s uncertain future, by the country&#8217;s most&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","book_status":[],"book_genre":[],"class_list":["post-14141","book","type-book","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book\/14141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/book"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"book_status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book_status?post=14141"},{"taxonomy":"book_genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myriad.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book_genre?post=14141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}