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      in US Politics

      Can American democracy survive Donald Trump?

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      “I WON THE ELECTION!” Donald Trump tweeted in the early hours of 16 November 2020, 10 days after he lost the election. At the same time, Atlantic magazine announced an interview with Barack Obama, in which he warns that the US is “entering into an epistemological crisis” – a crisis of knowing. “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false,” Obama explains, “by definition our democracy doesn’t work.” I saw the two assertions juxtaposed on Twitter as I was finishing writing this essay, and together they demonstrate its proposition: that American democracy is facing not merely a crisis in trust, but in knowledge itself, largely because language has become increasingly untethered from reality, as we find ourselves in a swirling maelstrom of lies, disinformation, paranoia and conspiracy theories.
      The problem is exemplified by Trump’s utterance, which bears only the most tenuous relation to reality: Trump participated in an election, giving his declaration some contextual force, but he had not won the election, rendering the claim farcical to those who reject it. The capital letters make it even funnier, a failed tyrant trying to exert mastery through typography. But it stops being funny when we acknowledge that millions of people accept this lie as a decree. Their sheer volume creates a crisis in knowing, because truth-claims largely depend on consensual agreement. This is why the debates about the US’s alarming political situation have orbited so magnetically around language itself. For months, American political and historical commentators have disputed whether the Trump administration can be properly called “fascist”, whether in refusing to concede he is trying to effect a “coup”. Are these the right words to use to describe reality? Not knowing reflects a crisis of knowledge, which derives in part from a crisis in authority.
      However, the very fact that we need to ask this question helps answer it – for lying, paranoia and conspiracy are also defining features of the totalitarian societies that American society is being so hotly compared to. As Federico Finchelstein maintained in his recent A Brief History of Fascist Lies: “As facts are presented as ‘fake news’ and ideas originating among those who deny the facts become government policy, we must remember that current talk about ‘post-truth’ has a political and intellectual lineage: the history of fascist lying.” Both George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, two of history’s most acute observers of totalitarianism, situated lying squarely at the heart of the totalitarian project. Not just the Hitlerian big lie of propaganda, but a culture of pervasive lying, what Arendt called “lying as a way of life” and “lying on principle”, systematic dishonesty that destroys the collective space of historical-factual reality. Orwell similarly insisted that lying is “integral to totalitarianism”: indeed, for Orwell, totalitarianism probably “demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth”. And as Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism, both the Nazis and the Soviets created markedly paranoid societies, in which the capillary action of conspiratorial fictions did as much work as ideological infrastructure. More

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      in US Politics

      Barack Obama on the moment he won the presidency – exclusive extract

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      More than anything campaign-related, it was news out of Hawaii that tempered my mood in October’s waning days. My sister Maya called, saying the doctors didn’t think Toot [Obama’s grandmother] would last much longer, perhaps no more than a week. She was now confined to a rented hospital bed in the living room of her apartment, under the care of a hospice nurse and on palliative drugs. Although she had startled my sister with a sudden burst of lucidity the previous evening, asking for the latest campaign news along with a glass of wine and a cigarette, she was now slipping in and out of consciousness.And so, 12 days before the election, I made a 36-hour trip to Honolulu to say goodbye. Maya was waiting for me when I arrived at Toot’s apartment; I saw that she had been sitting on the couch with a couple of shoeboxes of old photographs and letters. “I thought you might want to take some back with you,” she said. I picked up a few photos from the coffee table. My grandparents and my eight-year-old mother, laughing in a grassy field at Yosemite. Me at the age of four or five, riding on Gramps’s shoulders as waves splashed around us. The four of us with Maya, still a toddler, smiling in front of a Christmas tree.Taking the chair beside the bed, I held my grandmother’s hand in mine. Her body had wasted away and her breathing was labored. Every so often, she’d be shaken by a violent, metallic cough that sounded like a grinding of gears. A few times, she murmured softly, although the words, if any, escaped me.What dreams might she be having? I wondered if she’d been able to look back and take stock, or whether she’d consider that too much of an indulgence. I wanted to think that she did look back; that she’d reveled in the memory of a long-ago lover or a perfect, sunlit day in her youth when she’d experienced a bit of good fortune and the world had revealed itself to be big and full of promise.I thought back to a conversation I’d had with her when I was in high school, around the time that her chronic back problems began making it difficult for her to walk for long stretches.“The thing about getting old, Bar,” Toot had told me, “is that you’re the same person inside.” I remember her eyes studying me through her thick bifocals, as if to make sure I was paying attention. “You’re trapped in this doggone contraption that starts falling apart. But it’s still you. You understand?”I did now. More

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      in World Politics

      The Rise of the Digital Émigré

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      The French word “émigré” specifically refers to people who leave their home country for political reasons, a self-exile of sorts. In that sense, it’s a very different term from “immigrant,” “expat” or “nomad.” In history, émigrés have fled abroad to escape from revolutions in France, the United States and Russia. Many aristocrats escaped war-torn European countries amid the chaos of the Second World War. In the early 1920s, cities such as Shanghai and Paris were havens for émigré communities. Now, a century later, political changes have created a new wave of émigrés. I call them digital émigrés.

      For example, 2020 has brought an unprecedented rise in American citizens leaving the United States to seek new lives abroad. In fact, the number of Americans who gave up their US citizenship skyrocketed to 5,816 in the first half of 2020, compared with 2,072 in all of 2019, according to research from New York-based Bambridge Accountants. 

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      This trend has been accelerated not only by America’s poor handling of the pandemic, but also the rise of Trumpism and more generalized far-right political attitudes, plus uncertainty about health care and worries about newly emboldened militia groups across the country. Those who leave may include parents looking for safer countries to bring up their children or members of marginalized groups worried about the rise in racist political ideologies.

      Across the Atlantic, a similar dynamic is happening in the UK. Brexit has been a massive push factor for British digital émigrés. The number of British citizens moving permanently to European Union countries rose by 30% since the 2016 referendum. According to research, half of this number decided to leave within three months of the original vote. By now, some will already be almost eligible for citizenship in their destination country, which in some cases takes a minimum of five years.  

      Other Brits fled at the last minute, during the transition period of 2020, while their EU rights were still valid. At the time of writing, some are still planning an escape before the end of 2020. There has also been a 500% increase in British citizens who have taken up citizenship of one of the 27 EU countries. This is a predictable response to the actions of a UK government forcibly removing people’s long-held rights.

      These trends in both the UK and US indicate that people are no longer prepared to tolerate the consequences of damaging political decisions. In the past, it was harder to uproot one’s life and leave for another country. For starters, international moves require having a source of income, which can be challenging to find when you don’t speak the language, don’t have connections and aren’t familiar with the local culture.

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      Fortunately for 21st-century digital émigrés, the rise in remote working, and particularly in doing business online across borders, has provided the necessary freedom to make rapid international relocations. What’s more, the pandemic has boosted this trend by further legitimizing online working, compelling more employers to accept it as the norm. Countries needing immigration have seen the remote working trend as a golden opportunity to attract skilled professionals to their shores. A number of countries, including Estonia and Bermuda, have introduced digital–nomad visas. Others, such as Portugal and the Czech Republic, have special pathways to residency for foreigners who generate income from outside the country.

      In the case of Portugal and, more recently, Greece, generous tax breaks are available for those who make money online. For those countries, the beauty of the setup is that the foreigners’ money can help revitalize the local economy without taking jobs on the ground away from citizens.

      Indeed, the digital émigré trend is gaining such momentum that governments are beginning to take notice. If a large number of educated and skilled citizens leave their country permanently, taking their tax money with them, it could have severe implications for that country’s economy. Perhaps governments should keep this more firmly in mind when they decide to enact policies that deprive people of important rights, such as the freedom to live, work, study and retire across European Union countries. 

      Governments should tread carefully in this “digital first” world, where borderless working is rapidly becoming the norm. Remote working and online business empower digital émigrés to vote with their feet. These highly educated and skilled professionals can easily relocate their entire lives to destinations that more closely match their values, goals and lifestyle choices.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      As Donald Trump refuses to concede: the etymology of 'coup'

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      As Donald Trump sulked in the White House after the election and refused to concede defeat, many wondered if he was plotting a “coup”, in the sense of an illegitimate seizure of power. This is short for the French coup d’état, literally “blow” or “stroke” of state, but it took a silent linguistic coup for that to become its meaning.“Coup” is traced back to the Latin colaphos, for a punch or cuff. As the phrase itself suggests, a coup d’état was originally (from the 17th century) a decisive action by a (legitimate) government, such as the formation of an alliance or a cunning marriage; only later did it come to mean the seizure of the apparatus of state from outside. All coups, however, seem to require an element of surprise, just like a coup de foudre (literally, lightning strike) is love at first sight, and a “coup” in short is often cause for celebration: an admirable, unexpected success.Pleasingly, “coup” also has an old Scottish use, meaning: “The act of tilting or shooting rubbish from a cart, wheelbarrow, etc.” In this sense, emptying the White House of Trump will itself constitute a coup to be marked with much revelry.• Steven Poole’s A Word for Every Day of the Year is published by Quercus. More

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      in US Politics

      Obama hails arrival of a more 'caring government' as memoir launches – video

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      In an interview marking the launch of his memoir A Promised Land, Barack Obama tells Oprah Winfrey that the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will help lead the US back to the ‘competent, caring government we so badly need’. 
      He lamented the standard of governance over the past four years, saying Biden and Harris will ‘level set’ and show that the presidency will not label journalists ‘enemies of the state’ or ‘routinely lie’  
      A Promised Land by Barack Obama review – memoir of a president
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      in US Politics

      A Promised Land by Barack Obama review – memoir of a president

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      To read Barack Obama’s autobiography in the last, snarling days of Donald Trump is to stare into an abyss between two opposite ends of humanity, and wonder once again at how the same country came to choose two such disparate men.
      Somewhere at the top of a long list of contrasts is their grasp of language and facts. On the eve of the book’s publication, Trump has been emitting staccato tweets about winning an election he has decisively lost, a claim formally labelled within 10 minutes as disinformation. At the other end of the scale, Obama’s A Promised Land is 701 pages of elegantly written narrative, contemplation and introspection, in which he frequently burrows down into his own motivations.
      Obama makes clear he believes the whiplash from the 44th to 45th president is no accident. On the contrary, the mere fact that an accomplished, intelligent, scandal-free black man inhabited the White House was enough to trigger his antithesis.

      It is not the theme of the book by any means, but beneath the chronology of the Obama years, the inherited economic crisis, the fight over affordable healthcare and the rethinking of the US’s place in the world, racist resentment lurks below, and its orange embodiment rises into sharper focus with each chapter.
      In the preface, Obama says he set out to tell the story of his presidency in 500 pages and finish within a year. But an additional three years and 200 pages later, he has managed only some of the journey.
      A Promised Land takes us from childhood to the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, delving into certain events and decisions with a degree of detail that may lead some readers to wonder if there might be a sweet spot between Trump’s presidency by blurt and Obama’s earnest prolixity, between total denial of mistakes and the protracted re-examination of each one. (A second volume is in the works, delivery date uncertain.) More

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      in US Politics

      John Oliver on Trump's refusal to concede: 'Absolutely unforgivable'

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      John Oliver tore into Donald Trump’s “pathetic, dangerous” refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory on Last Week Tonight, after two weeks of the president’s attempts to delegitimize the results of the election with baseless claims of voter fraud, backed by most congressional Republicans. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, for example, said Trump is “100% within his rights” to challenge the election result, and chastised Democrats on the Senate floor for “any lectures about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election”.
      “First, no one expected Trump to immediately, cheerfully accept the results,” Oliver countered. “He’s incapable of cheerfully accepting anything apart from blowjobs, Nazi endorsements and the opportunity to scream inside a stranger’s truck,” to harken back to a photo-op from two years or what feels like two decades ago.

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      Furthermore, Democrats in Washington never refused to accept the election results in 2016: Hillary Clinton formally conceded the morning after election day, and Obama hosted Trump in the White House the day after that. “And yet Republicans are trying to defend their support for Trump’s indefensible behavior,” Oliver continued. One senior White House official asked the Washington Post: “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?” which Oliver called “a question that never ends well, whether the ones asking it are overworked parents who need a break or the Weimar Republic”.
      The Trump campaign and its television surrogates on Fox News have lobbed numerous unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud before, during and after the election, and “if you’re a casual viewer of rightwing media, you might think, ‘Well, there must be something here, they wouldn’t be going to all this trouble over nothing’”, Oliver said. “But the thing is, they are. This really is nothing.”
      Oliver summarily disproved Trump voter fraud claims from Pennsylvania to Georgia to Michigan – “I could spend the rest of this show debunking stories,” he said. “The problem is, it’s endless” and often nonsensical. “And who knows why Republicans are entertaining this – maybe it’s the fact that Georgia has two Senate runoffs coming up and they want to keep Trump happy so he’ll help rally voters for him there,” Oliver added. “Maybe they’re currying favor with him because they’re worried he’ll be a power broker going forward, I don’t know. What I do know is that the answer to the question ‘what is the downside of humoring him?’ is a lot.”
      The Trump administration’s refusal to acknowledge the election’s outcome prevents Biden from receiving high-level intelligence reports or accessing funds for his transition team. More pressingly, it blocks Trump officials from sharing critical details of a distribution plan for a Covid vaccine with Biden’s team. As cases surge to new records across the country heading into the holiday season, “you really want the new team handling the pandemic to be able to talk to the old team,” said Oliver, “even if, as I suspect, the old team’s plan was just a single white board in Jared’s office with nothing on it other than ‘discover cure?’ circled five times and then a drawing of Donald Trump saying: ‘Good job, new son.’”
      Many of Trump’s election fraud claims are laughable or ridiculous, Oliver continued, but “the fact is, a lot of people believe stuff like that. And when you continually insist that the election was stolen in big cities and suggest that remedying this calls for the ‘biggest fight since the civil war’,” to quote a video retweeted by Trump of the actor Jon Voight comparing contesting Biden to battling Satan, “things start to get deadly serious.” Earlier this month, two armed men were arrested outside the Philadelphia convention center, where city officials were counting ballots. One of the city’s commissioners, a Republican, told CBS news that the vote-counting center had received threatening phone calls “reminding us that ‘this is what the second amendment is for’”.
      It’s clear, Oliver said in response to the situation in Philadelphia, that “Trump is playing a dangerous game here, because there’s a huge difference between ‘not my president’ and ‘not the president’. And to be clear, people who are that angry are not riling themselves up in a vacuum. They’ve been fed a steady diet of misinformation, bullshit fraud claims, and a victim narrative from outlets like Fox News, Newsmax, OANN and, most importantly, Trump himself.”
      Trump’s continued propagation of election conspiracy theories via Twitter since the election are an “appropriate coda to a presidency that has destroyed so many lives”, said Oliver. “So many of us have lost loved ones, either because you can no longer square your love for them with their love for him, or because they fell down a mind-melting rabbit hole of conspiracy theories that he happily perpetuated, or because he let a deadly virus run wild, and it fucking killed them.
      “And now, as a parting gift to the country,” he concluded, “Trump is somehow managing to divide us even further while also hobbling his successor at the worst possible time, which is absolutely unforgivable.” More