Trump's America


Book Description

Donald J. Trump's presidency has delivered a seismic shock to the American political system, its public sphere, and to our political culture worldwide.




Political Culture in the Age of Trump


Book Description

The Trump presidency alone is a topic of considerable public discussion and debate. Yet, Donald Trump signals much more than the behavior of a single person. He is a symptom and not the sole cause a greater malaise gripping the republic. Albert P. Melone argues that the Trump phenomenon is an instance of the rise of mass society and the decline of pluralist democracy. He points out that yesteryear’s Madisonian pluralist paradigm of democracy no longer aptly describes and explains the American political world as it now exists. By substituting the conceptual framework of mass society for the pluralism model, the author points the way to a more powerful and convincing explanation of the Trump phenomenon.




Faith and Resistance in the Age of Trump


Book Description

Many people of faith have identified the election of Donald Trump as a confessional crisis--a moment that calls into question the deepest meaning of our religious claims and values. This book gathers reflections by a range of scholars and activists from numerous religious and denominational perspectives to address that crisis. Among the themes treated are disability issues, the LGBT community, gender and race, immigration, the environment, peace, and poverty.




Race, Gender, and Political Culture in the Trump Era


Book Description

This book demonstrates the fragility of democratic norms and institutions, and the allure of fascist politics within the Trump era. The chapters consider the antagonistic cultural practices through which divergent political machinations, including white (patriarchal) nationalism, are staged, and examine the corresponding policies and governing practices that threaten the civil rights, security, and wellbeing of racialized minorities, immigrants, women, and gender nonconforming people. The book contributes to social theory on nation-building by delineating processes of exclusion, intimidation, and violence, with a focus on rhetoric, performance, semiotics, music, affectivity, and the power of media. Various chapters also analyze creative, restorative, and at times unruly practices of community building, which reknit the social fabric with expansive visions of the polity. This anthropology-led volume incorporates contributions from a number of disciplines including sociology, American studies, communication, and Spanish, and will be of interest to scholars across the social sciences and humanities.




Resist!


Book Description

Resist! pays close attention to popular culture; it examines the political ramifications of Kanye West’s support of Donald Trump, the significance of Aaron Sorkin’s language to American political discourse, and the casting of female emotion as a political force in House of Cards and The Handmaid’s Tale. In doing so, the collection traverses the formal world of ‘the political’ as it relates to presidential elections and referenda, while emphasising the sociocultural and political significance of popular texts which have played a critical role in exploring, critiquing and shaping culture in the twenty first century. Popular culture is often considered trivial or irrelevant to more pressing political concerns, and celebrities are often reprimanded for their forays into the political sphere. Resist! pays close attention to texts that are too often excluded when we think about politics, and explores the cultural and political fall-out of a reality TV president and a divisive public vote on increasingly connected global audiences. In examining the cultural politics of popular media, this collection is inherently interdisciplinary, and the chapters utilise methods and analysis from a range of social science and humanities disciplines. Resist! is both creative and timely, and offers a crucial examination of a fascinating and frightening political and cultural moment.




Covering Politics in the Age of Trump


Book Description

Like politics, journalism has been turned topsy-turvy by the presidency of Donald Trump. Covering Politics in the Age of Trump takes a wide-ranging view of the relationship between the forty-fifth president and the Fourth Estate. In concise, illuminating, and often personal essays, twenty-four top journalists address topics such as growing concerns about political bias and journalistic objectivity; increasing consternation about the media’s use of anonymous sources; the practices journalists employ to gain access to wary administration officials; and reporters’ efforts to improve journalism in an era of twenty-four-hour cable news. Contributors include: Mark Ballard, Peter Bhatia, Rebecca Buck, Carl Cannon, Jill Colvin, Charlie Cook, McKay Coppins, Mary C. Curtis, Paul Farhi, Quint Forgey, Major Garrett, Ginger Gibson, “Fin” Gomez, Jesse J. Holland, Clark Hoyt, Sarah Isgur, Mark Leibovich, Ashley Parker, Fernando Pizarro, Tom Rosenstiel, Frank Sesno, Alexis Simendinger, Steve Thomma, and Salena Zito. The Trump administration’s contentious relationship with the media has altered the public’s expectations regarding the news and national politics. In Covering Politics in the Age of Trump, top political reporters explore this dynamic, relaying stories from the campaign trail to the briefing room that illustrate the new challenges faced by journalists working in the age of “fake news.”




Amusing Ourselves to Death


Book Description

What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? As our world begins to look more and more like Orwell's 1984, Neil's Postman's essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever. "It's unlikely that Trump has ever read Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman.” -CNN Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals. “A brilliant, powerful, and important book. This is an indictment that Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one.” –Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World




The Death of Truth


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic comes an impassioned critique of America’s retreat from reason We live in a time when the very idea of objective truth is mocked and discounted by the occupants of the White House. Discredited conspiracy theories and ideologies have resurfaced, proven science is once more up for debate, and Russian propaganda floods our screens. The wisdom of the crowd has usurped research and expertise, and we are each left clinging to the beliefs that best confirm our biases. How did truth become an endangered species in contemporary America? This decline began decades ago, and in The Death of Truth, former New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani takes a penetrating look at the cultural forces that contributed to this gathering storm. In social media and literature, television, academia, and politics, Kakutani identifies the trends—originating on both the right and the left—that have combined to elevate subjectivity over factuality, science, and common values. And she returns us to the words of the great critics of authoritarianism, writers like George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, whose work is newly and eerily relevant. With remarkable erudition and insight, Kakutani offers a provocative diagnosis of our current condition and points toward a new path for our truth-challenged times.




The Cruelty Is the Point


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From an award-winning journalist at The Atlantic, these searing essays make a powerful case that “real hope lies not in a sunny nostalgia for American greatness but in seeing this history plain—in all of its brutality, unadorned by euphemism” (The New York Times). NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • “No writer better demonstrates how American dreams are so often sabotaged by American history. Adam Serwer is essential.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates To many, our most shocking political crises appear unprecedented—un-American, even. But they are not, writes The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer in this prescient essay collection, which dissects the most devastating moments in recent memory to reveal deeply entrenched dynamics, patterns as old as the country itself. The January 6 insurrection, anti-immigrant sentiment, and American authoritarianism all have historic roots that explain their continued power with or without President Donald Trump—a fact borne out by what has happened since his departure from the White House. Serwer argues that Trump is not the cause, he is a symptom. Serwer’s phrase “the cruelty is the point” became among the most-used descriptions of Trump’s era, but as this book demonstrates, it resonates across centuries. The essays here combine revelatory reporting, searing analysis, and a clarity that’s bracing. In this new, expanded version of his bestselling debut, Serwer elegantly dissects white supremacy’s profound influence on our political system, looking at the persistence of the Lost Cause, the past and present of police unions, the mythology of migration, and the many faces of anti-Semitism. In so doing, he offers abundant proof that our past is present and demonstrates the devastating costs of continuing to pretend it’s not. The Cruelty Is the Point dares us, the reader, to not look away.




The Politics of Losing


Book Description

The Ku Klux Klan has peaked three times in American history: after the Civil War, around the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and in the 1920s, when the Klan spread farthest and fastest. Recruiting millions of members even in non-Southern states, the Klan’s nationalist insurgency burst into mainstream politics. Almost one hundred years later, the pent-up anger of white Americans left behind by a changing economy has once again directed itself at immigrants and cultural outsiders and roiled a presidential election. In The Politics of Losing, Rory McVeigh and Kevin Estep trace the parallels between the 1920s Klan and today’s right-wing backlash, identifying the conditions that allow white nationalism to emerge from the shadows. White middle-class Protestant Americans in the 1920s found themselves stranded by an economy that was increasingly industrialized and fueled by immigrant labor. Mirroring the Klan’s earlier tactics, Donald Trump delivered a message that mingled economic populism with deep cultural resentments. McVeigh and Estep present a sociological analysis of the Klan’s outbreaks that goes beyond Trump the individual to show how his rise to power was made possible by a convergence of circumstances. White Americans’ experience of declining privilege and perceptions of lost power can trigger a political backlash that overtly asserts white-nationalist goals. The Politics of Losing offers a rigorous and lucid explanation for a recurrent phenomenon in American history, with important lessons about the origins of our alarming political climate.