Owing to my own antisocial views of politics and society, I spent the opening days of this year taking in reading that takes to task America in its entirety. The two such books that crossed my path, Dick Meyer’s Why We Hate Us and Matt Taibbi’s The Great Derangement, take different roads through American culture, but both arrive at similar conclusions, which is to say that it is lacking. Meyer, an old-school news editor with long runs at CBS and NPR, focuses more on the damaging effects of social change and relativism. Taibbi, best known as the last and only reason to pick up a Rolling Stone magazine, offers a different angle on his usual indignant rants against the nation’s inertia. Yet both take great pains to avoid political endorsement, and might also agree that American culture remains the same exploitative conflict between the haves and have nots as it’s always been.

Of the two books, Meyer’s takes the broader, more unifying view. His thesis states that in the most diverse country in the world, it would be nigh impossible to find someone who doesn’t find serious fault with it. Through cultural and technological upheavals, the traditions and sense of community that bound people together in the past have been replaced with millions of anchorless, insipid narcissisms. The joke is that though social equality is more real than ever, people are also more isolated than ever. What Meyer advocates is taking our newfound open-mindedness and giving it courage, to call out ridiculousness in all aspects of life without being repressive to the people behind it. Essentially, we must get real.

Taibbi’s The Great Derangement reads as an experiment punctuated with political asides. These side stories will be familiar to Taibbi’s usual readers, illustrating the idea that it doesn’t matter who is in power, because the majority of Americans will be screwed either way. But what’s most interesting is the main story, in which Taibbi goes to Texas to infiltrate big-time pastor John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church, analyzing its methods and the people within the program. Like many such adventures, Stockholm Syndrome becomes a factor, only adding to Taibbi’s sense of outrage and betrayal. In the end, he provides no answers.

I despise most current affairs books, being that they tend to be either-or propaganda, but both Meyer and Taibbi have written pieces that merit discussion, if not agreement. That’s something the field could use more of. Preaching to the choir accomplishes little; conversation, uncertain, is more fun, and more fulfilling.