I was going to begin this review with a load of vital and relevant quotes from the book. But that would take far too long and might defer others from feeling they need to read 'The Witches Are Coming' for themselves. Every page here is necessary for everyone.
Because things are much, much worse than we may think.
'The Witches Are Coming' is funny, unapologetically biting and critical, blood-boiling, rage-inducing, and absolutely terrifying. In under 250 pages and a day's reading time, it cuts right into the heart of modern politics, the internet, mainstream media entertainment, and our current, retrograde society and culture - all are rife with histories of abuse, toxicity, propaganda, base aggression, and regression in the 21st century, right up to 2019. And witch hunting and a "boys' club" mentality.
And we are falling for it - especially in America, which has never been the land of the free no matter how many times we tell ourselves that - armed with unlimited excuses, delusions, cognitive dissonance, plausible deniability, and other forms of doublespeak. Even when the truth is right in front of us, loud and clear. All because of the ancient, dominant, dangerous and deadly disease of straight white male privilege and entitlement. And capitalism.
It's come to the epidemic of Neo-Nazism and Nazi sympathy in the American consciousness. It's come to the point where caring about anything - gun control, immigrant imprisonment, immigrant children dying in concentration camps, ending conversion therapy, the environment, climate change, the future of our one and only planet earth, love, compassion, and other people - is considered weak (in actuality, "too much hard work"), stupid, effeminate, and therefore something to be violently destroyed. Selfishness, self-interest and narcissism are encouraged by the Republican Party. Simple, proven facts are being negated haphazardly. Brutality and destruction - "manly" pursuits - are the new normal. Because of toxic masculinity, basic human decency is barely hanging on through life support.
We can't keep going on like this. It will literally be the death of us all.
Lindy West is one of the heroines of our times. She is not taking anyone's blatant lies, nor their misogynistic, racist, homophobic, and ableist bullshit (even when she likes the people who are linked to these kinds of "controversies" (they're wrong no matter which way you look at it)). Neither should anyone else have to tolerate and normalize these issues.
We have to care.
Not everything is a "joke" and should be excused and treated as such.
We have to choose what is right over what is familiar and comfortable. We have to choose to not believe the lies of rich white people.
We have to do something. We have to demand and effect change, no matter how hard it is and how long it takes.
High profile men and other people call women who want justice and the truth revealed "witches", and other derogatory terms to call women who are human and living their lives how they want, never hurting anyone. The too-long-in-coming impact of #MeToo, and men being held responsible and made accountable for their actions, is a "witch hunt", those fragile, insecure and cowardly men whine. It is true that there is magic, a spellcasting, in telling the truth; as much as there is a spellcasting in telling lies, in using the same buzzwords, over and over and over again, until they are believed without question and logic. So to call certain rich white men in politics who want to think they're bulletproof and immortal gods witches isn't that big a stretch.
Read 'The Witches Are Coming' by the intrepid Lindy West and be disturbed and scared by the truth. Call your friends and parents about it; keep talking about it everywhere. At least it will set you free, and be one of the stepping stones directing you towards the right path, in saving the human race, quickly, before it is too late.
“We were just a hair’s breadth from electing America’s first female president to succeed America’s first black president. We weren’t done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form—like the Balrog’s whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, ‘If I can’t have you, no one can’—white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.”
I have never been prouder not to be on Twitter.
Final Score: 5/5
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