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GAVIN O’TOOLE traces the roots of the dysfunctional partisanship and seething rage at the core of contemporary US identity
THIS SIDE OF THE LAW FOR NOW: Poor People's Campaign: a call for moral revival at US Capitol, Washington DC, May 2018 [Leeann Cafferata/flickr/CC]

Insurrection: What the January 6 Assault on the Capitol Reveals about America and Democracy
by John Rennie Short
Reaktion Books, £12.95

 

YOU could almost feel the suction from across the Atlantic as US liberals inhaled collectively on hearing that Colorado’s highest court had found “clear and convincing evidence that President Trump engaged in insurrection.”

What better confirmation that the mendacious plutocratic populist was a tyrant bent on a coup to sweep away the sickly vestiges of the US’s ailing democracy when he encouraged his motley army of extremists to storm the Capitol on January 6 2021? And what better outcome than a ruling by senior judges — followed in short order by Maine — that will greatly complicate his ambitions to storm the White House yet again in the 2024 presidential election in November?

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