Hosted by Danny Postel
Featuring Mark Danner
Produced by Finbar Anderson
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Ruminating on which of his foreign postings most reminds him of today’s American political landscape, New York Review of Books contributor Mark Danner looks to the Caribbean.
“I would pick a moment during one of Haiti’s parentheses,” Danner tells New Lines’ Danny Postel. “They use the term parentheses to describe the period between the fall of a dictator and a new one. Those moments are usually singularly violent, unpredictable, sporadically absurd, operatic in their politics, and that means they’re a great deal of fun to cover.”
“Him being a strongman is perhaps the most important thing that attracts these followers to him.”
While Haiti’s parentheses were unpredictable, Danner has tried as much as possible to minimize the surprises of the Donald Trump era by taking the famously erratic former president at his word, not least during the Jan. 6 uprising.
“When friends asked me, ‘Why are you going to Washington on the sixth,’ I would say, ‘I’m covering the coup,’” Danner explains. “That always provoked a bit of uncertain, somewhat nervous laughter, but it seemed to me that Trump had been telling us publicly that something was going to happen.”
Danner has no reason, therefore, to disregard the stated plans of Trump for America’s future should the presumptive Republican nominee regain the White House from incumbent President Joe Biden in November’s presidential election.
“I’m not at all surprised at the clarity with which he is evoking an autocratic future,” Danner says. “Trump believes that what he is saying is popular among his base and all indications are that he’s right. They want him to be a strongman. Indeed, him being a strongman is perhaps the most important thing that attracts these followers to him.”
Trump’s complete control and remodeling of the Republican Party in his image is because, suggests Danner, “There’s a basic misunderstanding about how people act politically. … The people who are willing to give up their jobs, people who are willing to give up their positions, people who are in a position of power and are willing to say, ‘That’s it, I’m going to become a private citizen,’ … There are very, very few people who are willing to do that as a matter of principle.”
Nevertheless, Danner refuses to give Trump all the credit for his current dominance of the American political scene. “One of the great stories of our times is the fact that the country, having witnessed an attempted coup on national television, has been unable to protect itself from the perpetrator,” says Danner. “I think that’s an incredible phenomenon and it suggests a kind of decadence in the system.”
Further reading:
The Mass Psychology of Trumpism — Watch the accompanying video here
The United Auto Workers Rejected Trump. Members Aren’t So Sure
How the War in Gaza Is Shaping the 2024 Elections — And the Future of the Democratic Party
A Deliberate Political Madness?