Disambiguating Trumpland
💥The what, why and how of Donald Trump’s victory
A little more than a year since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a considerable volume of literature has emerged that seeks to disambiguate the what, why and how of Donald Trump’s surprise victory, and disentangle the complex web of contradictions that his presidency has entailed. At the vanguard of that wave of analytical narratives is the plainly titled What Happened, by Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival and former Secretary of State. Her deeply reflective account paints a canvas of American politics that raises troubling questions about the political and economic prognosis for the country. While in part the book is one long justification of her defeat, it is nevertheless a self-critical account that outlines the extent to which the American polity is bitterly polarised, rife with misogyny, infiltrated by Russian propaganda, and in the thrall of a hateful conservative class that might stoop to any low to stay in power.
While Clinton’s analysis of why Americans put a brash property tycoon in the White House is an analytical, almost academic, study, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff, is a gossipy insider account of the dysfunction and bitterness that emerged since Trump took charge. Despite its less-than-journalistic standards of reportage, the book, which was also shot-gunned across the Internet after its publishers were threatened with legal consequences for releasing it, paints an unmistakable picture of profound instability in the Oval Office. That it came shortly in the wake of a group of 27 psychiatrists, including some from top universities, describing Trump’s mental state as “dangerous”, seems to have provoked that now-famous tweet from Trump in which he claimed to be “a very stable genius”.
A book that goes to the heart of the nativist call that the Trump campaign appeared to issue and respond to in 2016 is Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising by journalist Joshua Green. It unravels the elevation of former White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon to the driving seat of Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, on the strength of his commitment to hard-edged ethnonationalism. Most striking is this book’s disambiguation of Bannon’s masterminding of a populist insurgency building up in the U.S. for years, and his ambition to ensure that this insurgency was the crest of a global wave that would push the hard right to the fore of politics everywhere.
A little more than a year since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a considerable volume of literature has emerged that seeks to disambiguate the what, why and how of Donald Trump’s surprise victory, and disentangle the complex web of contradictions that his presidency has entailed. At the vanguard of that wave of analytical narratives is the plainly titled What Happened, by Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival and former Secretary of State. Her deeply reflective account paints a canvas of American politics that raises troubling questions about the political and economic prognosis for the country. While in part the book is one long justification of her defeat, it is nevertheless a self-critical account that outlines the extent to which the American polity is bitterly polarised, rife with misogyny, infiltrated by Russian propaganda, and in the thrall of a hateful conservative class that might stoop to any low to stay in power.
While Clinton’s analysis of why Americans put a brash property tycoon in the White House is an analytical, almost academic, study, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff, is a gossipy insider account of the dysfunction and bitterness that emerged since Trump took charge. Despite its less-than-journalistic standards of reportage, the book, which was also shot-gunned across the Internet after its publishers were threatened with legal consequences for releasing it, paints an unmistakable picture of profound instability in the Oval Office. That it came shortly in the wake of a group of 27 psychiatrists, including some from top universities, describing Trump’s mental state as “dangerous”, seems to have provoked that now-famous tweet from Trump in which he claimed to be “a very stable genius”.
A book that goes to the heart of the nativist call that the Trump campaign appeared to issue and respond to in 2016 is Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising by journalist Joshua Green. It unravels the elevation of former White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon to the driving seat of Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, on the strength of his commitment to hard-edged ethnonationalism. Most striking is this book’s disambiguation of Bannon’s masterminding of a populist insurgency building up in the U.S. for years, and his ambition to ensure that this insurgency was the crest of a global wave that would push the hard right to the fore of politics everywhere.
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