I’m finally getting to the spring issue of the Claremont Review of Books. I have to recommend Michael Anton’s review of Laura K. Field’s Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right:
While Field purports to be standing up for decency, moderation, comity, and calm reason, nowhere does she concede that Trump, his voters, or the figures she excoriates have a point about anything, any legitimate grievances, or any reason to be dissatisfied with the way things have been going over the past 30 or so years. Field is determined to see the worst in everything and everyone she targets while never giving even a sliver of the benefit of the doubt. She must recognize this as a shortcoming of her book because early on she warns readers that “to believe that there is nothing to learn from these thinkers and no compelling noneconomic reasons to support something like Trump . . . is naïve and dangerous.” Nearly every review of Furious Minds quotes this sentence as proof of Field’s scrupulous fair-mindedness, but none pauses to acknowledge that Field never actually, you know, cites a single example of one of the figures she discusses being right about anything, however small. That sentence is just a “to-be-sure” feint to make her book seem less unyieldingly one-sided than it actually is.
Anton is both forensic and ferocious.