In Colorado, the President’s tone has started rubbing off on residents.

By Peter Hessler

The New Yorker, July 24, 2017 Issue

This is a compelling article. Hessler covers Trump supporters in Grand Junction, Colorado.

• Why should you read it?

Because, ‘people have reasons for the things that they believe, and the intensity of their experiences can’t be taken for granted.’

‘“I’ve never been this emotionally invested in a political leader in my life,” he  said. “The more they hate him, the more I want him to succeed. Because what they hate about him is what they hate about me.”

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If you’re looking to understand the culture and thinking of generations of poor white Americans in the age of Trump, then portions of this book will provide fascinating reading.

Still, I can’t reconcile the myopia of the wide-eyed American exceptionalist  I found in the second half of the book, with the often astute social observer I met in the first.

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This is less a review and more of a birds nest.

The book opens with a terrifyingly beautiful epigraph from Susan Sontag:

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship.

Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom 

of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.  Although we all

prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is

obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves in that other place. 

each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves in that other place. 

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