From Greg Iles’s novel Southern Man: I watched in disbelief as businessmen voted for a repeat bankrupt, laborers for a boss infamous for stiffing his workers, evangelicals for a se-
rial adulterer, women for an admitted sexual assaulter, patriots for a draft dodger who would sell his country’s secrets for trivial gain, educated men for an ignoramus. But they did so with fierce gladness in their hearts. Because what their chosen one had done was open Pandora’s box – yes, the old one, filled with the ancient calamities of race hatred and rage and cruelty and bloodlust and infinite greed – and tell them that these things
were the remedy for all their grievances, that all their anger was justified, and most important: None of what ailed them was their own fault – or ever had been.
They took to that like infants to a honeyed tit.
I haven’t ever read one of Greg Iles’s books, but I may have to now, because the statement above is so right on, I could not love it more. You-Know-Who (Orange Menace) gives permission to racists, to sexists, to homophobes and transphobes, to those who hate Muslims, to xenophobes or anyone who is not white, Christian, and – centrally – like them. He gives permission to immature boy-ohs who have lived their entire lives imagining they’re on the top of the heap ‘alphas’ because they were born American, white, and male. He gives permission to our worst selves and instincts.
He gives permissiand to hate experts and expertise, to deny science and election results, the news, to look down on and belittle female reporters, overweight people, the disabled, the poor and anyone who does not superficially fit in his ‘nice countries filled with blonds’ box.
Iles, who died in 2025, was born and raised – and went to college – in Mississippi, so I’m imagining he knows of what, and who, he speaks re: southern men. Southern Man was his final novel, published in 2024.
I have to admit, I don’t read Iles – or Grisham or Turow or Sandford or Patterson or…. a whole host of male writers of mystery and thriller because inevitably it’s women getting killed, and brilliant but troubled (yet still impossible for women to resist sexually) male detectives, ex-detectives, police or whatevers solving the insolvable. No thank you. BO-ring! I tried Sandford briefly when I was seeing a man who loved his stuff, but omg, no. But. Maybe, maybe I’ll pick up Southern Man and see what I see… Maybe.
In the mean time, let’s defeat the small-minded minority of us who are racists, misogynists, transphobes and homophobes, xenophobes and those who hate both Muslims and Jews, as well as hating the poor, refugees, migrants and anyone who is not like them. Yes, let’s.
For more on Iles, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Iles#