America’s problems lie in its traumatic childhood, author argues

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In his new book, Nick Bryant argues that the division and hate in the US today are rooted in the nation’s past. But he doesn’t fully explain the Trump factor.

It is rare for an impending presidential election to have so major an effect on global politics. Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have strong reasons to continue their wars until January, in the expectation that a Trump administration will look favourably on them.

This is true of the presidential election itself: in two recent elections — 2000 and 2016 — the winner actually received fewer votes than the losing candidate, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton respectively. And the Republicans are openly planning ways to limit voter participation in elections. Measurements of national democracy, as carried out by Freedom House andBryant is both a political observer and a history nerd, well-read in American history. “The news cycle,” he writes, “is the historical cycle in microcosm.” Rather as a psychoanalyst might trace current traumas to early infancy, Bryant argues that so much of what is not working in the US has its origins in the distant past.

I sympathise with this view, having myself written a memoir which echoes much of Bryant’s disillusionment, although my infatuation is a generation older. But like any spurned lover, Bryant is prone to exaggeration. To link French President Emmanuel Macron’s desire for a more independent European foreign policy to apprehension about Trump is to overlook the legacy of Charles de Gaulle, who was equally suspicious of the Atlantic alliance.

 

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