Somehow I channelled Erasmus, the 15th. Century monk, with the famous quotation, “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.” He is also one of very early proponents of humanism, which remains my very favorite “ism”.
One of my favorite books I found in my book binging is Jonathan Rauch’s “Love Your Enemies”. (Review from January 2024 available at https://www.tillamookcountypioneer.net/book-review-love-your-enemies-by-aurthur-c-brooks/ ) I learned from that book about “confirmation bias.” Confirmation bias is the powerful urge we have to agree with arguments that confirm opinions we already have.
The book encourages us to combat our “confirmation bias” by seeking out opposing viewpoints. Accordingingly, I decided to look at “The Dying Citizen” and “The MAGA Doctrine” to challenge my own “confirmation bias” and to expose myself to different viewpoints.
It has not been a pleasant experience for me. Maybe my confirmation bias takes over, but I can only characterize the writing as a combination of muckraking and ”used car salesman” patter. Other people might read the same material and have every word ring true in their minds.
Victor Hanson was born in 1953 and is a distinguished historian and classics professor at Stanford University. He is a Trump partisan. I found him to be a tiresome writer.
Charlie Kirk was a early millennial born in 1993 and tragically assassinated last month by a demented young man from the later end of his generation. Charlie dropped out of college before his second semester but displayed great speaking ability and a talent for writing.
One crazy young man pulled the trigger that ended Charlie’s life, but I truly believe that lots of us share in the guilt. Partisanship has morphed into hatred that fuels the actions of Charlie’s killer and, on the other end of the political spectrum, the senseless murder of Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in Minnesota this summer.
I found the book “The Dying Citizen” to be tiresome reading. It basically piles grievance upon grievance and steps aside declaring the left is bad, Trump is good. He pads his book with wide detours into classical Greek and Roman history. I think including the fact that democracy began in 508 B.C. with Cleisthenes is more about enlarging the book than enlightening the reader. I do not find fault with most of the grievances he talks about. I thought it strange that his complaints about tribalism were more about Hispanic/Anglo divide than partisan politics. It appears to be a well-documented book with copious notes, but it appears that if anybody says something he agrees with, he accepts as fact and includes a numbered footnote. I tried following some but all I got were error messages about “page not found”.
Maybe I’m getting this wrong, but I think his main grievances stem from being a raisin farmer and being in an Hispanic majority public school. I can relate to his complaints, but I think he is as much inventive as he is factual. A big complaint is his fear of “leftists” wanting to give undocumented people the right to vote. I think that’s a straight-up “boogie man” lie.
I found Kirk’s book easier reading. He doesn’t bother us with notes, he just throws things out, sometimes they’re factual, sometimes not. He criticizes Obama for accepting a Nobel prize after bombing a “prosperous African nation into a place of terrorist gangs and slave trading.” Trouble is the prize was in 2009 and the bombing was in 2011 and was a Nato operation.
My biggest trouble with both books is that they were both written in early Biden years and promised sunlight and redemption when Trump regained the Whitehouse. Now that it’s 2025, the excess of government overreach far exceeds anything that Hanson and Kirk bemoaned.
Books are available at Cloud and Leaf Bookstore, Manzanita and Tillamook County Public Library
As always, discussion welcome at codger817@gmail.com and feel free to share with others.