Very Fine People

For some people, the rise of Donald Trump's MAGA cult represented only ongoing proof of a supremacist nation they had endured all along. Author A.R. Moxon was not one of them. He was caught unaware. Thus begins this confession of an American fool, a methodical mapping of the nation the author failed to see-a nation of "very fine people" too convinced they are exceptionally good to acknowledge the ways they participate in abuse and harm. This essay collection contemplates what to do about a populist far-right authoritarian uprising involving so many of our friends and family members. Written from 2016 to 2023, it is a work of progressing awareness, pondering the questions "how did we get here?" and "what do we do about it?" With clarity and wit, Moxon charts the insidious and destructive nature of American supremacy -the foundational lies empowering it, the social instinct accommodating it, the systemic sabotage of shared human society entrenching it into all of our lives-and finds some tools that might let us oppose it by becoming people who fix what is broken ... which means realizing, at long last, who the "very fine people" truly are.