A Little Book for New Theologians

1. The metaphorical "wildland" fire of American fury was sparked by decades of compounding systemic forces.

The fire was the culmination of forces that had been gathering for decades.

A metaphorical spark. The book opens with the story of Glenn Kile, a California rancher whose simple attempt to plug a wasp nest sparked the largest wildfire in state history. This physical catastrophe serves as a powerful parable for the political and social state of America. Over twenty years, the nation's social fabric became bone-dry tinder, primed to ignite at the slightest provocation.

Compounding systemic forces. The fury that erupted in the Trump era was not an overnight phenomenon but the result of decades of slow-burning structural changes. The author traces these changes across three distinct American landscapes:

• Greenwich, Connecticut: The epicenter of hyper-capitalism and financial impunity.
• Chicago, Illinois: A city defined by deep-seated segregation and industrial decline.
• Clarksburg, West Virginia: A rural community ravaged by resource extraction and the opioid epidemic.

The loss of common ground. As these three worlds drifted further apart, the shared national narrative of upward mobility and collective destiny dissolved. The chasm between the lived experiences of Americans became so vast that the country lost its center of gravity, setting the stage for a historic reckoning.

2. The financialization of the economy insulated the ultra-wealthy from accountability while eroding the common good.

We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.

The financialization of America. Over the last half-century, the American economy shifted from making things to financial engineering. This transition, fueled by deregulation and the rise of shareholder capitalism, allowed a tiny elite to amass unimaginable fortunes. In Greenwich, hedge fund managers and private equity executives operated in a parallel universe of compounding wealth and dwindling tax obligations.

The culture of impunity. This concentration of wealth bred a profound sense of entitlement and moral relativism among the financial elite. Figures like Chip Skowron pushed legal and ethical boundaries, viewing their financial performance as a license to bypass the rules. When the system crashed in 2008, the consequences were socialized, while the architects of the disaster were bailed out:

• Wall Street took home 23 percent of corporate profits by 2017.
• The top 0.01 percent of households held a historic share of national income.
• Major financial institutions paid fines but top executives avoided prison.

The erosion of civic duty. As the wealthy insulated themselves behind literal and figurative walls, they withdrew from the public square. Private philanthropy replaced public investment, allowing the rich to dictate social solutions without democratic accountability. This hyper-individualism weakened the collective capacity to address systemic problems.

3. Deep-seated racial and economic segregation in urban centers created inescapable cycles of vulnerability.

The chasms between American lives had become so vast that the vanishing common ground could no longer carry the weight of American institutions...

The architecture of exclusion. In Chicago, the legacy of redlining, restrictive covenants, and discriminatory housing policies created a deeply segregated landscape. The demolition of public housing high-rises did not end segregation but merely redistributed it, leaving families like Reese Clark's stuck in concentrated pockets of poverty. These neighborhoods were systematically cut off from the economic boom occurring downtown.

The compounding of disadvantage. Segregation acted as a trap, compounding every imaginable form of social and physical distress. A child's zip code became the single most powerful predictor of their life trajectory, affecting everything from educational quality to physical health:

• Life expectancy in poor Black neighborhoods was decades lower than in wealthy white suburbs.
• Unemployment for young Black men in segregated areas reached double the national average.
• Environmental hazards, such as lead and asthma triggers, clustered in low-income communities.

The breakdown of trust. For many residents of these neglected neighborhoods, the only encounter with the state was through the criminal justice system. The hyper-policing of Black bodies, exemplified by the killing of Laquan McDonald, shattered any remaining trust in public institutions. This systemic neglect created a volatile environment where survival required a defensive, localized mindset.

4. The physical and psychological trauma of the post-9/11 wars was borne by an isolated segment of the population.

The history of American warfare—even the ‘good’ wars—is a history of our leaders desperately trying to preserve the requisite national will because Americans would not abide a costly, protracted war.

An invisible burden. The post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the longest in American history, yet they were fought by less than 0.5 percent of the population. For the vast majority of Americans, these conflicts were abstract events, experienced only through fleeting television segments. This insulation allowed the political class to wage endless war without facing the accountability of a draft or a war tax.

The trauma of the return. For those who did the fighting, like Clarksburg native Sidney Muller, the physical and psychological toll was devastating. Returning veterans were thrust back into communities that offered hollow platitudes but lacked the infrastructure to treat severe trauma. The transition from the high-intensity combat of places like Sangin to the economic stagnation of rural America proved catastrophic:

• Veterans from small towns were twice as likely to die in combat as those from cities.
• Severe PTSD and brain injuries often went undiagnosed or undertreated by an overwhelmed VA system.
• Many veterans turned to self-medication, fueling the local opioid epidemic.

The eruption of violence. When the psychological wounds of combat collided with the despair of the opioid crisis, the results were lethal. Muller's descent into addiction and paranoia culminated in a horrific mass shooting on Locust Avenue, claiming the lives of innocent neighbors. This tragedy served as a grim reminder that the violence of distant wars inevitably bleeds back into the homeland.

5. Out-of-state financial interests extracted wealth from Appalachia while leaving behind environmental and human ruin.

Seeing the world without the past would be like visiting a city after a devastating hurricane and declaring that the people there have always lived in ruins.

The extraction of wealth. For over a century, Appalachia's natural resources were extracted by out-of-state corporations that pocketed the profits while leaving the local population in poverty. The rise of mountaintop-removal mining in the 1990s accelerated this exploitation, replacing traditional underground mining with highly mechanized, destructive techniques. This shift destroyed the landscape and eliminated thousands of stable, unionized jobs.

The environmental and human ruin. The ecological damage of mountaintop removal was pervasive and irreversible, poisoning local water supplies and destroying ancient forests. The health consequences for nearby communities were severe, yet the political power of the coal lobby prevented effective regulation:

• Runoff from mines contaminated streams and rivers with toxic levels of selenium.
• Counties with heavy mountaintop mining recorded thousands of excess deaths each year.
• Vulture investors used bankruptcy courts to abandon pension and health-care commitments to retired miners.

The loss of community. The hollowing out of the land was accompanied by a hollowing out of the communities themselves. Families were forced to sell their ancestral lands, and the social cohesion that had sustained generations dissolved. This systemic betrayal left a legacy of deep-seated resentment, turning once-democratic strongholds into fertile ground for right-wing populism.

6. The extinction of local journalism left a civic void that was rapidly filled by nationalized outrage.

A good newspaper... is a nation talking to itself.

The extinction of local journalism. The rise of the internet and the collapse of print advertising decimated the local newspaper industry across America. In Clarksburg, The Exponent Telegram was forced to merge its editions and cut staff to survive. The loss of these local watchdogs removed a critical layer of civic accountability, allowing corporate and political malfeasance to go unchecked.

The rise of nationalized echo chambers. In the absence of local news, Americans increasingly turned to nationalized, highly polarized media outlets and social media platforms. These digital spaces operated on an economy of outrage, using sensationalism and conflict to capture attention. The shared local narratives that once bound neighbors together were replaced by distant, abstract culture wars:

• Local news deserts grew as thousands of newspapers closed across the country.
• Public trust in media collapsed as information became highly partisan and fragmented.
• Citizens became less informed about local governance and more consumed by national political theater.

The death of nuance. Without the unifying force of local journalism, the capacity for constructive public debate dissolved. Complex local issues were reduced to binary, zero-sum conflicts, making compromise seem like betrayal. This media landscape primed the public to accept conspiracy theories and bad-faith political rhetoric.

7. Political and commercial actors successfully monetized fear, replacing collective destiny with a combat mindset.

The only important thing is the unification of the people—because the other people don’t mean anything.

The monetization of anxiety. In the decades following 9/11, political and commercial actors discovered that fear was a highly profitable commodity. The gun industry, talk radio, and cable news networks systematically stoked anxieties about demographic change, crime, and terrorism. This constant state of alarm transformed the American psyche, replacing a sense of collective destiny with a defensive, combat mindset.

The rise of the armed citizen. As trust in public institutions and neighbors eroded, millions of Americans turned to personal arsenals for a sense of security. The proliferation of concealed-carry laws and tactical gear reflected a growing belief in radical self-reliance. Carrying a weapon became a powerful cultural statement, an announcement of tribal belonging in a hostile world:

• Gun ownership consolidated into a smaller, more heavily armed segment of the population.
• The marketing of "tactical" weapons promoted a fantasy of civilian warfare.
• Mass shootings became a routine feature of American life, met mostly with political paralysis.

The erosion of empathy. This hyper-individualism fostered a profound last-place aversion among those who felt economically and socially precarious. The prospect of sharing resources or expanding rights to others was perceived as a direct threat to one's own survival. This defensive posture made collective action impossible, locking the country in a cycle of mutual suspicion.

8. A systematic effort to enfeeble federal institutions left the nation unprepared for collective crises.

Just because you can do something definitely doesn’t mean that you should.

The war on regulation. For decades, conservative donors and corporate interests funded a systematic campaign to enfeeble the federal government. Under the banner of "economic freedom," they dismantled regulations that protected consumers, workers, and the environment. In the Trump administration, this effort culminated in the deliberate "deconstruction of the administrative state," led by political appointees who openly disdained the agencies they ran.

The enfeeblement of expertise. The administration systematically sidelined scientific expertise and career civil servants, replacing them with political loyalists. This hostility to independent facts left the nation's regulatory and public health infrastructure severely degraded. When the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, the consequences of this enfeeblement were catastrophically clear:

• Key pandemic response teams had been dismantled or defunded.
• The civil service was hollowed out by vacancies and forced resignations.
• Public health decisions were consistently subordinated to political public relations.

The collapse of collective capacity. The enfeeblement of the state left Americans radically self-reliant in the face of a global crisis. The federal government's failure to coordinate a national response forced states and individuals to compete for scarce resources. This systemic collapse of collective capacity confirmed the very anti-government cynicism that the conservative movement had spent decades cultivating.

9. In response to systemic failures, a new wave of grassroots movements arose to reclaim the common good.

Our Constitution does not start with ensuring tranquility. It starts with establishing justice.

The awakening of the public. The compounding crises of the Trump presidency and the pandemic sparked a historic wave of grassroots activism. From the Women's March and Black Lives Matter to the West Virginia teachers' strikes, millions of Americans took to the streets to demand a new social contract. These movements represented a profound rejection of the hyper-individualism and corporate impunity that had defined the era.

The demand for structural change. This new generation of activists was no longer satisfied with incremental reforms or hollow expressions of concern. They demanded a fundamental restructuring of the nation's political and economic systems, focusing on the deep-seated connections between race, class, and power:

• The #MeToo movement challenged systemic misogyny and corporate complicity.
• Black Lives Matter forced a national reckoning with police violence and systemic racism.
• Grassroots political slates, like "West Virginia Can’t Wait," ran on platforms of economic justice.

The struggle for the common good. The election of Joe Biden in 2020 was a fragile victory for this movement, a collective effort to lower the political temperature and restore a sense of shared purpose. However, the deep-seated divisions and structural inequalities that produced the fury of the past twenty years remained. The future of the American experiment would depend on whether the nation could summon the courage to establish true justice for all its citizens.