Dyer, Joel. Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City Is Only the Beginning. 1998.

I picked up this book by coincidence. Molly left a new copy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace on the table and I (bad housemate) absconded with it and read the whole thing. A reference from this book led me to Harvest of Rage, which I didn't think would interest me but did, and to another book which I thought would interest me but didn't. It is a testament to Dyer's skill as a writer that I became absorbed and read the entire thing and last night even had bizarre dreams about it.

The book explores the psychology of rural America, describes the Farm Crisis of the 1980s (which has not ended), gives a fresh introduction to the Federal Reserve and FDR's presidency, describes the various factions of antigovernemnt movements, and focuses on the Oklahoma City bombing and the trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, especially the FBI's apparent deliberate failure to follow up several important leads. In short, it would seem that at least three people involved with the bombing are still at large.

The book ends in Oklahoma City but it travels many miles to get there. The mindset of rural America is not intuitive or obvious, and demands and deserves more explication than one would think. Dyer's sympathy for the American farmers is obvious and the book seems rhetorically brilliant. The sociological conclusions seem scientific and well-grounded, and yet the author does not feign objectivity. The “I” emerges in surprising ways at various times, recounting poignant anecdotes from Dyer's travels through the heartland, and excoriating the multinationals.

As the book was published in the late 90s, the author ought to rewrite it to remove the traces of pre-Y2K paranoia, which were cheap then and now seem highly contrived. The theme of the book from the subtitle to the concluding passages is that great amounts of violence is yet to come. This claim is sensationalistic and hopefully wrong, and furthermore we are left without a plan to avert it. If I were to squint while reading, I might assume that Dyer thinks campaign finance reform would solve all our problems, but I suspect that more profound systemic change might be necessary.

I feel that I have more in common with the rural Americans who live around me for miles on all sides than I do with New Yorkers. Yet, after reading this book, I have discovered that being able to speak a dialect does not bring me close to understanding a world view. In other words, I guess I'm a Chicagoan.

Dyer describes the antiigovernment movement as “taking advantage” of the despair of rural Americans who compose it. If dispossessed and displaced rural Americans join out of desparation, who exactly are they joining? Who benefits?