We learn that the Trump era is not yet the topic for historians.
(Photo: imago images / UPI Photo)
It was in 1935 when a book penned by Sinclair Lewis was published. The first American Nobel Prize winner for literature had toured early Nazi Germany and wondered with cool horror whether such a fall in a civilized country into barbarism was also possible at home (“It can’t happen here”). “Unfortunately, yes,” was the conclusion of his novel.
Anyone reading it today will admire the relentless diagnosis of a country that was already torn by internal tensions back then. The striking resemblance to “Trump’s own country” prompted the Aufbau-Verlag to reissue it in 2017.
What’s going on in america This question is at the top of the agenda if the so-called West does not want to come to terms with the prophesied end of the democratic constitution of its leader. A country in which an ex-president makes new, questionable headlines almost every day – and is loved by a considerable part of the country for it. Three very readable new publications are currently trying to squeeze the highly complex situation between book covers.
All three are real aids to understanding and avoid knee-jerk rejection through drooling partiality and persuasion instead of conviction. The authors avoid what they identify as the cause of social turmoil in wounded America. The overstress, excessive demands, ignorance and disdain for the unlike-minded. They leave us room to develop our own point of view.
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First there is Mary L. Trump against Uncle Donald, whom decent America had just chased from the White House court with a thin majority – on recall, as Donald believes and one must actually fear. Almost a million copies sold on the day of publication.
Mary L. Trump puts the USA on the couch
The book hit America like a bomb of unadorned analysis and piercing self-criticism in the midst of a poisonous mixture of hubris, lies, hatred and denial of historical facts.
The author risks a lot, but she has a scientific background in psychology, trauma therapy and psychopathology. She lays her country on the couch because it obviously suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. All symptoms speak for it: anger and hatred, but also hopelessness and apathy, paired with irrational short-circuit actions and manic self-overestimation. The Covid pandemic became a catalyst, compounded by the “betrayal of the government that was absolutely unwilling to help us through this unprecedentedly grisly time. Rather, it allowed the horror to spread and worsen. “
Mary L. does not hide her horror: Seventy-four million Americans – out of a total of 331 million – wanted Trump to win a second election “despite or because of four years of incompetence, cruelty, crime, insidiousness, unconstitutional behavior and treason. Too many were receptive to his ability to appear offended on their behalf. ”Too many, however, also had reasons to be angry with the established system.
This system – according to the author – “is based on a backward political structure”, where an undemocratic electoral system repeatedly heaves electoral losers into office, where half of the senators represent forty-one million citizens less than the other.
Mary L. Trump: The American Trauma. German translation: Astrid Becker et al.
Heyne publishing house
Munich 2021
256 pages
22 euros.
An aggressive minority could drown out the majority – up to the “near-death experience” on January 6th, when the president encouraged an outlaw mob to storm the Capitol, the heart of American democracy. It was only later that we heard of serious worries from the top military about this president’s finger on the atomic button.
Mary L. Trump does not speak of any of the 120 pages in her book. Her home country appears to her as a “high risk area” with serious “previous illnesses”. Is this still the “leading power of the West”, “the land of the free”, for 250 years with a constitution that self-determined citizens have defied and by which the dreams of all oppressed and the nightmares of their oppressors have since been measured?
This United States is nothing short of “united”. There is a cold civil war. Democrats versus Republicans. Whites against blacks. Rich against poor. City against country.
All of these are symptoms of deep disturbances, original sins such as the annihilation of the Indians and the enslavement of forcibly imported Africans, whose racist devaluation is suppressed by the white upper class.
Between dream and trauma
The American dream has always been trauma as well. As in the personal history of the individual, there are incurable wounds in that of the national collective. They weigh on the soul, spread pathogens into the circulation and destabilize the system. Only uncovering and relentless naming can banish or rationalize the demons of the past.
This also shocked George Packer. “Whether this huge all-for-all democracy will survive or be wiped out from the face of the earth is an interesting question”, so not an absurd impossibility. For him, America’s face has “deep vertical furrows”, a “gray of exhaustion around the eyes”, with “sparse residual hair that urgently needs professional help.”
Packer, George: The last best hope. German translation: Elisabeth Liebl.
Rowohlt Publishing House
Hamburg 2021
256 pages
26 euros.
That is how metaphorical it remains in Packer’s “The Last Best Hope”. He can also be sober: “I want to see how the whole story ends here – if not for me, then for my children.”
He does not reduce his country to the abyss between Democrats and Republicans. Four identities would have a major influence on politics: Free America understands freedom as tax exemption and state rules as a disgusting interference in its internal affairs.
Real America includes the losers pushed out of the middle class by group one: Republicans, rural, white and pseudo-Christian irradiated. The educated, digitally trained elite are gathering in Smart America. She cultivates a cosmopolitan narcissism and does not believe in national solidarity. That leaves Just America, young and also educated, fighting for social justice.
The author does not give flat grades. He believes in measures that can slow down or stop the downward trend: a compensatory tax reform, an enabling culture of debate that overcomes camp thinking.
Why not a community service where alienated groups work together? Why not compulsory voting in order to end the factual exclusion of many voters? A nice wish list on the windowsill. Perhaps the Christ Child will find him and arrange for the presents. Old basic trust in democratic stability remains shaken.
In Jan Philipp Burgard’s “Mensch, Amerika!” Too, unbearable contrasts collide. The journalist Burgard does not make books, but reports. He goes to the front sections of society with a camera and microphone. He is interested in people, events, places, situations. Report needs the reporter. Anyone who wants to “grasp” something has to “grasp” it. Nothing can replace personal closeness. Dangers are priced in.
Burgard, Jan Philipp: Man, America!
Piper Publishing House
Munich 2021
204 pages
22 euros.
In ten explorations he searches for the country he values, admires, but also fears. It’s about racism and police violence, gun freaks and gunmen, the power of lobbyists, the burning forests of California and the digital hobbyists of Silicon Valley.
People try to assert their identity against the remote controlled mass society. The shadows of the past are constantly pushing their way into everyday life. The blocked giant is facing disastrous wars. He does not pursue his war criminals, but their revelers. So it is not surprising that some interlocutors are open-minded and confess to criminal acts almost with a wink. It seems that failure is the only crime to be ashamed of.
Burgard manages the balance between close observation, cool analysis and yet also personal concern. He kind of likes all these people. He wants to understand how they became, who they are. A leitmotif seems omnipresent to him: fear. This strongest of human emotions connects losers and winners. It is fueled by fanatical apocalyptists and political gamblers, to whom broadcasters and newspapers offer themselves if that increases the market share. It is fought by large and young movements that do not want to give up their basic trust in the oldest democracy of modern times.
The former US President is working on his own social medium called “Truth Social”.
(Photo: Reuters)
Fear appears in a thousand different forms, and it is an accomplice of power. Anyone who knows how to play this keyboard – Trump was a virtuoso – can get terrifying reactions and then offer themselves as saviors and redeemers.
All three authors dispense with anti-American malice. You are suffering from the problems of the country and would “love to be wrong”. This gives their findings a high specific weight. And it turns readers into co-authors. It cannot and must not be indifferent to them if the dangerously overstretched Atlantic Bridge were to tear.
We learn from all three that America is so big, that everything is there, and that Trumpism does not reflect, express and rule everything. But we also learn that the Trump era is not yet the topic for historians. It would be wrong to see it only in terms of coming to terms with the past. The message remains on the wall. Burgard’s book ends with a sentence of subtle ambivalence: “Farewell, America!”
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