A Christian Existentialist and a Psychoanalytic Atheist Walk Into a Trump Rally

by David Shields, Scott Kent Jones

A Christian Existentialist and a Psychoanalytic Atheist Walk Into a Trump Rally is perhaps the only genuinely original thing you have read yet about Donald Trump. It can be read in a variety of as a psychological investigation of Trump, as a philosophical meditation on the relationship between language and power, as a satirical compilation of the "collected wit and wisdom of Donald Trump," and above all as a dagger into the rhetoric of American political discourse-a dissection of the politesse that gave rise to and sustains Trump. The book's central thesis is that we have met the enemy and he is us.



"You're unlikely to encounter another book so recklessly and unpredictably full of insight, even wisdom. Shields is the most exciting writer we have in America at the moment, the most startling and innovative." -Jeff Simon, Buffalo News

62 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 25, 2024

About the author

David Shields is the author of fourteen books, including Reality Hunger (Knopf, 2010), which was named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications. GQ called it "the most provocative, brain-rewiring book of 2010"; the New York Times called it "a mind-bending manifesto." His previous book, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (Knopf, 2008), was a New York Times bestseller. His other books include Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity, winner of the PEN/Revson Award; and Dead Languages: A Novel, winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Yale Review, Believer, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney's, and Utne Reader; he's written reviews for the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Boston Globe, and Philadelphia Inquirer. His work has been translated into fifteen languages.