Glenn Beck

Addicted To Outrage

How Thinking Like a Recovering Addict Can Heal The Country

320.973 BEC Beaverton Library 2018

Glenn Beck is still addicted to the causes of his outrage; about half of this book is his justification for that addiction, long lists of the bad things done by the people he opposes. Guess what? If only 1% of adult Americans do those bad things, once in their lives, that is 3.4 million bad things over (say) 68 years, or 500,000 bad things per year. Plenty of fuel for a couple of "ain't it awful" books per year.

The other half of the book is pretty decent; perhaps the outrage is the bait to bring his usual audience to his "recover from outrage" message and techniques. One could argue that the "recover from outrage" message is the bait that exposes a new audience to his ain't-it-awful justifications.

I suggest skipping chapters 5 to 25. There are still some taunts in chapters 26 to 39, but there is more useful "how I did it" information ... typed rapidly, Beck writes a lot of books, which means less time spent on each. His explanation of Alcoholic's Anonymous 12-step program is apropos; rigor is required to maintain distance from anger addiction.

Beck is a adult-conversion Mormon, which makes him anathema to my-way-or-perdition "Christians"; it's amusing to see how those bigots react to the "deviance" of the church he chose. Religious bigots are also addicted to outrage, not the forgiveness-laden messages of the Christian gospels.

As a quickly written book, there is redundancy and no index, and inconsistent "story arc". I would provide examples from the book (good and bad), but they are difficult to find; I did not take notes, and did not use enough postits to mark those examples.