When America Stopped Being Great

January 4, 2021
BBC foreign correspondent Bryant (Confessions from Correspondentland) delivers a revealing outsider’s perspective on the roots of America’s current state of “disunion.” Recalling his first trip to the U.S. as a 16-year-old in 1984, Bryant describes falling in love with “the bigness, the boldness, and the brashness of this land of plenty,” yet notes that the seeds for the Trump era were then being sown by President Ronald Reagan, “who elevated the stature of the presidency also ended up dumbing it down,” and by the country’s rampant consumerism and “winner-takes-all ethos.” As a student at MIT during the 1988 presidential campaign, Bryant was shocked by the effectiveness of George H.W. Bush’s negative campaign ads against Michael Dukakis, which accelerated the trend of “candidates deliberately to divide the country.” Bryant also critiques President Obama for failing to push back forcefully against Republican obstructionism in Congress, and casts himself with other journalists who missed the clues—including increased racial divisions and lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton—to Trump’s victory in 2016. Though he trods familiar ground, Bryant’s pithy observations (“ was a revivalist who did not specify precisely what he was trying to revive”) offer fresh insight. This well-informed portrait of American dysfunction hits home.

January 1, 2021
A British journalist charts America's decline over the past 40 years. BBC senior foreign correspondent Bryant mounts a scathing indictment of the polarization and degradation that have transformed the U.S. into what feels "like a continent rather than a country, a geographic expression rather than a properly functioning state." Offering a brisk overview of American politics, economics, and social change from the Reagan era to Joe Biden's recent win in the presidential election, the author underscores the conflicts and pressures that have deepened into crisis. Reaganism, Bryant asserts, glorified "conspicuous consumption, instant gratification and the celebration of wealth." In addition, the election of a former film star "normalised the idea that a show-business personality could become president." The Monica Lewinsky scandal was Bryant's first big American story; looking back, he views it as more than a tawdry episode since it led to increased journalistic sensationalism, the rise of "post-truth politics," and "the corrosive impact of the internet." Barack Obama's message of hope and change was undermined consistently by the GOP, which "took obstructionism to unprecedented levels." Like many journalists, Bryant gave little credence to Trump's ability to win, but he admits that "Trump possessed the great skill of populists and demagogues down the ages: to articulate the fears and prejudices of voters better than they could themselves, and also to offer simplistic solutions." The author looks in vain for events--such as 9/11, the financial crash, and the current pandemic--that should inspire unity but instead have "made fear the great driver of US politics," serving to exacerbate divisiveness. Now living in New York, Bryant hopes for a revival that will make America a place where his children can thrive. The nation might well pause, he suggests, taking "a respite from the hostility that might induce a period of reflection, restoration and renewal." After his trenchant yet bleak history, however, his hope for unification seems unlikely. An adroit political critique.

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