The Storm Is Here
An American Crucible
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The New Yorker's award-winning war correspondent returns to his own country to chronicle its accelerating civic breakdown, in an indelible eyewitness narrative of startling explanatory power
After years of living abroad and covering the Global War on Terrorism, Luke Mogelson went home in early 2020 to report on the social discord that the pandemic was bringing to the fore across the US. An assignment that began with right-wing militias in Michigan soon took him to an uprising for racial justice in Minneapolis, then to antifascist clashes in the streets of Portland, and ultimately to an attempted insurrection in Washington, D.C. Those dispatches were only the beginning.
This is the definitive eyewitness account of how—during a season of sickness, economic uncertainty, and violence—a large segment of Americans became convinced of the need to battle against dark forces plotting to take their country away from them. It builds month by month, through vivid depictions of events on the ground, from the onset of covid-19 to the attack on the US Capitol— during which Mogelson followed the mob into the Senate chamber—and its echoes in Donald Trump’s return to power five years later. Bravely reported and beautifully written, The Storm Is Here is a unique record of the moment at which American democracy began to crumble.
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The clash of right and left during 2020 reveals America's blighted soul in this vivid account. New Yorker writer Mogelson (These Heroic, Happy Dead) interviews rifle-toting militiamen protesting Michigan's lockdown measures, documents violent demonstrations in Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., after the killing of George Floyd, and mingles with "Stop the Steal" protestors in Washington, D.C. The book's climax is an impressionistic, firsthand account of the January 6 Capitol riot: "Each time the mob heaved, it lifted me off my feet. One of the people I was pressed against wore a helmet, a gas mask, and an army combat uniform with a patch that read ‘Armor of God.' " Unabashed about his own political leanings, Mogelson paints rightists mainly as QAnon zealots and covert racists, and sympathizes with leftists who defend the burning of a Wells Fargo in Minneapolis and other acts of property destruction as blows for racial and social justice. While noting some excesses, he praises antifascists for being willing to put their bodies on the line against the Proud Boys and other alt-right extremists. Unfortunately, some of Mogelson's rehashes are selective and misleading: Breonna Taylor was not killed "in her bed," but died in her hallway after her boyfriend fired once at police. The result is a colorful but biased study of American extremism.
