Review of One Nation After Trump National Review
A fast read, and potent. Especially important for those who have been in deep despair, anger, and fear since the 2016 national election in the U.s.. The commencement function of the book reviews how the 2016 election results grew from decades of devastating neglect and damaging strategizing. The 2nd one-half proposes a visionary roadmap toward a restoration of wellness, hope, and the American dream of the common good, rooted in "a new economy, a new patriotism, a new civil club, and a new democracy." Each of those iv basic goals is discussed in depth, and the volume is well supported with source citations, a detailed index, and ideas for where to go from hither. Now will we be able to overcome our various divides to come up together in support of a new, wise, and genuinely expert-hearted and empathetic leader to run in our side by side national ballot in society to throw this terribly inadequate, unsafe, and narcissistic President 45 out??? May information technology be so.
Shelved as 'maybe'
July 28, 2017 Part of me wants to read this so bad and another less noble part wants to watch the republic burn. I have null interest in the state of the spousal relationship because a bulk of the matrimony has betrayed the foundational precepts of America with their decision in 2016. Every bit a registered Non-Partisan voter, I am horrified by what has come up to laissez passer. I think I'd rather work on my aloofness. If or when I take my human foot off the throat of the idealist in me (because it really does need to dice) I'll give information technology a adventure, just honestly, that volition depend on the legislative and judicial branches' performance in the coming months and years. It is a long, four yr journey to the other side.
Perhaps I went into this book with exaggerated expectations because of the authors, simply I plant One Nation Under Trump to exist simplistic and without much truthful merit. The start two-thirds of the book is an extensive telling of how Trump was elected and the many misdeeds he has committed both before and since his election. Footling for me to disagree with here, but too no new insights or data for a relatively informed voter. Merely the real disappointment for me was the final section of the book, which purported to outline what the American voter should exercise now. Although the writers made a point of stating that their intent was not to provide a mere laundry list of ideas and actions, information technology seems to me that that is precisely what they did. Picayune fourth dimension was spent in describing how the many actions they recommended might exist achieved or how the incredibly extensive programs would be paid for or how a majority might be constructed to laissez passer such things. Overall a great idea, 1 that I would still like to explore, but lacking depth.
This volume has some useful information in it about some specific aspects of Trumpism, but the solution offered (a new fusion party of centrist Dems and neocons) as well as the explanation for current atmospheric condition are shallow and superficial.
This is a very skilful book. However if you lot accept followed what's been going on for a long, mayhap non quite as good. It really didn't tell me much that I didn't already know.
I've read plenty of books that deal with current events, but this felt absurdly electric current. Man, the ink is still moisture on the pages it'due south then electric current. The main bespeak of the book is that the Trump stuff we're currently going through can be overcome and even pb to a more vibrant and effective autonomous social club - but it's gotta take a lot of work, and won't be easy. The master thrust of the volume is all-time expressed in a quote past Pres. Obama 10 days before his term concluded. Obama told people to take responsibility for their democracy, "Not just when there's an election, not only when your ain narrow involvement is at stake, but over the full span of a lifetime. If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the Internet, try talking to one of them in real life. If something needs fixing, then lace up your shoes and practice some organizing. If you lot're disappointed by your elected officials, take hold of a clip lath, get some signatures, and run for office yourself. Show up, dive it, stay at it." While it's primary message is a note of optimism, there's also a lot of bleak moments hither. The book has two parts - i) Trump and Trumpism, and 2) The Way Forward. The first part makes up about 60% of the book. The authors annotation that a lot of Trumpism predated Trump. The GOP was making inroads with the white working class well earlier Trump. Also, for much of the US, at that place actually was no shift - that was by and large simply the Midwest. But it should still concern Democrats that inroads are notwithstanding increasing. (Also, many of Trump's supporters are actually well-off). Peradventure the #1 struggle of this era will exist a fight for the truth. In that location's been a loss on common political conversation since the 1960s, largely driven by the right - and the right helps shape the overall media narrative. We've had things like filibuster usage abuse old norms. Newt Gingrich began an insurgency to try to take downward a seemingly permanent House Democrat majority but it's been transformed to a Steve Bannon led crusade for the deconstruction of the administrative state. Populism advances with support of some of the elite - and that'southward what's happened hither. CPAC has shifted from libertarianism to Trumpism. Trump's base is culture/race warriors, but his swing voters are those based on economic concerns. Frankly, much of this first part of the book read like a rehash of following twitter over the concluding nine months. It was adept, but boy was it familiar. The 2nd part pushes the way forward afterward Trump. For all the talk of capitalism nowadays, it was actually a mixed economic system in the mid-century that worked well. We had the Wagner Act, Highway Act, Ike passed the National Defense Educational activity Act that made didactics loans for higher didactics bachelor. The authors note that those who benefited from the GI Bill tended to be more engaged citizens throughout their lives. Maybe we could do something like that now. We demand responsive regime and responsive corporate beliefs - not merely corporations beholden to shareholder interest. (OK, nice sentiment - at present how practise yous practice it?) HRC's campaign didn't really focus on the depth of economic issues people felt. Only nine% of her ads were on the economy while a tertiary of his were. We demand well-off professionals from the anti-Trump coalition - substantially modernistic Eisenhower Republicans. There'south a need for a robust economic agenda. We must face up the bug caused past complimentary trade. This calls for a Lease for American Working Families. It talks about investing in the infranstructure and floats the Universal Basic Income plan. For now, permit'southward protect the existing welfare system. Elizabeth Warren has proposed plans for those living in the gig economy. Build on Obamacare and maybe motility to single payer. Recognize that safe neighborhoods and good community-police force relations go hand-in-hand. Reform drug laws and gun laws. HRC had good ideas, but non much economical focus (and not much skill at presenting those ideas beyond a laundry list of plans). There's a demand to promote patriotism, non nationalism. It quotes George Orwell saying, that patriotism stems from "devotion to a item identify and a item way of life" while nationalism "is inseparable from the desire for power." We need to re-link patriotism to our multiethnic culture and advance that in opposition to Trump's nationalism. America First is selfish, non realistic. Trump opposes our allies. We also demand to grapple with the causes of nativist backfire. The book compares "neighborhood people" to cosmopolitans. We need a new politics based on empathy. Civil society and our sense of community has gone down since the 1970s and even more so since 2008. 65% had confidence in organized faith in 1979, 57% in 1996, 52% in 2009, and now but 41%. Banks went from 60% in 1979 to 22% in '08 and up to 27% only. Public schools? From 53% to 30%. Newspapers? 51% to xx%. Organized labor? 36% to 23%. Big business? 32% to xviii%. But small concern, the cops, and the war machine are over 50% at present. A growing sense of breach (bowling alone) helped lead to Trump. Polarization and geographic sorting are both upwards. Nosotros demand a vibrant civil society to check Trump. Nosotros come across religious groups oppose Trump on clearing and the travel ban. Nosotros take Rev. Hairdresser and Moral Mondays. Professional person groups similar lawyers have as well helped with the travel ban. Academics have been involved. Average citizens opposing voter restrictions take spoken up. We have national service programs we tin can build on. Trump slashes these programs, of form. Democracy must be a means, and an ends for the motion. We gotta get more to vote. If yous run across other Americans as evil, that's bad for democracy. GOP voter suppression laws are trying to make it worse. Trump and Sessions prevarication about illegal voters with their sham commission featuring Kris Kobach. There are ideas to make voting easier - accelerate them. Screw the electoral college. Gerrymandering is bad. McCutcheon vs. the FEC makes political corruption easier. Campaign finance reform is needed. Facebook has a fake news problem. Thing is: the authors argue nosotros're seeing the emergence of what we need in the wake of Trump's win. Want an more engaged populace? Wait at the Jan. 21 marches or the drome rallies, or continued protests. Many previously apolitical have become politicized. You got the Indivisible Guide and Daily Action group. Many conservative intellectuals have rejected Trump. That could serve equally the harbinger of a realignment, the same mode that the difference of the neoconservatives to the GOP helped create ane realignment. There is some good stuff here, but for a book whose point is optimistic, information technology tended to dwell more on the bad news. Also, while I liked a lot of their ideas, in that location wasn't always a clear idea (or whatever idea) of how to reach them. Maybe that's too high a standard to hold a volume to, as information technology's not bloody probable to solve all problems and have all ideas fully formed in a few months. But the power of the book is diluted as parts read like a random laundry listing of possible suggestions and not much more than.
Update ane/16/xviii: Original Review one/xv/18:
Right now, we are a nation divided. I think a better title for this book might accept been "One Nation, United and Stronger Than Ever". Trump does play a role in sure areas where improvements are needed, but let's exist real: every President plays a role in improving areas such equally health care, climate, conditions of roads and buildings, our education organisation, etc. It's misleading to point to Trump and infer that everything that needs improving is Trump'due south fault, as it's the error of millions of u.s.a., maybe even all of u.s.a.. There are many suggested improvements in voting and in other issues listed in this volume: I'd like to name a few:
1) Texas's voter ID police force, passed in 2011, prohibited young people from using their public-academy educatee IDs to vote, but alleged that a handgun license was a sufficient form of identification. Studies have shown the more than educated i is, the more likely one is to vote liberal/democrat. Therefore, Texas was ahead of the game: lets non allow those who want higher education to vote, merely let's ensure people with guns are allowed to vote. And that certainly worked in Trump's favor. I do believe a person should have some kind of ID to show who they are and to ensure they don't vote more than once. Merely the proof can't be selective: Have ID? And so Vote! I like Australian's idea best. In 1924, Australia adopted a constabulary requiring all citizens to present themselves at polls on Election Day (exceptions were allowed, such as illness or strange travel). They didn't have to marking the ballot, but they had to pay a fine of $20 if they didn't show upwards. The Impact? The turnout in Commonwealth of australia was sixty% in the early 1920s. Merely in the 1925 election, the turnout soared to 91%, and it has stood at over xc % ever since.
2) Become rid of the electoral college. Metropolitan areas are going to keep growing, therefore giving smaller populated states more and more power.
3) Extend the number of pre-vote days so that those older or ill have more than time to vote. In Florida, before the 2016 ballot, the time period to vote was shortened and Trump won Florida. But I want to say in my county, Palm Embankment, where Trump has a resort, we gave Clinton about 350,000 votes, Trump received about 200,000 votes. So in my county, nosotros knew who was more qualified.
4) Some other idea proposed is to take the final voting day consist of 24 hours: Saturday noon to Dominicus noon. (The reason Tuesday was chosen in the commencement identify was because Wednesday was traditionally "market day" for the farmers.
5) The Supreme Court: do away with lifetime appointments and have unmarried 18-twelvemonth terms, staggered so that each president in a term could nominate two justices to fill up posts.
vi) Yes, let'south Buy American. And let'due south showtime with Trump setting an example and ensure that all products of Trump's ain companies should be Made In America.
seven) Get out the ACA as it is until Trump and republicans come with a promised replacement (yeah, that was the campaign rhetoric). "It'due south a moral disaster, snatching health care away from tens of millions [of Americans] mainly to requite the very wealthy a near-trillion-dollar taxation cut."
8) Reinstate online privacy protection. Back in the twenty-four hour period, we wrote letters and no one was opening most of them before delivering. At present, everything, everything about you, every slice of information in eastward-mails, can at present be read and shared with anyone, anywhere. Applied science has given us a way too communicate quickly. Even so, for example, I don't want whatever wellness problems I might share with a friend or cousin via a text handed out to bigpharm, crusade and then my text inbox would be filled, daily, with thousands of unwanted ads, and everyone in the world would know most my cholesterol count. I don't want this.
9) Allow Mueller to practise his job and investigate to observe out if the Russian government influenced the election. This is a HUGE issue. We gotta know the truth. Considering for whoever is elected President in 2020 (and yeah, absolutely, Trump could be elected again), I'd similar to know for sure there was no outside interference, and I would remember we all concord on that.
Over again, most of the details of this volume are already known or can be found anywhere on the internet. There was zero completely jaw-dropping hither. The writing is clear and concise, and over again, this is a good iii star read. And no doubt yous volition observe issues far more impactful than the ones I mention to a higher place (all mentioned right here in this book). And although this volume is interesting, at that place is one large flaw: how America can get to "i nation" isn't explained specifically explained, but there are lots of places to start inside these pages. (And to my goodreads friends, if you're still reading some other of my rambling reviews, well, thanks.)
I'll merely only quote things from this book and award this book a iii star rating, an interesting read. "...a Russian war machine intelligence unit had...executed a cyberattack on at least ane U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-fishing emails to more than 100 local election officials simply before the 2016 election." And and so Comey started talking (over again, after 14 investigations), about Hillary's emails just days before the election and Hillary STILL received ii.9 million more votes!!! And about breaking laws: Trump has best-selling that winning the presidency has made his brand "hotter": membership for his Palm Beach resort doubled its membership fee to $200,000 after the election. That's an accented violation of Article two, Section 1, of the The states Constitution!!!. Then the volume offers some interesting fixes like 1) the revolutionary thought of counting each vote as i vote so that in America, 1=1!!! and two) the US should rejoin the Paris Understanding climate initiative from which Trump withdrew thus joining Syria and Nicaragua as the just countries in the globe non a part of the Paris Agreement!!! and 3) "We should accept pride in the United States' exceptional ability to absorb newcomers, and also in their own intense desire to be American!!! Okay, all those assertion points are mine. Most of this material is already familiar to many Americans, so at that place are no surprises here. And once more, a good, 3-star read.
By the standards of pop voting (and stance), Donald Trump is an illegitimate President, elected to role by the quirk we know as the Electoral College where voting is informed by entitlement and gerrymandered districts, a throwback to the times where Houses of Parliament were populated by those who owed their wealth and livelihoods to the King, an poorly conceived solution to the founders' original problems associated in the 178os with approving a Constitution and forming a authorities. Three Beltway Insiders, all competent and opposed to the policies and legislative initiative advanced by Donald Trump, accept provided a look at the reasons Trump was elected President in the 2016 Presidential election, reasons Hillary Clinton did not win that ballot, and what those who oppose Trump must do to send him off and win the hearts and minds of American voters. What they suggest is doable, plausible, and acceptable to me, a voter who predicted that Barack Obama would get President even earlier he appear his candidacy, who voted enthusiastically for him twice, who felt disappointment at sure of his decisions (among them not to engage the American people in a discussion of the morality of assassinating Osama Bin Laden, led past Obama himself, the moral law professor, and handing off the design and implementation of the Affordable Care Human activity to the Senate, led past Democrats who had accepted huge amounts of coin from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries), and who truly believed him to exist the best of the Presidents in my lifetime nether conditions as hard as those in the 1930s. But I disagree on ii major points and am willing to argue those points with the authors. The author first believe that Hillary Clinton lost the election because she failed to projection an calendar that appealed to the most disaffected Americans, those who suffered (as all of united states did) from the 2008 financial plummet but who did recover witht the rest of the states, and 2d, that J.D. Vance described that plight of and so many Americans to whom Trump made illusory promises he failed to keep and Clinton only ignored when she did not go to them, plead her case with them, and inspire them with an economical calendar which promised to diminish the wealth and income gaps that have given the wealthy most of the benefits of economic growth, merely left the vulnerable behind. What both assertions overlook is that Hillary Clinton--the married woman of the founder of the Clinton Foundation and the person who habitually accustomed $500,000 checks from bankers and other lobbying groups--along with J.D. Vance were both pretty much part of that flush, "I'thousand here to assist yous, so trust me" core that made their apologeas insincere to nigh people. Clinton indeed lost the ballot considering she failed to induce almost 10 percent of those who voted for Barack Obama to vote for her. Her unfavorable ratings were, at times, during the election cycle lower than Trump's even though she was perceived as perchance the most qualified person ever to seek the Presidency and the polls supported that decision. She failed to articulate an economic calendar that resonated with the vulnerable. But it was like shooting fish in a barrel to meet as the candidature progressed that Mrs. Clinton was not pulling alee of Trump in key places similar Iowa, Michigan, even Pennsylvania, where it was inconceiveable that that Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and the suburbs of those cities would permit Clinton to blow Trump off the Pennsylvania map. And then what happened? I believe that Republicans who would vote for cockroach if the GOP had nominated a cockroach voted exactly as they e'er did, and those who hated Trump but despised Clinton voted for Trump. She was destined to lose, in other words, and there is no sugarcoating that.
This was a skillful book containing excellent information on Trump and Trumpism and how every bit a nation and as individuals we tin can move forrard to resolve the bug which led to a Trump presidency. The book is divided into 2 parts. The first is an analysis of the history and events which led to the election of Trump. The second is a discussion of how to begin to resolve the many aspects of our economy and our government that plagued usa prior to the ballot of 2016 and go on to cause inequities in our country today. I would have given this book v stars merely it left we with wanting more than. This is hard to describe, but I felt, the authors could take expanded the 2d secton of the book. It was a worthwhile read and those interested in this topic would certainly find new assay within it's pages.
Information technology'south easy to similar a political book when you agree with everything the writers say. I appreciate that these liberal journalists non only clearly described the problems that led to Trumpism just too offered solutions. I especially liked the recommendations for eliminating the rigged electoral college, simply I wish they had told united states how we can alter the style Senators are allocated so that sparsely populated Wyoming and densely populated California won't have the aforementioned number of Senators.
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