Insert Title Here!

Seriously: What Should My Book Be Called?

What should I call my book? I have long called it The Black Pill.

It is a book about the political violence I have covered in other countries, and how it projects our future here at home. I alternate scenes of organized political violence in places like Colombia, Brazil, and the Philippines, with my experience among American militias and Proud Boys protests in Michigan, Idaho, and Portland.

Originally, I called it The Authoritarians, as a place-holder name that accurately describes its real subject, the people who believe in this violence. My first-hand investigations of political issues lead back through the long history of studying authoritarianism, including the profound power of tribalism, the cleaving role of violence, and the latest answers of cognitive psychology. I consider socio-economic and neurological explanations for our authoritarian moment, because pre-existing conditions sure do make it easy for a young man to pick up a gun.

So, seven years after I started, what should the book be called? The Authoritarians is bad. It says too little, it is hard to spell, and there is no clear understanding of what “authoritarianism” is let along who fits in that group.

So I considered new titles and came up with The Black Pill: A Genealogy of Political Violence. The first part is a term used by the most radical and violent militia extremists in the United States. Taking the “black pill” means you are the most hard core, the most committed. (In contrast to the “red pill” taken by average Trump supporters and the heroes of The Matrix.)

Now somebody else—some lousy stinking diligent hardworking CNN reporter—published a book about the US militias called The Black Pill.

So I need a new title.

Got any suggestions?

Young Men With Guns ?

This Will End Badly ?

Bad Guys Coming Soon ?

My second choice for a while was Death Squad Democracy. It has the advantage of being accurate. Today’s political violence is occurring inside electoral democracies. Rodrigo Duterte was voted into office in the Philippines specifically on his promise to kill tens of thousands of his own people. Jair Bolsonaro’s staff plotted to kill opposition candidates—while sitting in their presidential offices. Trump was just reelected on his promise to throw “millions” of people into deportation camps. The world is voting for violence. It could end for us as it has for other countries, in the kind of paramilitary violence that I could call Death Squad Democracy.

That title is accurately brutal, but still brutal. There must be something else.