“A very controversial writer,” according to Viera, the host. Notice that this is hardly a friendly interview.
A longer and friendlier interview, which goes much further in her claims, can be found here. Among the things she mentions is the threat of martial law described here. A worry one might have is that the theory is much more loaded than the actual data. But what do you think?
Feminist Philosophers 
you mean ‘martial law’, yes?
Thanks so much, Mish. Goodness knows what I meant, but your version is what I should have meant.
i agree, theory does seem more loaded than data, although i haven’t read the book. wonder if now is a good time for such an alarmist book?
dk: nice point about timing. In part because she is predicting outcomes, and they may well not happen, so it can all work against her. At the same time, her voice is now just one of many people saying the sky is falling. And perhaps it is, but how is a different matter.
I think you meant something different: do we need additional doom sayers. From my perspective, it is getting hard to tell at all who is credible.
I read Naomi’s book “The End of America.” It made me think about a lot of the weird things that the Bush administration did (Patriot Act, etc) and scared the crap out of me, but I also kept in mind that it was theory. A very frightening one indeed, and I think that Naomi is addressing something that many Americans have fears over. I think that her argument is an interesting one, but I do agree that there are a lot of people shouting doom and gloom these days. I do think that her argument is an interesting one. I think that that the past 8 years have left many people feeling powerless, scared and unsatisfied with their government. We need to be on the lookout if this theory is true, but also not start jumping to conclusions.
jj- i was thinking about the problem of predicting outcomes. i was also thinking that if the obama campaign with its focus on hope and critisism of negative campaigning really do reflect what more liberal voters are wanting, then i don’t think its a great time for fear of gov’t. i know i’m ready to exhale. she did say that she has a section on what to do in this more recent book and that’s definately good in terms of being pro-active.
however, as you say, with all the gloom and doom, i don’t know that i’d feel too confident in advocating for anything with info that i don’t actually know is true first hand. :( sad.
“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”…George Santayana
I dare those of you who so quickly dismiss Wolf’s ideas to watch PBS’s Frontline yesterday 10/23/08 and a prior one, “Bush’s War” and then say that Ms. Wolf is “crying wolf”.
The interviewer is someone who, it is obvious, views her interviewee as a silly alarmist. History is full of smug and ignorant people who were sure that what they knew was correct and the messengers who tried to warn were fear mongers so their warnings fell on deaf ears.
There is some irony that the most successful fearmongers and liars are not the Naomi Wolf’s of the world but our present US leaders. The recent history of how we got into a war that is bleeding us economically and killing our young soldiers was begun by the most power hungry, corrupt people who fooled most of us. Colin Powell was one of their pawns and he was their most decent spokespersons. But we are responsible for our ignorance..and one way to stay that way is to dismiss people with ideas we just don’t like to think about. (or learn more about)
PW: we try to discourage insulting conjectures about motives. I hope you weren’t suggesting that comments here were the product of fear.