Troll Nation

How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself

By: Amanda Marcotte, David Talbot - foreword

Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt

A Senior Political Reporter examines how Trump, a man with no detectable personal qualities outside of resentment and the will to dominate, could appeal to millions of Americans and win the highest office in the land.

The election of Donald Trump in 2016, like most of his campaign, came as a shock to many Americans. How could a man so lacking in capacity, so void of any intellectual heft, become the president of the United States? How could a man with no detectable personal qualities outside of resentment and the will to dominate appeal to millions of Americans, enough so that he was able to win the highest office in the land?

With this book, journalist Amanda Marcotte will outline how Trump was the inevitable result of American conservatism’s degradation into an ideology of blind resentment. For years now, the purpose of right wing media, particularly Fox News, has not been to argue for traditional conservative ideals, such as small government or even family values, so much as to stoke bitterness and paranoia in its audience. Traditionalist white people have lost control over the culture, and they know it, and the only option they feel they have left is to rage at a broad swath of supposed enemies - journalists, activists, feminists, city dwellers, college professors - that they blame for stealing “their” country from them.

Conservative pundits, politicians, and activists have abandoned any hope of winning the argument through reasoned discourse, and instead have adopted a series of bad faith claims, conspiracy theories, and culture war hysterics. Decades of these antics created a conservative voting base that was ready to elect a mindless bully like Donald Trump.

©2018 Amanda Marcotte. Foreword © 2018 by David Talbot. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Giving a name to the state of Republican politics

Marcotte's book is especially useful in that she gives us a term "Troll Nation" to describe the core to motivation of Republican politics today. The sooner progressives can accept her argument, the better for us all.

She has some pointed critiques of our media culture as well.

The one important shortcoming, in my mind at least, is the Democratic Party is kind of left out of the analysis. Marcotte's argument should be read along with books like Lily Geismer's *Don't Blame Us* and Thomah Frank's *Listen Liberal* .

A former conservative loves this book

For the past decade, indeed before, we have watched the conservative Republican party turn into nothing but a bunch of assholes and trolls. I say this as a former conservative.

This book clearly lays out exactly the manners in which the republican party has turned into nothing but a bunch of trolls. Instead of a cogent argument or a defense of conservative values, all we get from these crybabies are “fake news“ to dismiss empirical facts.

The fact that the right wing are funded by mega billionaires who prop up their propaganda networks that spew endless demonization of the left is clearly demonstrated and laid out in this book. A deeper question we should ask might be “why are the billionaires doing this?“ The answer should be obvious, so long as they can keep the “peasants“ fighting amongst them selves, we will not notice or be able to stop them from robbing us.

That being said, the infuriating and childish manner in which the Republican Party behaves itself combined with its anti-democratic tendencies, suppressing votes, gerrymandering and abusing their minority party technical rule over the rest of us is more understandable once you listen to this book.

If you were on the left and tired of being kicked around by conservatives, this book should help you to gain your footing and be able to push back. All sides are not equal in this struggle, one side The Republicans,embrace and glorify fascism, bullying, cruelty and dishonesty. The other side tries to hold to the truth and the ideals that are necessary for free and functioning democracy.

the truth about the lies

Accurate assessment of the Republican right. There is no hope for them the only hope is their defeat.

Marcotte: a breath of fresh air, as always

This is not a book for faint-hearted right wingers; it's for those of us who will do our utmost to remove you from power so we can resume building a nation that works for all of us down the generations. Amanda Marcotte is pithy, on-target, absolutely unsparing, and hopeful.

The Right Book at the Right Time

I found his author after reading a couple of her pieces on rawstory.com and we seem to have the same views politically.
For the last year or so I have been trying to understand the other side because I am just sick and tired of being sick and tired.
I thought reading up on cults would help me more than anything, till I came across this book.

I don't want to give away the content but I resonated with every line of the book, Marcotte explains several experiences I've had that I have been wondering about for years.

I am listening to it for the second time now. I just paused it long enough to write this review; actually re-write my review because I don't think I did the book justice with my first review.

If you are looking for a way to maintain until Biden/Harris are sworn in, this book is for you. Just don't forget to vote!

Reverse Trolling Felt Very Gratifying

For years I have felt the most unifying ideology of the right to be an incoherent recrimination of the left’s most fervently held beliefs and their need to get back on the left for what they felt was the condescending mocking suffered at hands of cultural elites and the left’s politically correct accusations that many it not most Republicans were ignorance racists.
Unfortunately their nihilistic self destructive behaviors, complete with silly denials of objective reality, lunatic conspiracy theories, and outright obstruction to all things liberal has only proved the case against them. Although it felt good to consume, I doubt Troll Nation will do much to shame the shameless back to fact based reality, still I wish I could hold down certain Trump blind family members and force them to listen to the uninterrupted truth as told with entertaining humor by Amanda Marcotte.

Troll Nation

great book!
Great explanation of the invasion of trump trolls and how the blue wave performed poorly in the 2016 election and what we need to do to win in the 2018 and beyond elections. Go Blue!😀

Title to finish, just hate

Can a book like this really do anything positive? No, it cannot. At least narrator didn't screw it up too

Really Enjoyed it!

Basically nothing anyone on the internet doesn't already know, especially feminists, but it can be informative to hear it all in one place like this

Disappointing

I bought this book after reading an insightful piece by the author for Politico. While I broadly share the author's perspectives on the broad themes, this book is a tiresome screed that offers no new insights and will only serve to fuel the tribalism that the author decries. Some may find it comforting or even indulgent, but to me it was more heat than light.