Notes From a War With No Front Lines

Jeff Sharlet, The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War

The rhetoric of Civil War was definitely present on January 6th, 2021, when a contingent of Americans tried to reverse an unfavorable election. But journalist Jeff Sharlet believes such rhetoric percolated long before and after that day. Sharlet believes Americans have long harbored a strange bipartisan longing for a violent purgation of our body politic. Maybe, he implies, it’s already begun; we just haven’t noticed yet.

So Sharlet seeks the front lines of that elusive conflict. He seeks them in history and art, including a rare sit-down interview with Harry Belafonte, focusing not on his epoch-making music, but on his political activism. He seeks the front lines in politics, embedding himself in Trump rallies in 2016, when Trump was new and exciting, and in 2020, when even his followers didn’t bother denying his racism.

But most importantly, from a journalist most famous for award-winning investigations into the dangerous intersections of religion and power, he seeks America’s front lines in places of faith. This usually means churches, especially White Evangelical Christian churches, many of which have entrusted their message to American power. But it also means anything Americans treat religiously, not only believing its truth, but speaking its liturgy.

Sharlet sees religion in places one wouldn’t necessarily consider sacred. He’s hardly the first observer to notice that Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric resembles Prosperity Gospel preachers like Joel Osteen. But Sharlet parses Trump’s verbal cadences to find their tent-revival origins. Trump’s speeches baffle outsiders while leaving True Believers energized because, Sharlet insists, that’s what they’re designed to do. Like a snake-handling preacher, Trumpian language separates insiders from The World.

He also sees irreligion in places ordinarily associated with belief. He finds churches unwelcoming places, dominated by Trump apologia and calls for uprising. An armed security guard threatens Sharlet outside an Omaha storefront congregation. (Here, Sharlet’s choices shine through. Though he assertively notes the Omaha congregation is integrated, students of religious history will notice the thread unifying the churches Sharlet targets for scrutiny: not Christianity, but Whiteness.)

Jeff Sharlet

Religious language and religious analysis come naturally to Sharlet. Though culturally Jewish, and having no particular personal faith, he’s immersed himself in American religious discourse for twenty years or more. He sees the tacit patterns within language and action which, to outsiders, appear like meaningless word salad. He shows readers how the moments that appear disconnected are actually part of a whole. And what he shows is pretty disconcerting.

If he were louder and more frenetic, like Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson, we might easily mistake Sharlet for a Gonzo journalist. Like those famous personalities, he inserts himself bodily into the unfolding narrative. He also doesn’t flinch from candidly taking sides. While observing Occupy Wall Street, he sleeps in a Zuccotti Park encampment. When investigating Pastor Rich Wilkerson’s made-for-TV ministry, he meanders from a boring service.

This book’s centerpiece is a 120-page travelogue that combines journalism with memoir. Sharlet starts at a memorial rally for Ashli Babbitt, the January 6th casualty whom critics call a domestic terrorist, and True Believers call a martyr. Then he drives back across America, stopping at various churches, monuments, and sites of conservative pilgrimage, including Representative Lauren Boebert’s now-defunct open carry restaurant. He interviews anybody willing to talk to a journalist.

Partway through the travelogue, though, Sharlet admits he has ulterior motives for this journey. In his glove compartment, he has his own sacred talisman: his stepmother’s ashes, which he wants to distribute at various key locations. For Sharlet, this journey is a contrast between the America which his stepmother (and tacitly, he himself) loved, and wanted to be part of after her death, and another, uglier America, pugnacious and vulgar.

That duality permeates Sharlet’s book. There’s an America of great natural beauty and community solidarity, an America where youth eagerly organize to defend their rights following the Dobbs decision, even at great personal cost, simply because it’s right. Then there’s a counter-America, which mounts counter-protests against the organized youth, because their entire identity revolves around identifying enemies who need to be beaten. Even when those “enemies” are their neighbors.

Sharlet’s narrative seems disconnected at first. Some incidents he relates are almost a decade old and tangential to his themes. But ultimately, he brings it together, mostly. His narrative contains both national importance and personal struggle—as, indeed, does everybody’s anymore. His closing chapters leave some loose ends unresolved, in a most un-journalistic way that leaves me itchy. But overall, he brings us through an America with a freighted future.