Author: Paul Bryant
Publication Date: 2020
Rating: 4/5
Out of all the "anti-Trump" books I have read (granted, not many of them) or, more broadly, out of all the anti-Trump voices I have heard in general, this book by Nick Bryant is by far the most convincing one. When I first saw this on the Audible trending list, I immediately dismissed as just another salty whining fest about conservatives, Christians and White America. Trump has inspired a whole new market of self-flagellating lefty literature (which includes every single trashy tell-all Goodreads users smugly assure themselves "Drumpf desperately tried to ban!!") They're just a waste of paper and money, a true opium for the masses still reeling from the letdown of 2016. I have no time for any of them.
However, my attitude towards this book changed when Bryant came onto Planet America, a political commentary show in Australia that focuses on the United States. While still a left-leaning program, at least one of the hosts is willing to gently ridicule the Left on occasion. Generally, though of course not always, they get some decent guests from both sides of the political spectrum, and usually they do not come across as too partisan. Bryant was one of these, and I found his take on the Trump presidency refreshing. He has nothing good to say about the forty-fifth president, of course, but his disapproval does not cling to that one man. He is more or less as critical of all the previous presidents from Reagan onwards (no less Clinton and Obama), and this view is what drives the main argument of his book.
Since the golden 1980s, when the charismatic Reagan was voted in, American politics have gradually been dumbed down, with political culture and celebrity culture becoming intertwined in a detrimental way ... this partly curtailed by the boring and detached George W. Bush, but then exacerbated further by Bill Clinton, Bush Jr, Barack Obama and finally Donald Trump.
There is a lot the book goes into, but it's all very eye-opening without coming across too much like a cheap attack at either side. If taken as true, which I am inclined towards (albeit with awareness of the bias engendered by his perspective; for instance, he cannot give Trump credit even when he was right, such as banning flights from China after Covid-19 struck, writing this off as merely a random act of racism), this book is for the most part an honest look, harsh but ultimately loving, at America as a country, and the profoundly complicated mess it has gotten itself into. Finger-pointing from either side is of little use, as it only further divides people.
Though I find it very hard not to detest the establishment Democrats in their present form (I do agree with a select few of the "far left" however), this book has enlightened me to the uglier side of the Right as well, as most of what I hated the leftist media for doing during Trump's term is exactly what Fox News and others did during the time of Obama.
America's political culture is all just noise, backstabbing, double standards and hypocrisy from all sides, while the people and their country decline further and further from the glorious icon of prosperity it would seem never actually existed but in the minds of the hopeful and the privileged.
