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      Glenn Greenwald: The Borderline Between Editing and Censorship

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      Glenn Greenwald’s image as a journalist grew over the past two decades from that of an outspoken blogger to reach the status of being both respected and feared as an authoritative voice in the world of investigative journalism. In 2014, he spearheaded the creation of The Intercept after securing generous funding from billionaire Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay.

      As a columnist for Salon from 2007 to 2012, Greenwald had developed a reputation for fearlessly challenging the Bush and Obama administrations. Then, after a move to The Guardian, he became the key player in a scoop that called into question the entire US security state and the military-industrial complex. His active role in the drama surrounding whistleblower Edward Snowden secured his reputation as a leading investigative journalist.

      Accompanied by filmmaker Laura Poitras, over the course of several days, Greenwald conducted an in-depth interview with Snowden in Hong Kong before the whistleblower’s departure to Moscow, where he still remains in exile. Shortly after that cloak-and-dagger event that dominated the news cycle for several weeks, Omidyar announced the creation of the news organization First Look Media and the launch of its first media outlet, The Intercept. It was led by a trio consisting of Greenwald, Poitras and Jeremy Scahill.

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      Thanks largely to Greenwald’s reputation, The Intercept stood as the model of successful, professional independent journalism, free of corporate or governmental influence and ready to challenge the dominant power structures in the US and elsewhere. Most people considered Greenwald’s name and his dominant role to be the chief asset of The Intercept’s brand. That explains why the announcement last week of his resignation on the grounds of alleged censorship could not fail to produce a shockwave in the news industry.

      The first reaction came from The Intercept’s editor-in-chief, Betsy Reed, whom Greenwald accused of censoring his article dedicated to the Hunter Biden affair. Some may feel that “the lady doth protest too much” when, to defend her insistence on reducing the scope of his piece, she characterizes Greenwald as a spoiled, petulant child. Here is how she framed it: “The narrative he presents about his departure is teeming with distortions and inaccuracies — all of them designed to make him appear a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Grown person:

      Someone who is old enough to realize that there is a power structure looming over them that will never accept to be reformed or even swayed by those who have unveiled its vices.

      Contextual Note

      Reed’s outburst turned out not to be the most tactful way to parry Greenwald’s accusation of censorship. Reporting on the conflict, Mediaite posted this headline: “‘A Grown Person Throwing a Tantrum’: Intercept Issues Blistering Statement Responding to Glenn Greenwald ‘Smear.’” Greenwald clearly appeared more civil and respectful in his complaint against The Intercept than Reed’s sour-grapes dismissal. One statement of Reed’s appears to contain unintentional comic effect. It’s a classic case of damning with faint praise: “We have the greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be, and we remain proud of much of the work we did with him over the past six years.” May he rest in peace.

      Apart from the condescension that reads like a family member regretting a grandparent’s descent into the incoherence of Alzheimer’s, what this also ironically reveals is the recognition that The Intercept’s reputation still depends on its historical association with Greenwald. Even if Greenwald launches a rival outlet, his name will forever be linked with The Intercept. It will remain a major asset and a prop for the website’s future credibility. Even Reed cannot afford to keep antagonizing the petulant child or the doddering uncle.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Reed’s quandary is real. She must defend herself and cannot do otherwise than attack Greenwald. But calling him an over-the-hill has-been is fraught with danger. Her dilemma can be compared to the one faced by admirers of Muhammad Ali when the black radical anti-war hero of the 1960s turned into an ally of George W. Bush, the white Texan president famous for fomenting unjustified wars on foreign soil.

      The difference is nevertheless striking. The kinds of punches Ali received during his boxing career did far more physical damage than the multiple symbolic punches Greenwald has received throughout his career from the American, British and Brazilian establishments. (Greenwald did once receive real punches the hands of a Brazilian journalist and delivered one of his own.) After retiring from boxing, Ali suffered from dementia pugilistic that completely effaced his historical activism and many of his most active thought processes. In contrast, Greenwald seems to be suffering only from the political punches delivered by two parties in the US, the Democrats and the Republicans, who rival, in election after election, at presenting only the lesser of two evils as viable choices for voters. 

      The case can be made that Reed was acting as a responsible professional doing the job she was hired for and doing it well. The Intercept’s co-founder, Jeremy Scahill, has stepped up in her defense, heaping praise on Reed with this appreciation: “I have never questioned her professional or personal integrity, her immense skill as an editor, or her commitment to following the truth wherever it leads.” A close reading of a statement that begins by a negative affirmation “never” could reveal a slight faintness in the praise, but Scahill, unlike Reed, carefully avoids even a hint of damning.

      Interviewed by Krystal Ball, Scahill expressed on November 2 what is probably The Intercept’s consensus on the US presidential election, indicating a general sense of agreement with Greenwald: “Joe Biden represents the kind of official, legalized form of corruption that produces presidential candidates and Donald Trump is a garden variety crook.” Greenwald believes in denouncing corruption. Reed believes in arresting crooks. Matt Taibbi, a former colleague at The Intercept, made the point about media complicity more succinctly than Greenwald when he wrote this about Biden on Monday: “The same press that killed him for this behavior in the past let it all slide this time.”

      There are two ways of interpreting this quarrel depending on one’s priorities. The question is how important is it for the public to be aware of Biden’s “legalized form of corruption”? Greenwald thinks that awareness is essential to establish before the election because it will have an impact on future policy. Reed just wants to be free of President Donald Trump. The Intercept can deal with Biden after he’s elected.

      Historical Note

      Glenn Greenwald’s case against The Intercept is worth listening to, not in the interest of determining who may be right or wrong in his quarrel about censorship, but in terms of the substance of his article. His Substack post focuses on two related issues, both of which represent long-standing historical trends: the degradation of politics that explains a diminishing quality of US presidential candidates and the historical evolution of the media in its treatment of the facts at play during elections.

      Greenwald’s uncompromising treatment of the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, obviously rubbed The Intercept’s editors the wrong way. They appeared to view his complaints merely from an electoral perspective. They read it essentially as a trivial attack on the former vice president. Though focused on Biden as a flawed candidate, Greenwald’s point was much more general. Biden’s casual nepotism is an indicator of systemic failure. The candidate’s flaws reflect and reveal a cancer at the core of democracy, a phenomenon aggravated by the media that too willingly let serious issues pass while aligning behind the lesser of two evils.

      Betsy Reed was closer to the pulse of her enterprise than Greenwald. She may even have felt more American than Greenwald, as someone who lives under the shadow of Donald Trump’s presidency, in the belly of the beast, in contrast to Greenwald, who long ago preferred exile in Brazil, which eventually put him under the shadow of President Jair Bolsonaro. The Intercept team understandably was committed to dumping Trump, if only to be free to focus on the real issues of government rather than the permanent reality TV show Trump has been running for the past four years.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      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

      Lady Gaga attacks Trump's 'grab' remarks at Joe Biden rally

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      Lady Gaga gave an impassioned message of support for Joe Biden as America heads to the polls, making reference to Donald Trump’s history of crude sexual remarks and alleged sexual assaults.“Vote like your life depends on it, or vote like your children’s lives depends on it, because they do,” she told a rally in Pennsylvania. “Everybody, no matter how you identify, now is your chance to vote against Donald Trump, a man who believes his fame gives him the right to grab one of your daughters, or sisters, or mothers or wives by any part of their bodies … Vote for Joe. He’s a good person.”Her words referred to Trump’s infamous 2005 boast that “when you’re a star, they let you do it … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything”.Trump referred to Gaga at his own Pennsylvania rally, saying she “is not too good … I could tell you stories about Lady Gaga. I know a lot of stories.”On Sunday, Trump’s communications director Tim Murtagh tweeted: “Nothing exposes Biden’s disdain for the forgotten working men & women of PA like campaigning with anti-fracking activist Lady Gaga. This desperate effort to drum up enthusiasm is actually a sharp stick in the eye for 600,000 Pennsylvanians who work in the fracking industry.” Gaga responded: “I’m glad to be living rent free in your head.”At his Pennsylvania rally, Trump also criticised Jon Boni Jovi, Jay-Z, and LeBron James, who won the 2020 NBA championship with the LA Lakers in October. “I didn’t watch one shot, I got bored, back forth, back forth,” Trump said. “You know why? When they don’t respect our country, when they don’t respect our flag, nobody wants to watch”, a reference to the kneeling protests James and his team made on their return in July.James later endorsed Biden on Instagram, saying: “We need everything to change and it all starts tomorrow.” More

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      Trump v Biden: how to watch the US election coverage in the UK

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      So, you are in the UK and want to watch the US election results? Even after what happened in 2016 – and even though the election wasn’t called for Donald Trump until 7.30am GMT – you really want to put yourself through all that again? Well, fine. I cannot condone this sort of behaviour, but I can, begrudgingly, guide you through your viewing options.
      BBC One: US Election 202011.30pm-1pm
      Katty Kay and Andrew Neil – in his last gig for the broadcaster – will present rolling coverage, from Washington and London respectively, starting half an hour before the first presidential polls close. Jon Sopel and Clive Myrie will be with the Trump and Biden campaigns, while Nick Bryant, Emily Maitlis and others will report from various battleground states. Experts will be shepherded in for analysis and Christian Fraser will have a big screen to play with.
      Kay and Neil’s heroic – and potentially traumatising – shift will conclude at 9am. At this point, Matthew Amroliwala and Reeta Chakrabarti will begin four further hours of reaction and analysis. Hopefully, by the time this is over, we will know who won. Even if we don’t, BBC One is scheduled to return to normal. Sure, the election is important, but not important enough to derail Doctors.
      ITV: Trump Vs Biden: The Results11pm-6am
      As with all elections, ITV’s coverage will be less watched than the BBC’s, but fitfully more interesting. The good news is that Tom Bradby is holding the fort, so we might witness another of his planet-sized, shoulder-slumping sighs when he finally knocks off. However, official coverage ends at 6am, so there is an almighty chance that the result will be revealed on Good Morning Britain, provided that Piers Morgan can be quiet for long enough.
      Sky News: America Decides9pm-7am
      Sky’s election output kicks off at 9pm with an hour-long programme entitled Trump: America Interrupted, which will look at the impact of the Trump presidency. After that, results coverage begins at 10pm – four hours before many polls close – with America Decides, which Dermot Murnaghan will present live from Washington. Apparently, Sky will use its most comprehensive election data yet and will work closely with NBC News. It will also include an augmented reality “Race to the White House”, whatever that means. Either way, Kay Burley will take over at 7am.
      CNN: Election Night in America5am-9pm Thursday
      For those of you who hate sleep, CNN’s rolling coverage has already begun and will continue unbroken until The Lead with Jake Tapper begins 64 hours later. Why has such a vast amount of time been devoted to election coverage? It is almost as if CNN knows that the result will be contested and that the contest will rattle on unsatisfactorily for days.
      Other options
      As you would expect, your best bet of thorough election coverage would be to follow the Guardian’s election liveblog. But there are other options for the more news-averse. At 10pm, Comedy Central is showing the vastly underrated Die Hard knock-off White House Down. And, given his bracing, shellshocked reaction four years ago, you would be foolish to miss Stephen Colbert’s Showtime election show; it won’t be shown live on UK TV, but it will be all over YouTube after it airs. Then again, you could just go to bed as normal and avoid the whole sorry mess. More

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      US shops boarded up ahead of feared election unrest – video

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      In anticipation of possible election-rated civil unrest, buildings in downtown New York City and in Beverly Hills have been boarded up. As a response to an NYPD advisory, stores and businesses that may be affected by demonstrations have put up boards to protect glass windows. Security around the White House in Washington DC has also been strengthened
      US election 2020: Trump and Biden make final pitches with historic election hours away – live More

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      in US Politics

      Obama compares Trump to a 'two-bit dictator' who lies ‘every single day' – video

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      Former US president Barack Obama has criticised Donald Trump for casting doubt on the results of the election, likening him to strongmen elsewhere in the world. Addressing a drive-in rally in Miami on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s behalf, Obama said his successor has suggested he may declare victory before all the votes are counted. ‘That’s something a two-bit dictator does,’ Obama said. The former president also accused Trump of ‘lying every single day … the fact-checkers can’t keep up, it’s like, just over and over again’
      US election 2020: Obama accuses Trump of ‘lying every single day’ at Florida rally for Biden – live More

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      America prepares to deliver its verdict after Trump replays 2016 campaign

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      The crowd was small at first. But as the night wore on, the numbers grew and so did belief in miracles. In the early hours of 9 November 2016, Donald Trump and family walked into the ballroom of a midtown Manhattan hotel to celebrate one of the greatest political upsets of all time.“Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division – have to get together,” the new president-elect said. “To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.”The speech is now all the more striking because, in the view of countless critics, Trump spent the next four years doing precisely the opposite. His norm-busting presidency deepened divisions, poured oil on flames, stress tested institutions to breaking point and rendered truth itself a partisan issue.And on Tuesday, millions of Americans will deliver their verdict in a referendum on Trump’s first term, after a bitterly fought election campaign that has left the nation with even deeper wounds than those exposed four years ago.Trump’s opponent, former vice-president Joe Biden, has left the president trailing in every major national opinion poll since becoming Democrats’ presumptive nominee in April. Biden commands a bigger lead over Trump, nationally and in several crucial battleground states, than the ill-fated Hillary Clinton did at the same stage in 2016.Yet the stunning repudiation of the political establishment that year has left Democrats haunted. There is little sign of complacency in the Biden camp amid the profound uncertainties of an election campaign waged against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, and fears that the incumbent will seek to declare victory prematurely and prevent every vote being counted.As both candidates spent Monday in a final frenzied sprint across battleground states, Trump was in trouble. Past incumbents have successfully made elections about not themselves but their opponents. George W Bush shifted the spotlight to challenger John Kerry. Barack Obama did likewise to Mitt Romney. But this president’s profligate and shambolic campaign could neither escape the pandemic nor find a way to define Biden. It is still all about Trump. More

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      America in the Mid-70s and 2020

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      It was summer almost half a century ago when I got into that Volkswagen van and began my trip across America with Peter, a photographer friend. I was officially doing so as a reporter for a small San Francisco news service, having been sent out to tap the mood of the nation in a politically fraught moment. The Vietnam War, with all its domestic protests and disturbances, was just ending. North Vietnamese troops would soon enough enter Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital; the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, was then trapped in an escalating scandal called “Watergate.”

      And here was the odd thing. I felt trapped, too. In some way, I felt lost. As I put it then — and this should have a familiar ring to it, even if, in 1973, I was only referring to the TV version of the news — “That screen haunted my life. Somehow I wanted to shatter it and discover new, more human reference points, a true center of gravity.” I had the urge to break out of that world of mine and do the all-American thing, the Jack Kerouac thing: go “on the road.”

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      So, Peter and I set out on that famed American road, traveling from campgrounds to fast-food restaurants, carnival midways to Old Faithful, only to find ourselves trapped in what I called “the increasing corporate control not just of people on the job, but on their vacations, in their leisure hours.” I found myself interviewing, and him photographing, what I came to think of as a “population of disoriented nomads” — mostly lower-middle-class and working-class Americans, confused and angry, “pushed aside,” as I wrote then, by “forces they feel are beyond their control.” We were, it turned out, on someone else’s road entirely.

      In Milwaukee, we would be joined by Nancy, who later became my wife, and then would spend weeks following those all-too-unromantic highways (without a Jack Kerouac in sight), interviewing anyone who would talk to us. In the end, that attempt of a 29-year-old to break free from his own life, to figure out “where (or whether) I fit into American society” became my first book, “Beyond Our Control: America in the Mid Seventies.” In retrospect, that book about our strange journey into a country being reorganized for eternal consumption and the wellbeing of giant corporations became my own — as I would then call it — “dream-document excavated from our recent past.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      And yes, even so long ago, it was already a troubled moment in a troubled land. I must admit, though, that I hadn’t looked at “Beyond Our Control” in years, not until a friend recently found a copy, read it and emailed, quoting my own ancient text back to me to point out how eerily relevant it still was, how — in a sense — Trumpian parts of that 1973 America already were.

      He highlighted, in particular, an interview near the end of that book with “Frank Nelson” — I changed all the names, so who knows now what his real one was — about which more in a moment. That missive startled me. I had forgotten all those Frank Nelsons and perhaps as well the Tom Engelhardt who interviewed them so long ago.

      So, curious about that long-lost self of mine and the world I then inhabited, I picked up that old book and reread it in order to meet the young Tom Engelhardt on the road in another American universe. And how strange that journey back into my own — and our — past proved to be.

      The Right Wind Sweeping In Off the Plain

      So, if you have the patience for a little time travel, return with me to July 1973 and let me tell you about Frank Nelson, whom I met at a trailhead in Yellowstone National Park with his wife and three children. He was “a responsible, likeable family man” with — regardless of how hard I pressed him — “no vision of a better future.” A plumber and union shop steward from Cleveland, as well as the chairman of the union bargaining committee in his factory, he proudly told me, “I have really dedicated myself to the labor movement all my life and I believe in it.”

      Yet he was already talking back then about the growing “conservative approach” of the trade union movement and the possibility that it would be destroyed, he believed, by “the race issue.” He was clearly both anti-Semitic and racist. (“Being white, I would prefer the continued supremacy of the white race instead of this homogenization that’s coming.”) And while discussing what he felt was a growing American crisis with me, he also told me that “your liberals believe in one world government … and your conservatives” — which he clearly believed himself to be — “believe in America first, American domination.” And remember, this was July 1973, not July 2019. It was Nixon’s America, not Trump’s.

      Frank and his wife Helen were open, chatty and so pleased with the interview experience that she gave me their address and asked me to send them a copy of anything I wrote. In other words, he said nothing he felt was out of the range of propriety. My reaction, on leaving him, was: “For me, this interview seemed like the crescendo towards which the bits and pieces of our trip have been building.”

      As I had discovered in those weeks of interviewing, Nelson, like so many others on that vacation loop, was filled to the brim with half-spoken and unspoken fears about a future in which, as I put it then, “the [corporate] pushers will survive, maybe even profit. It’s these people we’ve talked with, the vast mass of middle people who have barely eked out a toehold in the system, who will be cut off at the knees. And, being hooked [on that system], they don’t know what to do.”

      Then, thinking about Nelson (and others like him we had met), I added:

      “The next step for Frank Nelson, however, may be out of this passivity and into the streets … The motivation, the frustration, the anger is there. Even a new ideology, the ideology of race and nationalism is emerging. All that’s missing is the right wind sweeping in off the plain, a combination of forces at the top of the society willing to mobilize Frank Nelson.

      … Sinking people don’t usually have a trenchant analysis of reality. All they require is the promise that their hard-won sense of status will not go down the drain; and an explanation, any explanation, on which to hang their hopes. American society leaves people so confused and reality so disjointed that almost any formula which pretends to put the pieces together and appeals to what people think of as their self-interest may prove acceptable.”
      In those pages, I had already brought up Weimar-era Germany — the moment, that is, before Adolf Hitler rose to power — and then I added:

      “In Germany in the thirties, the formula that worked was anti-Semitism, anti-communism, and a rabid nationalism combined with full employment and a return to domestic stability. If Frank Nelson’s any criterion, the formula may not be that much different here … Nationalism could well be the banner under which the struggle and the inevitable sacrifices will come, and race the bogeyman just as Jews were in Germany. The identifiable (Black) poor are the symbol for Frank Nelson of what he has to lose, what could be ripped out of his hands. And he’ll defend himself against that even if he has to ally himself with ‘the Jews and rich Gentiles’ to do it.

      Frank Nelson and millions of other Americans are set up for the picking, if a group at the top sees profit in the crop.”
      Welcome to a More Extreme World

      In the age of Donald Trump, the Proud Boys, and the Wolverine Watchmen, much of this should feel strangely familiar. If, however, my reporting was in any way prophetic, I have to admit that I didn’t realize it all these years — not until my friend wrote me. Still, it should be obvious, in retrospect, that, bizarre as the present moment may seem, it didn’t come out of the blue, not faintly. How could it have?

      For that matter, Trump didn’t exactly arrive out of the blue either. As a start, just a couple of months after I got back to San Francisco from that cross-country jaunt of ours, he made his first appearance on the front page of The New York Times. He was 27, two years younger than me, and already the president of the Trump Management Corporation. The headline, shades of the future Donald and the white nationalism that’s accompanied him, was: “Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias in City.”

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      The Justice Department was then charging Trump’s father Fred and him with refusing “to rent or negotiate rentals ‘because of race and color’” in the buildings they then owned and managed. And his first words quoted in that paper about those charges were, appropriately enough: “They are absolutely ridiculous … We never have discriminated and we never would.” Of course not! And what hasn’t been increasingly, ridiculously Trumpian about our all-American world ever since?

      When you think about it, with that moment in 1973 in mind, Trump himself might be reimagined as some extreme combination of Richard Nixon (a man with his own revealing tapes just like The Donald) and George Wallace. The racist governor of Alabama and a third party candidate the year Nixon slipped by Democrat Hubert Humphrey to first win the White House, Wallace was a man best known for the formulation “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

      Nixon took the presidency in 1968 and again in 1972 with his own form of racism, the “southern strategy,” first pioneered by Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 (and then called, far more redolently, “Operation Dixie”). In a racially coded and distinctly nationalist fashion, Nixon brought southern whites in the formerly Democratic bastions of the South definitively into the Republican fold.

      By 1980, Ronald Reagan wouldn’t think twice about launching his own presidential election campaign with a “states’ rights” speech (then still a code phrase for segregation) near Philadelphia, Mississippi, just miles from the earthen dam where three murdered civil rights workers had been found buried in 1964. And in the intervening years, the Republican Party, too, has gone south (so to speak) big time and into a form of illiberality that was, even in the Nixon era, striking enough. By 2016, of course, that southern strategy had become something more like a national strategy in the (pussy-grabbing) hands of Donald Trump.

      Meanwhile, the corporatization — I might, then, have thought of it as the fast-foodization — of the country that Peter, Nancy and I were traveling across was already well underway. At the same time, a new kind of all-American inequality was, in those years, just beginning to make itself felt. Today, with the first billionaire in the White House and other billionaires, even in the midst of a pandemic, continuing to make an absolute mint while so many Americans suffer, the inequality that left Frank Nelson and his peers so desperately uneasy has never stopped rising to truly staggering levels. 

      Believe me, even if Trump has to leave the Oval Office on January 20, 2021, we’ll still be in his America. And 47 years after my long, strange trip, I think I can guarantee you one thing: If it weren’t for the pandemic that has this country in its grasp and has swept so many of us off any path whatsoever, some young reporter, stir crazy and unhappy, would still be able to head out onto a 21st-century “road” and find updated versions of Frank Nelson galore (a surprising number of whom might be well-armed and angry).

      Welcome to America! There’s no question that, so long after Peter, Nancy and I traveled that not-so-open road, our lives and this country are way beyond our control.

      Writing about the people I had interviewed then (about whom, with the single inspirational exception of a museum director I met in Twin Falls, Idaho, I knew nothing more), I said: “I don’t doubt that they, like me, are still heading reluctantly toward a future that will make the summer of 1973 seem truly unreal and leave us all wondering: Could life ever have really been that way?”

      In COVID-19 America, with the West Coast still burning, Colorado in historic flames, a record 11 storms hitting the Gulf Coast and elsewhere this hurricane season, and heat of every sort rising everywhere, don’t for a second believe that the phrase “beyond our control” couldn’t gain new meaning in the decades to come.

      Welcome to a more extreme version of the world Frank Nelson and I already inhabited in 1973.

      *[This article was originally published by TomDispatch.]

      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 World Politics

      Held Together With String, Can America Hold?

      by

      In December 2007, Mwai Kibaki beat Raila Odinga in the Kenyan general election and all hell broke loose. Odinga’s supporters took to the streets, alleging Kibaki had “stolen” the election. Police fired on demonstrators and some died. In retaliation, the targeted ethnic cleansing of Kikuyus, Kibaki’s community, began. 

      The Kikuyus themselves responded by targeting other communities. A bloodbath ensued. The New York Times observed that “ethnic violence, fueled by political passions” was threatening to ruin the reputation of a country regarded as one of the most promising in Africa. It turns out that this promise was illusory. Rival ethnic groups within arbitrary colonial borders were held loosely together by self-interest and little national identity. The country was held together with string.

      360° Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

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      About 20 years ago, Stephen Heiniger, then a British policeman, visited a dear friend in New York. Like my view of Kenya, he observed that New York was held together with string. The Guatemalan who worked in a restaurant’s kitchen had little in common with the owner. He did not really identify with New York or even the US. The immigrant was slaving away to make money to send back to his family, socializing largely with people from his part of the world.

      What Heiniger observed about New York 20 years ago is increasingly true for America today. The country is full of such loose groups held together by self-interest. This is largely defined in terms of success, which in turn is mainly measured by money. A strong social, regional or national identity and common purpose in a large, diverse and unequal land is increasingly lacking.

      In the 2020 presidential election, America might be about to emulate Kenya. Political passions run so strong that the threat of violence looms high. Not since the Civil War ended in 1865 has America been so divided. The reputation of a country long considered the most promising in the world faces damage, if not ruin.

      The Mother of All Elections

      Michael Hirsh, the deputy news editor of Foreign Policy, thinks this is the most important election ever. It is more important than the seminal elections of 1800, 1860 and 1932. These led to the triumphs of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt respectively, changing the course of history. In each of these elections, America was divided but managed to hold together and move forward.

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      Hirsh argues that the 2020 election is the most significant because President Donald Trump has damaged institutions of American democracy to such a degree that the future of “the 244-year-old American experiment of a republic of laws” is at stake.” He blames Trump for openly encouraging racial violence, stoking division and failing to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

      Hirsh reflects the unease of many members of the American elite. For a long time, they have self-consciously thought of themselves as a modern-day Rome. Now, they fear that America could end up “as just another abject discard on the ash heap of failed republics going back to ancient Rome and Greece.”

      As during the times of the Cold War, Americans fear an enemy. This time it is another communist country, a former ally named the People’s Republic of China. Hirsh believes the US is stumbling precisely at “a moment when [it] has lost its material preponderance” to China. Its “central place in stabilizing the global system” is on the ballot.

      The Economist shares Hirsh’s view. It makes a case for Democratic nominee Joe Biden in a breezy editorial that seems to have been penned in the Oxford Union. It declares Biden not to be the miracle cure for what is ailing America but a good man needed to “restore steadiness and civility to the White House.”

      Media organizations from The New York Times to The Times of India agree upon the importance of the 2020 election. They have published millions of words on the subject and sought out pollsters to predict the election outcome. As the day of reckoning draws nigh, campaigning has reached fever pitch. Candidates for the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House are all summing up their final arguments to Americans who have not voted yet. Even as citizens go to the polls on November 3, the Senate has confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority over liberals. Everything is on the ballot in 2020, including and especially the courts.

      To understand the presidential election, it might be useful to cast our eyes to an event 30 years ago. In August 1990, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein “invaded and annexed Kuwait.” The US swung into action to liberate an oil-rich country that its cash-poor neighbor had gobbled. Hussein threatened “the mother of all battles” but suffered abject defeat. This was a heady time for the US. The Berlin Wall had fallen. George H.W. Bush had come to the White House promising “a kinder and gentler nation” and “no new taxes.” Ronald Reagan’s revolution of getting the government off people’s backs and bringing the Soviet Union to its knees seemed to have succeeded. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union had collapsed.

      President Bush had presided over the ultimate triumph of America. The dreaded Cold War with its specter of nuclear destruction was finally over. America’s liberal democracy and free market economy were deemed the only way forward. Francis Fukuyama waxed lyrical about the end of history and humanity was supposed to enter the gates of paradise, with all earthlings securing unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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      After a spectacular victory in the Gulf and the glorious subjugation of the Soviet Union, Bush should have romped to victory in the 1992 election. Instead, he lost. The economy had been slowing and deficits had been growing, forcing Bush to raise taxes. Many Americans went apoplectic. They could not forgive the president for breaking his promise. There was unease even then with the new era of globalization that Bush kicked off.

      In that election, Texan billionaire Ross Perot made a dash for the White House campaigning against this brave new world. He warned against “shipping millions of jobs overseas” because of “one-way trade agreements.” Perot argued that countries with lower wages, lesser health care or retirement benefits and laxer environmental laws would attract factories away from American shores. With the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the cards, Perot famously predicted “there will be a giant sucking sound going south.” Perot did not win, but he took enough votes away from Bush to pave Bill Clinton’s primrose path to the White House.

      In 2020, Trump is running for a second term as Perot’s angry child. He has jettisoned “bad” trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Biden is the successor to Bush and Clinton. He was vice president when the US negotiated the TPP. The die is cast for a clash between two radically different visions for the future.

      Who Will Win?

      In 2016, I had an uncanny feeling that both Brexit and Trump’s triumph were not only possible but probable. In February that year, I examined the UK’s troubled marriage with Europe and argued that British Prime Minister David Cameron had promised more than he delivered, which would cause him problems later. In July, I posited that we could soon be living in the age of Trump because of increasing inequality and rising rage against entrenched elites.

      I followed the two articles with a talk at Google in August on the global rise of the far right. Aggrieved by the superciliousness of journalists based in New York and Washington, I resonated deeply with the “left-behind” voters. They believed that American elites had turned rapaciously parasitic and sanctimoniously hypocritical. It seemed inevitable that some Pied Piper would lead a populist reaction.

      In 2020, I do not have my finger on the pulse in the same way as in 2016. Social distancing and limited travel in the era of COVID-19 has made it difficult to estimate what really is going on. Besides, Americans say radically different things depending on which candidate they support. Often, they are very guarded or say little, making it hard to judge what is truly happening.

      Democrats seem convinced that the nation is horrified by four years of a Trump presidency. They see him as crass, racist, misogynist, dishonest and deeply dangerous. Democrats believe that Americans will punish Trump for damaging institutions, spreading hatred and lowering the dignity of his office. Opinion polls give the Democratic Party a handsome lead even in some key battleground swing states. Pollsters were wrong in 2016, but they might have improved their methods since. Therefore, Democrats believe that they could retain their majority in the House of Representatives, flip the Senate and win back the White House.

      Republicans do not seem to have much faith in these polls. Many are confident of another close victory. They predict losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College. Republican strategists are banking on the silent white vote to turn out in their favor. Many voters are uncomfortable with the Black Lives Matter movement, calls to “defund the police” and prospects of higher taxes. They fear Biden to be a Trojan horse for the culture warriors of the far left led by Kamala Harris, his running mate. They worry about identity politics and the strains it places on the social fabric. Republicans also hope to pick up minority support from Hispanics who oppose abortion, Indians who back Trump’s good friend Narendra Modi, Taiwanese who hate China and others.

      Making Sense of Donald Trump

      When I speak to Americans, one thing is clear. This election is a referendum on President Trump. His manifest flaws have been chronicled by numerous publications and innumerable late-night comedy shows. Yet Trump still retains the trust of many Americans. Why?

      The best answer came from some militia members I spoke to in West Virginia. They conceded that Trump lies but gave him credit for telling one big truth: Things had turned much too ugly for far too many people like them. 

      Some of these militia members were veterans who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were filled with a burning sense of injustice. These gentlemen had withering contempt for the likes of Paul Bremer, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton who served President George W. Bush. They viewed wars abroad as a criminal waste of American blood and treasure. These war veterans pointed out that Bremer, Wolfowitz and Bolton had been courtiers who climbed up the Washington greasy pole without ever serving in uniform. They remarked that Bush himself was a draft dodger who wriggled out of serving in Vietnam because of his father but sent others to die on foreign shores.

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      These West Virginians went on to say that their children had few prospects. Since 1991, working-class jobs have left for China. So, their children need a good education to compete for the few decent jobs in the services sector. However, they study in schools with few resources and overstretched teachers.

      The militia members’ argument is simple but powerful. Only children who study in private schools or state schools in districts where houses cost a million dollars or more get into top universities, which cost a mere $300,000 or so for an undergraduate degree. Affluent foreign students also make a beeline for America after high school. Such is the competition that most parents hire expensive admissions consultants for their children. So, those who come from hardworking ordinary American families are simply outgunned.

      The celebrated entrepreneurs of the US might be dropouts, but top corporates hire largely, if not exclusively, from top universities. The West Virginians pointed out that, before Barrett’s nomination, “all nine justices of the nation’s highest court would have attended law school at either Yale or Harvard universities.” Those who go to posh schools and top universities effortlessly enter the cushy salaried class. They can walk in and buy a million-dollar home with a tiny down payment. All they need apart from their job is a good credit score. In contrast, ordinary Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

      One militia member went on to discuss the bailout in some detail. He told me he had voted for change twice but got more of the same instead. This gentleman blamed President Barack Obama for caving in to Wall Street. He said veterans struggled to get by while bankers got big bonuses from taxpayer money. For him, this showed that Democrats had sold out to Wall Street. He declared that fortunes of the new feudal superclass have been made through the serfdom of an ever-increasing underclass. In his memorable words, the system has “f**ked us over. Now, we will f**k it up.”

      The West Virginians brought to life many arguments I have made over the last decade. In July 2013, I argued that increasing inequality, lack of access to quality education and an erosion of liberty were chipping away at the very basis of the American dream. Over the years, I have cited many studies that chronicled how America was becoming more unequal. In fact, inequality of both income and wealth has worsened even more during the COVID-19 pandemic. Note the economy has tanked but stock markets have stayed high. Social mobility continues to plummet. Poverty is shooting up dramatically. So is hunger. Surviving the terrible American nightmare has become more of a reality than achieving the great American dream.

      Such developments have led to much anger. In an eloquent interview, Trump supporter-turned-opponent Anthony Scaramucci explained why the president won the support of the white working class in places like West Virginia, Wisconsin and Michigan in 2016. For this class, the television celebrity was “an avatar to express their anger.” In rural and suburban areas, blighted factory towns and rundown neighborhoods, Trump was the “orange wrecking ball” to “disrupt and change the system.”

      Another interview by Trump’s former strategist, Steve Bannon, is equally instructive. He rightly says that the American economy is no longer based on capitalism but on neo-feudalism. This former Goldman Sachs highflier argues that the underclass and the superclass don’t pay for anything. The working and middle class are left taking the tab. Quantitative easing (QE) might have saved the economy from collapse but has largely benefited the wealthy. In a clever turn of phrase, Bannon calls QE the bailing out of the guilty who had crashed the system itself. Trump is a “very imperfect instrument” for this populist revolt.

      Likable Uncle Joe and Dancing Kamala

      Many Republicans tell me that they like Biden. They think he is a good and likable man. These folks have reservations about his son Hunter but admire his late son Beau who served in the US Army. However, Republicans fear Biden could be turning senile and Harris would be the real power behind the throne. They reserve their special ire for Harris who they damn for practicing identity politics. Even many Democrats are uncomfortable about her cozy relationships with the Silicon Valley mafia who Americans feel care more about India than Indiana. 

      For many Republicans, Harris is a disingenuous elitist who plays the race card to win votes and sympathy. She had no compunctions putting young black men into jail for minor crimes as a prosecutor to further her political career. They detest the fact that Harris played the race card against Biden during the Democratic presidential primaries. She made a big deal about his opposition to mandatory busing of colored children to largely white schools. Now, Harris is merrily dancing her way to the White House on a presidential ticket with the same man she excoriated not too long ago. Politics is a bloodsport, but some find Harris a bit too canny and bloodthirsty.

      Biden’s supporters take a different view. They think he is still in good health and has good judgment. As per The Economist, the former vice president is “a centrist, an institutionalist, a consensus-builder.” He is exactly what the doctor ordered for a deeply-traumatized nation. Biden will not only steer the Democratic Party forward but also get rid of the scourge of Trump for the Republicans. Decency and civility will return to public life and the White House. Many point to Biden’s impassioned 1986 speech against the Reagan administration’s support for the South African apartheid regime as evidence of his deep commitment to equality and justice.

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      Democrats see reservations against Harris as evidence of America’s deep-seated sexism and racism. With Indian and Jamaican parents, Harris is multiracial like Obama. For many, she is the future of America. She could be the first woman vice president, breaking the key glass ceiling. Immigrants like her parents provide America the talent to stay top dog. As long as Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk and John Oliver make a beeline for America, Uncle Sam will triumph over the Middle Kingdom.

      Democrats make good arguments for the Biden-Harris ticket, but they lack the passion Trump supporters displayed. The fervor of the 2008 Barack Obama or the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaigns is distinctly missing. Democrats are not offering a clear vision or a program for the future. They are running on kicking out Trump and restoring American democracy. It remains to be seen if this will enthuse working-class voters to switch their support to the party of Roosevelt.

      Another Battle in a Long War

      Both Biden and Trump have declared they are fighting for America’s soul. It is the mother of all battles in what could prove to be a protracted war. The country is now economically, educationally, socially, culturally and virtually divided. The division that cable news networks exacerbated a few decades ago is now on steroids thanks to social media. Algorithms have created filter bubbles and echo chambers. People see more and more of the same. In the post-truth world of fake news, people cannot even agree upon basic facts.

      In this unequal and polarized world, institutions are falling short. Congressmen who face reelection every two years are constantly fundraising. They have little time to write laws or hold the executive accountable. Senators often stick around forever, some until they die. Partisanship is so intense that little gets done. Judges are increasingly appointed on partisan grounds and this is damaging their legitimacy.

      At the heart of the matter is a simple question: What holds America together? Bannon has a point when he says that immigration and trade benefit the affluent by lowering costs and raising profits. If hedge funds in Greenwich, Connecticut and internet oligopolies in Silicon Valley, California invest globally and move money through complex legal structures in different countries, what do they have in common with a plumber in Hattiesburg, Mississippi or a carpenter in Great Falls, Montana?

      After the ethnic cleansing in 2007-08, Kenyan leaders signed a power-sharing agreement and the country drifted back to normalcy. As Kenya gears up for elections in 2022, fear and loathing are in the air again. The dormant divisions in this former colony threaten to erupt. The same is true for America. Young black men suffer violent policing and mass incarceration in America’s unjust criminal justice system. The white working class feels betrayed. The woke generation wants to upend the old social order. Feminists want to burn down the patriarchy. Catholics and evangelicals aim to outlaw abortion. With America’s different tribes pulling in different directions, things are truly held together with string.

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