Revolutionary Roads

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Revolutionary Roads. By George Packer ... thought a revolution was coming. At the depths of the re- ... the Edge of the
on William Styron’s collected nonfiction

12 CHARLES JOHNSON

15 AMANDA FOREMAN on Helen Castor’s ‘Joan of Arc: A History’

Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution

23 ‘INDEPENDENCE LOST’

CMYK

8 ANTHONY DOERR on Coetzee, Ruefle, Pynchon, Mantel and more

JULY 5, 2015 $2

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MICHAEL BIERUT

Revolutionary Roads 27

By George Packer it wasn’t hard to find Americans who thought a revolution was coming. At the depths of the recession, in hard-hit places like the North Carolina tobacco country or the exurbs of Tampa Bay, I met plenty of people who believed we were one power blackout or gas shortage away from civil unrest, political violence, even martial law. The feeling didn’t conform to strictly partisan lines, and the objects of wrath included bêtes noires of both the left and the right: banks, oil companies, federal

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and state governments, news media. At Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, a Tea Party couple visiting from rural Virginia was surprised to find a patch of common ground with Occupiers — at least until the discussion turned to actual policies. The anger was populist, which is ideologically capacious. The enemy was bigness, feathering its own nest and conspiring against the little guy. The revolution didn’t come — it never does in America, not since the first one, no matter how bad things get. The Tea Party reared up, only to be appropriated by CONTINUED ON PAGE 22

BY THE PEOPLE Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission By Charles Murray 319 pp. Crown Forum. $27. WAGES OF REBELLION By Chris Hedges 286 pp. Nation Books. $26.99.