American Demagogue: Critical Essays on the Trump Presidency
- ISBN-10
- 1790943728
- ISBN-13
- 9781790943722
- Pages
- 240
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2019-02-17
- Author
- Ray Smock
Description
"The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demagogues," said the Greek historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in the year 20 BC. Today the United States of America has a world-class demagogue as its president. Donald J. Trump is the most successful, and most dangerous, demagogue in American history. He has dramatically changed how we see the role of government, the nature of our democratic institutions, and the place of the United States as a world leader. He has turned the history of the presidency up-side-down. In these essays, Dr. Ray Smock, former historian of the U.S. House of Representatives, combines the urgency of breaking news with critical historical analysis that reveals, in stark contrast, the dangers posed by a leader who cannot govern the nation because demagogues, by nature, rely on fear, lies, smears, scapegoating, and division to gain power and to hold it. While deeply concerned with how this president's demagoguery divides the American people into warring camps, the author sees hope in the tenets of the U.S. Constitution, the law, strong public and private institutions, a free press, and the rise of a new Congress, which can place constitutional checks on this runaway president. These essays are clarion calls for a return to more civil government with less partisanship. It is a strong defense of the free press as an important check on a president who regularly uses lies and deception to further his political agenda. This is the author's second book on the Trump Presidency. The first, published in 2018, was Trump Tsunami: A Historian's Diary of the Trump Campaign and His First Year in Office, also available on Amazon.
