0:00

Welcome back to 1A, I'm Todd Zwilik in for

0:02

Jen White. What are

0:04

the consequences of America's

0:06

unresolved history? That's the

0:08

topic of a new book by

0:10

journalist and historian Nick Bryant, The

0:13

Forever War America's Unending Conflict with

0:15

Itself. The book maps a path

0:17

from the founding of America to

0:19

the current political state of the

0:21

country and argues that the political

0:23

divisiveness we see today is a

0:25

predictable part of this country's story.

0:28

Nick Bryant joins us now from Sydney,

0:30

Australia. Nick, welcome to 1A. Todd,

0:33

it's great to be on. Thank you for

0:35

having me. Wonderful to talk to you. And

0:38

we want to hear from you as well.

0:40

What do you think America's history can teach

0:42

us about overcoming this political divide? Email us

0:44

1A at wamu.org. We

0:47

always want to hear from you. Nick,

0:49

you begin in this latest book

0:51

on January 20th, 2021 with

0:54

President Biden's inauguration. Yeah,

0:57

I'm led, awake in a hotel room

0:59

just a couple of blocks from the

1:01

White House. And I'm awake because I'm

1:03

finding it hard to sleep because what

1:06

should be a peaceful transfer of power,

1:08

Todd, comes with the threat of

1:10

political violence of American fighting

1:13

American. And Washington that

1:15

day really felt like a garrison

1:17

town. There were 25000 troops who

1:20

were stationed that day. That

1:22

was 10 times the number that were

1:24

in Afghanistan at the time. There was

1:26

a green zone in the center of

1:28

Washington. You'll probably remember it, this area

1:30

that was sequestered by

1:33

this big wire fence. And

1:35

the green zone, of course, was terminology

1:37

from the Iraq War. But Washington itself

1:39

felt like Baghdad on the Potomac. So

1:41

hold that thought, Nick, because I want

1:44

to set the scene of what

1:46

was happening on the dais on the west

1:48

front of the capital. Here it is. Together,

1:52

we shall write an American

1:54

story of hope,

1:56

not fear, of unity, not

1:58

division, of light, not of power. darkness, a

2:01

story of decency and dignity, love

2:04

and healing, greatness

2:06

and goodness. May

2:09

this be the story that guides us. That

2:12

was the sound from the west front of

2:14

the Capitol, Nick. You saw something very

2:16

different. Yeah. I

2:18

mean, I saw a Capitol that was

2:21

festooned with red, white and blue bunting,

2:23

but Todd, it could still have been

2:25

sequestered with yellow police tape because that

2:27

was still a crime scene. Only

2:29

two weeks before Biden delivered that inaugural

2:32

address, of course, the inaugural

2:34

platform had been used as a staging post for

2:36

the January the 6th insurrection.

2:39

And what was remarkable that day as I made

2:41

my way up to the press stand and I

2:44

was stood what 50 yards away from where Biden

2:46

delivered that speech, where he uttered those immortal words

2:48

democracy has prevailed, not out of a

2:50

sense of celebration, but out of a

2:53

sense of profound relief. What

2:55

struck me, Todd, was that they

2:57

were testing the teleprompter, the giant

2:59

teleprompter in front of the presidential

3:01

podium. And the words they

3:04

use were actually the words of

3:06

Lincoln's Gettysburg address. The 273

3:09

words of the Gettysburg address, it took two

3:11

minutes to deliver. People often

3:13

forget what a short sermon it was.

3:16

But the question that Lincoln asked that day seemed to be especially

3:19

pertinent on that day when

3:21

Washington did feel like this garrison

3:24

town, a city under military occupation.

3:26

Can this nation long endure?

3:29

And it spoke of how

3:31

America keeps on repeating its

3:34

history in many ways. Well, you live

3:36

in Australia now, nice and far

3:38

away, but you covered the United States for

3:40

quite a long while as a journalist at

3:42

the BBC. You

3:44

have, I think it's fair to

3:46

say, a personal relationship with America. Is

3:48

that right? You show up in your

3:50

work. You speak very intimately about this country.

3:53

I love America. Everything I'm going to

3:55

say today needs to be prefaced with

3:58

that expression of deep affection. I

4:01

first traveled to America in 1984. It

4:03

was your great summertime of American

4:06

resurgence. I arrived in Los Angeles

4:08

on the eve of the LA

4:10

Olympics. And after the national

4:12

trauma of Vietnam and Watergate and

4:14

the Iranian hostage crisis, that summer

4:17

was really the time when America

4:19

got its mojo back. And of

4:21

course it was perfectly crystallized and

4:23

encapsulated in Reagan's reelection slogan that

4:25

year, it's mourning again

4:27

in America. I left your country

4:29

far more confident than I arrived.

4:31

I ended up living a kind of

4:34

personal American dream of my own.

4:37

I always wanted to cover Washington for the BBC

4:39

and I got to do that. They sent me

4:41

to the Washington in the midst of what was

4:43

then called the Monica Lewinsky scandal. We really should

4:45

have called it the Bill Clinton scandal. But

4:48

I lived through this extraordinary period of

4:50

history. I saw the first impeachment of

4:52

an American president since the

4:55

19th century. I thought I'd only cover one and

4:57

I've covered three. I

4:59

was there for the crazy election in 2000, the

5:01

Florida recount. I was there for 9-11. I

5:04

was there in the run up to the Iraq

5:07

war. I left America to follow the

5:09

war on terror in places like Afghanistan

5:11

and Pakistan, the hunt for Osama bin

5:13

Laden in South Asia. I met a

5:15

very beautiful Australian. I came to live

5:17

in Sydney. But we returned in

5:19

2013 to America. I

5:23

was living in New York. I was covering American

5:25

politics there. I met this guy called

5:27

Donald Trump in 2014. About

5:30

nine months he came down before

5:32

he came down the famous golden escalator.

5:35

And yeah, it's just been this crazy

5:37

wild ride. But yeah,

5:40

I have enormous affection for your country. We have

5:42

a four year old daughter who travels the world

5:44

with an eagle on her passport. She's

5:47

a New Yorker and showing wonderful signs of

5:49

being a bona fide New Yorker. We

5:51

love that. And it speaks of this

5:53

great love that I have for America.

5:56

Well, we're gonna welcome your

5:58

daughter back, state side. when she comes back

6:00

to the land of her birth, a U.S. citizen

6:03

with her eagle passport. And we're going to talk

6:05

about Donald Trump, too, before the hour's over. I'm

6:07

quite confident. But you've got

6:09

this idea, Nick, kind

6:11

of coursing all throughout your

6:13

book, unresolved history

6:15

in our country behind

6:17

racial tension, economic

6:20

tension, culture wars. That

6:22

concept of unresolved history, what does it

6:26

what does that mean in your look

6:28

at America as an outsider than an insider

6:31

than, I suppose, an outsider again? I make

6:34

two big arguments in the book. The first is

6:36

that Donald Trump is as much a product of

6:38

your history as Abraham Lincoln, John

6:40

F. Kennedy, FDR, Ronald Reagan,

6:43

Barack Obama or Joe Biden. It's

6:45

just the history that tends to

6:47

get forgotten, ignored, buried or

6:50

concealed. And once you revisit

6:52

that history, Trump makes a

6:54

lot more sense. The penny kind

6:56

of drops, the historical penny drops.

6:58

And what I also argue is

7:00

that America right now is

7:03

confronting what I call a problem

7:05

of historical overload. There is so

7:07

much history that is

7:09

unresolved, whether it's an argument

7:11

still over race and

7:14

the legacy of enslavement and segregation, whether

7:16

it's an argument over the meaning of

7:18

the Second Amendment and how that relates,

7:21

obviously, to gun rights and argument over

7:23

power, how it should be divided

7:25

between the federal government and the states and

7:27

argument over how power should be divided between

7:30

the branches of government, the White

7:32

House, the judiciary and Congress. Abortion,

7:35

you know, in in this reporting of Roe

7:38

versus Wade in in the early

7:40

1970s, the New York Times said that this

7:42

was a historical issue

7:44

that had now been resolved. Well,

7:46

that just simply wasn't a case,

7:49

was it? And that's true of

7:51

so many things. I, I

7:54

actually use sort of invert

7:56

Tip O'Neill's famous dictum, all

7:58

politics is low. local. In

8:01

many ways in America right now, all

8:03

politics is history. We're talking

8:05

to journalist and historian Nick Bryant about

8:07

his new book, The Forever War America's

8:09

Unending Conflict with Itself. Well,

8:12

Nick, you mentioned our unresolved

8:14

history over race. We're

8:16

going to talk about guns, we're going to talk about Trump,

8:19

but the race tension in

8:21

your book is also fascinating. You write,

8:23

and I'm quoting here, more so than

8:25

any other area of national life, there

8:27

was something tragically recurring about

8:30

black American history. How

8:33

has the US failed to confront its past when

8:35

it comes to race in your view? What

8:37

are the mechanisms of it? Well,

8:40

one of the grand narratives of American

8:42

history, of course, is one of great

8:44

advancement and one of great progress, but

8:46

that just doesn't apply to the racial

8:48

history of the country. What you tend

8:50

to have is moments

8:52

of progress tend to get followed by

8:55

moments of regression. I mean,

8:58

enslavement, you have reconstruction where

9:00

African Americans briefly enjoyed

9:02

the promise of emancipation, but of course that

9:05

is followed by segregation and the Jim Crow

9:07

era. You have the Voting Rights Act in

9:09

1965, which finally

9:12

gave you universal suffrage in America, remarkably

9:14

it's that recent. I mean, African Americans

9:17

in the South could finally vote unfettered,

9:19

but the attacks on

9:22

democracy began even as

9:24

the ink on that legislation

9:26

was drying. King's

9:28

Eye Have a Dream speech in

9:31

1963, August 1963, this wonderful

9:33

pion to nonviolence, but just

9:36

two weeks later, you

9:38

get the Birmingham church bombing and

9:41

those four school children are

9:43

killed. And I guess the biggest manifestation of

9:45

this is the election of

9:47

Barack Obama. It was tempting to view that

9:49

as an end of

9:51

history moment. Finally, the sin

9:53

of enslavement had been absolved,

9:55

but who followed Barack

9:57

Obama into the White House? racist

10:00

Donald Trump who made his political

10:02

name as the untitled

10:04

leader of the birther movement which

10:07

denied the very legitimacy of

10:09

the black presidency. What you're

10:11

saying Nick reminds me of the fact that

10:14

you know all of the debate over in

10:16

recent years in this country over Confederate monuments,

10:18

monuments to racist

10:20

rebel soldiers and generals

10:23

in this country were not erected during

10:26

the Civil War. They were erected well after during

10:29

Jim Crow as a reminder really

10:31

to local black folks where

10:34

they stood in the town where the statue

10:36

was erected. Even so the famous

10:39

Confederate rebel flag wasn't

10:41

really popularized until the really

10:44

until the middle of the 20th

10:46

century in this country. It's the backlash to

10:48

progress that you're talking about. Yeah

10:51

one of my inviting memories of

10:53

2015 when Trump had

10:55

come down the golden escalator to launch his

10:57

bid for the presidency was

11:00

being in South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina

11:02

the day that the Confederate flag came

11:05

down. It was an

11:07

extraordinary day of course it followed that awful

11:10

mass shooting at that church in

11:13

South Carolina in Charleston where

11:15

Dylann Ruth this white supremacist

11:18

believed he could ignite a race war

11:20

and of course there were photos of

11:22

himself wrapping himself in the Confederate colors

11:24

that fabric of hate. And

11:26

I watched that flag come down that

11:28

day and I wondered whether

11:30

I was kind of watching the final surrender of

11:32

the Civil War. It felt so

11:35

historically loaded and

11:37

around the same time of course Barack

11:40

Obama came down to South

11:42

Carolina he led the morning at one

11:44

of the big funerals he sang Amazing

11:46

Grace. It

11:48

was this extraordinary moment and he flew

11:50

back to Washington that day the White

11:52

House was bathed in the colors of

11:55

the rainbow flag because the Supreme Court

11:57

had made same-sex marriage legal across the

11:59

country. country. And you

12:01

thought American progressives were

12:03

winning every battle.

12:05

It seemed that grand narrative of

12:08

progress and advancement was continuing. It

12:10

was tempting to assume that an

12:12

African American president would be followed

12:14

by America's first female

12:17

president. But what we were

12:19

really watching, Todd, that summer was

12:21

another backlash moment. And that backlash,

12:23

of course, came in the form of

12:25

Donald Trump. We're going to

12:27

e-mails to say the continuing problem is

12:29

that the U.S. as a whole refuses

12:31

to admit the violent crimes of our

12:33

shared history. In fact, there is and

12:35

always has been resistance to face that

12:37

truth. What we're experiencing now is the

12:39

result of many working to face the

12:41

truths of the past. No more intentional

12:44

amnesia, says Linda. Linda, we thank you

12:46

for that comment. Nick,

12:48

you also talk about a pattern

12:50

of progress and backlash

12:53

when it comes to the abortion

12:55

debate in this country. You write about

12:57

the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v.

12:59

Wade, which also sparked nationwide protest. We're

13:14

not past this with the

13:16

Dobbs decision. Nick, not by a long shot. We're

13:19

awaiting this week more abortion decisions

13:21

from the Supreme Court. So this

13:23

continues. How do you think the

13:25

abortion debate plays into the

13:28

cycle of progress and backlash that

13:30

you diagnose in America? Well,

13:32

I think the overturning of Roe and the

13:35

Dobbs decision is proof of two Americas right

13:37

now, because obviously

13:39

you have wildly different abortion

13:41

laws in conservative states and

13:43

liberal states. And

13:46

those divisions within

13:48

America are now being codified into

13:51

law. I think that's a key

13:53

point to make. I think

13:55

it shows the proof of the

13:58

intransidence of the Supreme Court. in

14:01

regularly defying public opinion on issues

14:03

such as abortion and guns, where

14:05

there is majority support for a

14:08

women's right to choose. And

14:10

I think it also shows how the Supreme

14:13

Court has really overstepped

14:15

the thinking of the Founding Fathers,

14:17

which is slightly ironic, given that

14:19

the Supreme Court right-wing justices believe

14:21

so firmly in the idea of

14:23

originalism, the idea that you should

14:25

interpret the Constitution as the

14:27

Founding Fathers intended it to be interpreted.

14:29

Well, the Founding Fathers never intended the

14:32

Supreme Court to be supreme. They

14:34

regarded it very much as the

14:37

third branch of government, way behind

14:39

Congress and the presidency. And

14:41

now, of course, the Supreme Court

14:44

occupies this extraordinary role. It's like

14:46

the nine justices of these super

14:49

legislators. Now, the Founding

14:51

Fathers never intended that

14:54

to be the case. They never intended

14:56

the Supreme Court to be as supreme

14:58

as it is now. So there's a

15:00

lot to unpack historically in

15:03

the Roe vs. Wade and the reaction to

15:05

it. I mean, I think that one of

15:07

the imperatives, what's operating here that

15:09

I'd love for you to comment on, one

15:11

of the imperatives of the Supreme Court is

15:13

that it's an institution that is designed to

15:16

get out of this vicious cycle that

15:18

you're describing, right? Progress, backlash, progress, backlash,

15:22

to use its authority to settle the

15:24

big questions. The Supreme Court

15:26

did settle Roe in the early

15:28

1970s. It was the

15:30

revisiting of it, wasn't it? It was the rejection

15:32

of precedent and this new court saying, no, no,

15:34

no, no, no, we're

15:36

going to check out of the consensus building

15:39

that comes with a final decision and revisit.

15:41

That to me was the, apart from the

15:43

policy of abortion, of course, that was the

15:45

important sort of big trend

15:48

there. Yeah,

15:51

I think another big trend that the abortion debate

15:54

over the last 50 years or

15:56

so has shown is how the judiciary has

15:58

become so much more partisan. and

16:00

how a deliberate strategy on the right

16:03

especially has been to try and pack

16:05

the federal judiciary with as many right-wing

16:07

justices as possible. It's always worth remembering

16:09

that when Roe vs Wade

16:12

was actually brought in, most

16:15

of Richard Nixon's appointees, these

16:18

were Republican appointees actually supported

16:21

it. One

16:23

of Kennedy's appointees, Whizzer

16:25

White as he was called, Byron White, a

16:27

former football star, he

16:29

opposed it and so did William Rehnquist who

16:31

ended up being the Chief Justice of the

16:33

Supreme Court. But what we've seen in the

16:35

50 years since of course is a far

16:37

more strongly

16:40

partisan Supreme Court.

16:42

So the idea that they're a

16:44

constitutional referee is immediately

16:46

compromised because so many

16:49

Americans regard them as partisan. Kim

16:51

emails to say division and polarization among

16:54

citizens as well as fascism is a

16:56

worldwide problem, not just the USA.

16:59

Kim, that's a great point and we're going

17:01

to get to it after just a short

17:03

break here. We're talking to journalist and historian

17:06

Nick Bryant about his new book, The Forever

17:08

War, America's Unending Conflict, with itself.

17:10

And we want to hear from you. Do

17:12

you agree that divisions in America are inevitable?

17:15

Why or why not? You can email

17:17

us 1a at wamu.org. Still

17:19

to come, how does the upcoming election fit

17:21

into the cycle of America's unresolved

17:24

conflicts? I'm Todd Zwilich. You're listening

17:26

to 1A. Let's

17:54

get back to our conversation with journalist and historian

17:56

Nick Bryant. It's all about his new book, The

17:58

Forever War. America's unending

18:01

conflict with itself. Well, before the break,

18:03

Nick, I read a message from Kim.

18:05

I want to restate it because it's

18:07

a good one. Division and polarization among

18:10

citizens, as well as fascism, is a

18:12

worldwide problem, not just the USA.

18:15

So that demands the question, Nick,

18:17

are we really so different? Does

18:19

America have a unique problem of

18:21

not being able to resolve its

18:23

big conflicts? Of

18:27

divisions for sure. I'd argue,

18:29

though, that not many countries

18:31

argue over their history with

18:33

the same intensity and have

18:35

the same amount of unresolved

18:37

history as the

18:39

United States of America. I think

18:41

that is actually something that sets

18:43

America apart. And what I

18:45

show in the book is that division has

18:48

always been the default, really, Todd. I mean,

18:50

going back to the founding of

18:52

the country, I mean, victory

18:54

over the British brought about independence, but

18:57

it did not bring an instant sense

18:59

of nationhood. Indeed, there was a worry

19:01

at the time that there

19:03

wouldn't be in the United States of America,

19:06

that the country might split

19:08

into three or four different confederations

19:10

along regional lines. I

19:13

mean, the Constitution, in many ways, was an agreement

19:15

to keep disagreeing. It wasn't

19:17

really until about 50 years, until there

19:19

was a really strong sense of national

19:23

consciousness. Arguably, America

19:25

became an empire, Jefferson's

19:27

empire of liberty, before it became a fully fledged

19:29

nation. It was very much a state

19:31

nation rather than a nation state in

19:34

those days. And of course, then you have

19:36

the 1860s, where you're in the state of

19:38

civil war. Then you have the

19:40

period of segregation, where the American South is

19:42

obviously a very different place than the North.

19:45

And now you have this problem

19:48

of a red and blue America,

19:50

which is rendered in such

19:52

deep shades of red and blue. And

19:55

that's a recurring theme of the book. How

19:57

division is a recurring theme. Some people might

19:59

argue. you, the

20:02

division is uncomfortable and can be

20:04

destructive, but the dynamic that you

20:06

described of a disunified

20:08

country in conflict and a constitution

20:10

built to keep disagreeing is ironically

20:13

the strength of it, right? I mean, a country

20:16

that is eclectic, that is

20:18

varied, that has a constitution

20:20

hopefully that is flexible and

20:23

malleable and plastic

20:26

enough that it can accommodate all

20:28

this disagreement. Yes, the disagreement continues,

20:31

but the margins hold because it's

20:34

designed to hold even if it

20:36

has turmoil within and not all

20:38

countries can say the same, right?

20:40

Countries fracture, they disintegrate or they

20:42

might be authoritarian, top heavy, stolid,

20:47

stagnant in their culture and their political

20:49

progress. So what about

20:52

the counter argument there that yes, it's

20:54

uncomfortable. Yes, it's really

20:56

awful to live through and observe sometimes,

20:58

but maybe this is the best it

21:00

gets for modern humans. The

21:04

problem is to the price of unity

21:06

in the early years of the Republic,

21:08

the price of unity was enslavement, the

21:10

compromise reached over slavery after

21:12

the civil war and the period of

21:15

reconstruction came to an end. The price

21:17

of national unity was segregation. This

21:21

agreement basically that civil

21:24

rights in the South would not be enforced,

21:26

that the South could maintain a system of

21:28

racial apartheid that was Jim Crow.

21:32

Look on the question of the constitution, America

21:35

finds itself in this sort of odd situation now where

21:37

it can't really live with it and it can't really

21:39

live without it. The

21:41

constitution now creates regularly

21:43

systems of deadlock where

21:46

the executive can't agree with the legislature

21:48

and the Supreme Court has to intervene

21:50

and referee and as we said earlier,

21:52

there are problems with that because the

21:54

Supreme Court has become so divided

21:57

and partisan. But

22:00

if you didn't have, if you had constitutional

22:02

change, and let's say, for instance, you got

22:04

rid of the Electoral College. Well, the Democrats

22:06

have won the popular vote in seven out

22:08

of the last eight elections. So you basically have

22:10

a Democratic lock on the White House. If

22:12

you got rid of the Senate, which is

22:14

a problematic institution in many ways, obviously, because

22:16

small states have the same number of senators

22:18

as as big states, then how would

22:20

that go down in the rural states that are

22:22

washed with guns? Because one of the first things

22:24

a reform Senate would presumably do would

22:26

bring in new gun rights. So you've got this kind

22:29

of this paralysis almost at the

22:31

moment where you've got a constitution that

22:33

doesn't really work. But it's hard to

22:36

imagine America working without the

22:38

Constitution. Michael

22:40

emails something interesting. Consider regarding the

22:42

current polarized climate in the United

22:45

States, the role of the media

22:47

and in particular conservative media that

22:49

feeds into vilification of the left,

22:51

promotion of conspiracy theories, all

22:54

the rest. Nick, do you see the

22:57

current climate of right wing media

22:59

as a symptom of these continuing

23:01

divisions or as an exacerbator or

23:03

both? Oh,

23:06

I think it's hugely problematic. You

23:08

know, the role of Fox News in this

23:10

is deeply disturbing. I

23:12

mean, for instance, about watching the forever

23:14

war, when you're actually in a foreign

23:17

country, you could do it from your

23:19

sofa on the day that Donald Trump

23:21

was found guilty simply by switching channels

23:23

on your TV. Between MSNBC and Fox

23:26

News, it was as if they were

23:28

covering different trials. It was as if

23:31

they came from different countries. But

23:33

of course, they came from the

23:35

same country. Yet the spread of

23:37

misinformation has been hugely problematic. But

23:39

again, this is a common

23:42

theme in American history. You

23:45

know, the day that JFK was killed,

23:47

he was about to deliver a speech

23:49

at the Dallas trademark where he was

23:51

warning against misinformation.

23:55

Richard Hofstadter, the famous US political science,

23:57

delivered a lecture in Oxford on the

23:59

E. of Kennedy's assassination on November the

24:01

22nd, 1963, where

24:04

he introduced the idea of the

24:06

paranoid style in American

24:09

politics, the conspiratorial flavor,

24:11

what he called the

24:13

uncommonly angry mind. So

24:15

again, this misinformation and

24:17

this conspiratorialism has

24:19

been a recurrent theme of the American

24:21

story. America had Tucker Carlson in the

24:24

1930s. His name was

24:26

Father Coughlin. He was famous on the

24:28

radio. He was racist, he was

24:30

anti-Semitic, and he filled his listeners'

24:32

minds with pro-Nazi propaganda and the

24:34

idea that America should not enter

24:36

the wars of other countries, that

24:38

America should keep to its own

24:41

and not get involved in

24:43

Europe. Sounds pretty familiar. Yeah,

24:46

I mean, he came from a

24:48

church that they called the Shrine of the Little Fuhrer.

24:51

He was this horribly

24:54

anti-Semitic, Nazi-sympathizing

24:56

demagogue who used the tools

24:59

of demagoguery, the radio,

25:01

to reach his audience.

25:04

What's kind of alarming about

25:06

people like Coughlin is the

25:09

way they actually seeped into the mainstream

25:13

of American politics. Sometimes

25:16

we talk about the second New

25:18

Deal that was far more anti-Wall

25:20

Street, far more populist. And

25:22

there are many stories that you think that the second

25:24

New Deal, which was a response

25:27

in many ways to demagogues

25:29

like Charles Coughlin and Huey

25:31

Long, the former governor of

25:33

Louisiana. And it

25:35

shows that these

25:37

extreme figures, McCarthy

25:39

was the same in the 1950s in

25:41

terms of his impact on American

25:43

policy, foreign policy, how these extreme

25:46

figures can actually influence

25:48

mainstream political thought.

25:51

And Coughlin's a classic example

25:53

of how demagogues have regularly

25:55

raised their heads in American

25:57

politics. And also it's worth

25:59

saying. You know, a lot

26:01

of American presidents have displayed

26:03

surprisingly and worryingly authoritarian tendencies,

26:05

including some of the great

26:07

heroes of the American story,

26:09

like FDR and like Abraham

26:12

Lincoln. Which brings us to

26:14

the current day, which brings us to Donald

26:16

Trump. Well, Nick, we've experienced

26:18

Donald Trump as the entrepreneur, as

26:21

the entertainer, as the pitch man,

26:24

as the con man, all very

26:26

American archetypes. I'm sure you'd agree.

26:28

What do you think is so significant

26:31

about Trump and his political rise in

26:33

the context of

26:35

the backlash and the reactions that

26:37

we're talking about? I

26:40

think we should have seen it coming to because Trump

26:43

was the beneficiary of

26:45

so many trend lines that were sort of 50 years

26:48

in the making, economic,

26:50

political, racial, cultural, technological.

26:53

When Donald Trump, for example, said in 2015 and 2016 that the American

26:56

dream is dead,

26:59

that really resonated in the post-industrial

27:01

communities where those empty factories became

27:04

echo chambers for the slogan, make

27:06

America great again. The Republican

27:08

Party during the Obama years, it essentially become

27:10

the anti-Obama party. So it made complete sense

27:12

for them to pick as their presidential

27:14

nominee, the most emphatically anti-Obama candidate. Many

27:17

of Trump's supporters, not all of them

27:19

by any means, but a

27:21

lot of his supporters had problems with an

27:24

African American in the White House. So it

27:26

made perfect sense again for them to back

27:28

the untitled leader of the birther movement, which

27:31

negated the very idea of

27:33

a black presidency. Technologically, he benefited from

27:35

Twitter. Technologically, the Russians were able to

27:37

influence the election in many ways through

27:40

Facebook. Culturally, what we were watching, we

27:42

were watching reality TV shows. He was

27:44

the king of reality TV. Donald

27:46

Trump. So many trend lines

27:48

favored him. And when you throw

27:51

in an antiquated electoral system that

27:53

allows somebody who doesn't win the nationwide popular

27:55

vote to win the presidency, which of course

27:57

is what the electoral college does. have

28:00

this situation where Donald Trump

28:02

can win. He wasn't historically inevitable in

28:04

2016, but I'd

28:07

argue that he almost became

28:09

historically inescapable. You

28:12

mentioned one thing in your list there that

28:14

I think is worth just picking out again

28:16

and highlighting so many people forget. Donald

28:19

Trump could not have made his

28:21

transition from TV entertainer and

28:23

pitch man to politician without

28:26

the relentless attacks, the racist

28:29

lie that Barack Obama was

28:31

not a citizen of the United

28:33

States, that he was an other, that he was

28:35

a foreigner. And by the way, the access to

28:37

Fox News to repeat it over and over and

28:39

over again, none of this would have been possible

28:41

without that. And

28:44

Todd, it wasn't only Fox News that was

28:46

amplifying that message. I mean, Trump

28:48

was allowed to say those things on

28:51

pretty mainstream American networks.

28:55

And because he was saying extreme

28:57

things, people tended to

29:00

give him even more airtime and amplify that. And

29:02

I think that was a huge problem. I think

29:04

the media has taken a

29:06

long look at itself and its role in

29:09

assisting Donald Trump's rise in many ways. I

29:12

mean, he understood the art of the attention

29:14

economy. He wasn't only

29:16

appealing to the post-industrial landscapes

29:18

of the Rust Belt, he was appealing to the

29:21

kind of, the

29:23

devastated landscape of the modern day media.

29:26

I mean, into our drive revenue streams,

29:28

we threw this lifeline and we grabbed

29:30

it. And I think, we were complicit

29:33

in the rise of Donald Trump for sure.

29:35

I couldn't agree more. Well, Nick, how are

29:37

you thinking about this election then and how

29:39

it fits into the patterns of unresolved conflicts

29:42

that we talk about it and what's at

29:44

stake? What's your, when you step back from

29:46

the daily coverage and the debates and all

29:49

the rest of it, how are you viewing

29:51

this election in the grand scope? Todd,

29:54

I'm worried about how it's being framed

29:56

as this terrible choice between a doddery

29:59

81-year-old and a

30:01

crazy 78-year-old and how I

30:04

realized that the polls show that the Americans would

30:07

like a different choice, but this

30:09

is the choice that they've got.

30:11

And it's an absolutely stark choice

30:13

from my point of view. It's

30:16

a stark choice between somebody who

30:18

believes in democracy, Joe

30:20

Biden, and somebody who doesn't

30:22

believe in democracy, and

30:24

that is Donald Trump. Covering

30:27

the Trump White House for those

30:29

four years, he was displaying

30:32

alarming authoritarian

30:35

tendencies, and so often

30:37

he was reined in by the sort of grown-ups

30:39

in the room who acted as

30:41

moderating influences. My great fear of a

30:43

Trump 2.0 obviously was those grown-ups in

30:46

the room just would not be there,

30:48

those moderating influences would not be present.

30:50

It's a stark choice facing

30:53

America, and I really do believe, and

30:55

I don't think this is hyperbole, this

30:57

is a co-red moment for

30:59

American democracy. We have a

31:01

weekly election series here on 1A, it's called

31:03

If You Can Keep It. Nick,

31:05

I know you get the reference, and

31:07

we talk all about the stakes of

31:09

this election, not polls, not numbers, not

31:11

odds. We're focused on the very stakes

31:14

that you're talking about, so I appreciate

31:17

your distilling this election down to

31:19

the very stakes. Brian emails a

31:22

great question for you, Nick, as we round

31:24

out the hour here. What conflicts does Nick

31:27

think have been mostly resolved in American

31:29

history, and what areas have we gotten

31:31

it right? Hmm,

31:34

that's a great question, because

31:36

it's so many areas, you

31:39

know, whether it's immigration, whether it's in

31:42

race, whether it's in guns. I

31:45

would have said, I would have said

31:47

up until a couple of years ago, that

31:49

America really got it right, with,

31:52

mostly right, with science and the application

31:54

of science and the driving of public

31:56

health to better the lives of many,

31:58

not all, not enough Americans,

32:00

there was still racism imbued in

32:02

the application of public health.

32:05

Now that is also under attack. That has

32:07

become a mode of disinformation

32:09

and division as well. So I take it

32:11

back. Yeah,

32:13

no, I mean, you know, I was very

32:16

lucky to be a visiting scholar at MIT.

32:18

I mean, you know, an institution that almost

32:20

invented the American future. So I've, I've seen,

32:22

you know, I've seen the

32:25

wonder and the extraordinaryness of American.

32:27

I totally acknowledge that in the

32:29

book. I mean, I point to

32:31

where America has achieved extraordinary

32:34

success. But if you're looking for

32:36

an area, a political issue where

32:39

there has been a sense of resolution,

32:42

I'm struggling to find that. I mean, we thought, I

32:45

suspect it would be abortion

32:48

that did seem settled for many

32:50

years. Well, let's end

32:52

on this then just in a thought, because we only

32:54

have just a quick minute. What's the best possible outcome

32:57

for this election for you? Maybe

33:00

not the result of a candidate more

33:02

broadly than that. What's the best we can hope for

33:04

after this election? The

33:07

people will accept the result. And

33:10

I hope the result will be the Joe

33:13

Biden victory. I'm no longer a BBC correspondent.

33:15

I can say that now. And

33:18

if you want to preserve your democracy, then

33:21

you need Joe Biden back in the White House. As

33:24

journalist and historian Nick Bryant, his

33:26

new book is called The Forever

33:29

War, America's Unending Conflict with Itself.

33:31

It's available now. It's

33:33

a harrowing and important read for all

33:36

of us Americans who want to understand

33:38

the ongoing conflict, unresolved conflict in our

33:40

country. And more importantly, what's

33:43

at stake? Nick, thank you so much. Todd,

33:45

it's been a great pleasure. Thank you for having me

33:48

on. Remember the 1A Vox Pop app? Well, it's

33:50

free. It's one easy way to get your voice

33:52

heard on this show and you'll find it wherever

33:54

you get your apps. Today's producers

33:56

were Maya Garg and Arthi Getty. This

33:59

program comes to you from WAMU, part

34:01

of American University in Washington,

34:03

distributed by NPR. I'm Todd

34:05

Zwilich. We'll talk more tomorrow. This

34:08

is 1A.