Lingo (and more)

Two Kenyon authors have published books that are well timed for this heated political year—although the books are extremely different in character and perspective. Business executive and blogger Jim Pierce '78 has written Opine Needles: A Blogger's Journey through the Obama Presidency (Tate Publishing), a wide-ranging collection of blog entries from 2010 and 2011. The entries carry force both from the immediacy of the news and from Pierce's scathing criticism of the Obama administration, the American left, and the “effete elite.” Topics range from energy policy, to education, to health care, to why Pierce loves Texas. Obama, he argues in his prologue, has replaced “tenets comprising the philosophical foundation of our country” with “fiscal insanity and social engineering.”

Writer Arthur Goldwag '79, meanwhile, has produced a history of what he calls the “miasma of paranoid ideas” that have persisted in American politics since Colonial times. In The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right (Pantheon Books), Goldwag draws parallels between the Illuminati hysteria in the 1790s and McCarthyism in the 1950s, as well as between the anti-New Deal forces of the 1930s and today's Tea Party movement. Conspiracy theories and fear-mongering, he argues, have moved from the fringe into the mainstream, pushing discourse far to the right.

Both authors are active online. Pierce maintains his blog at opineneedles.com. Goldwag blogs on arthurgoldwag.wordpress.com.