![]() The penultimate chapter of the book is in Wisconsin, because I was in Wisconsin right after the Dobbs ruling, Roe v. But what does that indicate to you about the overall direction towards authoritarianism? The percentage wasn't a lot different in the 2020 election, a minority to be sure. But more than 100,000 people in this state of a little over 600,000 also voted for Trump that year. You live in Vermont, Jeff, a state that in 2016, heavily favored Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. "What are you packing? What are you carrying?" This is the sort of simmering-approaching-boiling-point that we're at. And I keep sort of going back and forth with them saying, "But I've brought a pencil, and you've brought a gun." And at one point, the usher who's just wearing a blue blazer, leans into me and says, "How do you know I don't have a gun?"Īnd this to me is an American question right now. ![]() I went out in the parking lot, and an usher and a gunman in full militia gear come out. But at a certain point, Pastor Hank Kunneman, I guess alerted that I'd been there, starts saying, "I sense that there's a reporter in this room." And he starts preaching against me, and he says, "Report on, lie on."Īfterwards, I wanted to talk further. That's complicated, right? And the preaching is very dynamic. It's a very diverse church, as so many of these far-right churches are. What happened in that church that prompted them to say, "You've gotta leave now?"īecause I had already encountered more guns on this journey than I'd seen in my 20 years of reporting - and I'm not squeamish about guns, I mean, Vermont is a very well-armed state, I'm a gun owner, a responsible gun owner, I hope - so once I realized I was gonna go to that church, I called and I walked in, and I said, "I'm a journalist," identified myself and "hope I can talk to Pastor Hank Kunneman afterwards" and sit through the service. I've been on the wrong side of a gun as a reporter before, but never in a church. They ended up taking me out of the church with gunmen, they had their own militia. One example - I pulled into a church on Sunday morning in Omaha, Nebraska. What's one example of some people you spoke with who left you nervous about the state of democracy as we know it in America? You report from Donald Trump rallies that you attended, from evangelical churches, speaking to the people that you say are embracing things like book-burning, legislation targeting transgender and nonbinary Americans. ![]() Mitch Wertlieb: Now, your book is not based on theory or some kind of analysis from above-the-fray. More from Vermont Public: 'A Nightshift Book': Jeff Sharlet On Finding Empathy In Unexpected Places ![]() At the end of his days, he'd say, "Where your anger comes from doesn't matter as what you do with it."Īnd that gave me a kind of a hope that I wanted to fuel the reader through the very dark journey that follows. Ninety-six years in the struggle, Harry Belafonte - and I'll have to say, angry, every one of them - he didn't rest on his laurels. Trump has recently been campaigning on the idea of a "final battle." That's apocalyptic language. Jeff Sharlet: 'Cause I needed to open with hope, but it couldn't be cheap grace, it couldn't be the kind of narrow-minded optimism, "everything's going to be okay." Harry Belafonte reminds us of the long struggle, and takes us out of that language that Trump and Trumpism - and I will use the “F” word, ”fascism” - wants us to believe in. Wertlieb starts the interview by asking Sharlet why he begins the book on a note of optimism, with a chapter on the entertainer and civil rights legend Harry Belafonte, who recently died at the age of 96. Their conversation below has been condensed and edited for clarity. Vermont Public’s Mitch Wertlieb spoke with journalist Jeff Sharlet. The reporting takes the reader to some dark places. If that seems like an alarmist point of view, Vermont-based journalist and professor of English at Dartmouth College, Jeff Sharlet urges you to read the stories of the people he's encountered in his new book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. The second civil war in America's history has already started. ![]()
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