Growing Up Red: Outing Red America From the Inside

by Tim Schilke

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, author Tim Schilke knew that his concerns about some generally accepted suburban truths were often left unanswered. He later learned that a carefully crafted Red-suburban version of reality isolated him from nearly everything real. "Red truth" was a strange morph of God, Patriotism, and Republicans. When this uniquely Red-suburban mentality played a role in winning President George W. Bush a second term in late 2004, Schilke began an investigation into the driving factors behind his Red upbringing, which still persist and thrive today in suburban and rural America.From carefully-guarded moral relativism, to the Army's questionable recruiting techniques; from Major League Baseball's tainted home run records, to the myth of the Ownership Society; Schilke maps these current events back into the perspective of his Red upbringing.Why does Red-suburban middle-America consistently vote against its own interests in election after election? Growing Up Red attempts to show that, in Red America, it is simply the patriotic thing to do. In Red America, raw Faith trumps Knowledge. Carefully-tweaked irrational fear drives never-ending consumption. A Republican President marches arm-in-arm with God down Main Street every Fourth of July.What happens when actual reality starts to bleed through the carefully-protected fences of suburbia? Find out in Growing Up Red.

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[G Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in 2005. It was both infuriating and a highly educational dive into the perspectives at play in how we got into the mess we were in at the time. I'm writing this review today in 2020 as this book is still relevant. It still explains a lot of why we in the US are in the mess we are in now and demonstrates the kinds of horrors that may yet come again.