Democracy Under Fire: Donald Trump and the Breaking of American History
- ISBN-10
- 0190877243
- ISBN-13
- 9780190877248
- Category
- Political Science
- Pages
- 256
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2022-03
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Author
- Lawrence R. Jacobs
Description
Donald Trump's presidency offered Americans a dire warning regarding the vulnerabilities in their democracy, but the threat is broader and deeper-and looms still. "January 6th was a disgrace," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell solemnly intoned at the end of Donald Trump's second impeachment trial on February 13, 2021. As to the culprit, Senator McConnell declared that "there is no question that President Donald Trump is practically and morally responsible." Before Trump even ran for President, his disdain for the rules, procedures, and norms of American democracy and the US Constitution was well-known and led prominent Republicans to repudiate him as "unfit" for the GOP nomination. Given the clear-eyed assessment of candidate Trump, why did the Republican Party nominate him as its presidential candidate in 2016 and then stand by him during the next four years? Much of the attention paid to Trump's rise to power has focused on his corrosive personality and divisive style of governing. But he alone is not the problem. The vulnerability is much broader and deeper. The ascendance of Trump is the culmination of nearly 250 years of political reforms that gradually ceded party nominations to small cliques of ideologically-motivated party activists, interest groups, and donors. Trump's rise is not an aberration but a predictable outcome of trends deeply rooted in American history but which accelerated in the last few decades. In Democracy under Fire, Lawrence Jacobs provides a highly engaging, if disturbing, history of political reforms since the late-eighteenth century that over time dangerously weakened democracy, widened political inequality as well as racial disparities, and rewarded toxic political polarization. Jacobs' searing indictment of political reformers concludes with recommendations to restrain the unbridled ambition of politicians who thrive on division and instead generate broad citizen engagement with tangible policy making.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2022-02-01
- 256 pages
- Ebook
- Oxford University Press
-
- 1989
- 207 pages
- Paperback
- Duke University Press
Similar books
-
Citizenship under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of Conflict
By Sigal R. Ben-PorathCitizenship under Fire examines the relationship among civic education, the culture of war, and the quest for peace.
-
World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability
By Amy ChuaAccording to john Lloyd, there are allegations in Russian security agency dossiers that Friedman (“born in 1964. in the city of Lyov, former Ukrainian Republic, a jew”) along with Aven (“born 19;; in Moscow, a jew”) engaged in criminal ...
-
The Capitol Riots: Digital Media, Disinformation, and Democracy Under Attack
By David VanDyke, Michael Hoechsmann, Sandra JeppesenThe book will appeal to both a general audience of those curious about how and why the Capitol riots unfolded and to students and scholars of communications, political science, media studies, sociology, education, surveillance studies, ...
-
Stoking the Fire of Democracy: Our Generation's Introduction to Grassroots Organizing
By Stephen Noble SmithFor young people who want to know what comes next, this book will help them become what Saul Alinksy called the fire under the boiler of democracy.
-
The Capitol Riots: Digital Media, Disinformation, and Democracy Under Attack
By David VanDyke, Michael Hoechsmann, Sandra JeppesenIntroduction: The cascading crises propelling the Capitol riots / Sandra Jeppesen, Michael Hoechsmann and iowyth hezel ulthiin -- Against apartheid pedagogy in the age of white supremacy / Henry Giroux -- Mediatized visions of a nation on ...
-
The Unsustainable American State
By Desmond S. King, Desmond King, Lawrence JacobsCovering the early nineteenth century to the present, The Unsustainable American State offers an unsettling account of the dysfunctionalities that accelerated the erosion of American state capacity in the post-1970s era: persistent racial ...
-
Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House
By April RyanShe takes us inside the policy debates, the revolving door of personnel appointments, and what it is like when she, as a reporter asking difficult questions, finds herself in the spotlight, becoming part of the story.
-
Democracy under attack: How the Media Distort Policy and Politics
By Malcolm Dean31 David Marquand (2008) Britain since 1918: The strange career of British democracy, London:Weidenfeld & Nicolson, p 364. 32 Lance Price (2010) Where power lies: Prime ministers v the media, NewYork: Simon & Schuster,p 349.
-
Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness
By Lawrence R. Jacobs, Robert Y. Shapiro... enacting " the largest expansion of the Medicare program in twenty - three years " ( Litman and Robins 1984 , 461 ) . ... drew the attention of legislators and other political activists , as did Representative Henry Waxman's success ...
-
Forged Through Fire: War, Peace, and the Democratic Bargain
By Frances McCall Rosenbluth, John FerejohnMcGarrah, Jim. Review of Red Clay On My Boots: Encounters with Khe Sahn, 1968–2005 by Robert J. Topmiller. Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 105, no. 4 (2007): 767–69. McGill, Barry. “Asquith's Predicament, 1914–1918.