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?

The problem, as we have all learned since, is that these rulings do not obstruct a Trump comeback, and neither do the multiple criminal lawsuits he faces over his conduct in office. Even if he were miraculously to go away, the panoply of factors that enabled him to grip the US psyche would remain alive and kicking.

Indeed, it is because of those factors that Trump’s chances of winning the election appear to grow with every further inhalation on the liberal left. Polls indicate that Biden is deeply unpopular and trailing Trump in key states.

The systemic features that gave birth to a new nation John Rennie Short calls “Trumpland” are the focus of his book, which explores the phenomenon from the vantage of that cathartic moment when Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the November 2020 presidential election fomented an insurrection.

The author explores the deep flaws in US democracy that spawned the Trumpian virus in a swamp of racial and demographic division and resurgent ethno-nationalism, but also the peculiar ego of the individual who has exploited them.

This story begins with a well-documented loss of faith in government itself presaged by the election of Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama. Short writes: “Both men won astounding, surprising, and norm-breaking elections. Neither achieved all of his goals, but both shared a defining characteristic: they were elected as a reaction to and disrupters of the status quo.”

The origins of endemic disillusionment were a step-change in traditional US narratives of mistrust in government fuelled by Reagan’s Republicans and reinforced by neoliberalism. The failure of successive administrations to protect living standards — evident in the growth of a super-elite and a dwindling middle-class — has hollowed out the “American Dream.”

Profound social and cultural changes by which white hegemony has been eroded by growing diversity have fuelled polarisation, nurturing both dysfunctional partisanship and a seething rage at the core of the contemporary identity of the US.

Short paints a jaundiced picture of the country’s fabled constitutional framework and electoral machinery, whereby a gaping democratic deficit has undermined the legitimacy of the entire political system.

He writes: “Insurrections happen in the context of declining political legitimacy and growing discontent. While all voters get to exercise political choice, only some get to exercise real political power.”

In an enlightening chapter on conspiracy theories, he unpicks the paranoia at the heart of Trump’s core support powered as it is by a sense of victimhood, uncertainty, dispossession and the biblical zeal of the evangelical right. Under the right circumstances — and a charismatic leader — these have metastasized in public discourse, offering alienated individuals a sense of belonging behind a messianic figure.

And this very American sickness has been spread by social media, talk radio and cable television, with hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones creating a “punditocracy” chipping away daily at faith in democracy itself.

However, Short saves much of his wrath for the mainstream media, which did little to call out Trump’s lies, preferring to hide behind a spurious defence of “balance,” while milking the boost in ratings he offered them. The author writes: “There was an abject failure of public news media by outlets seemingly in thrall to the carnival-like atmosphere of Trump’s presidency and their growing audiences and increasing revenues. Trump was a money machine for the media.”

This book offers a searing analysis of the long and short-term factors that put a demagogue in the White House and culminated in a near fatal challenge to US democracy. While Short says there are signs of hope, his conclusion is disconcerting.

The multiple crises facing US democracy embodied in Trump’s “Big Lie” that Biden did not win in 2020 persist. Defiant conspiracists now populate the Republicans, ramshackle constitutional norms are dangerously outdated, and polarisation is as deep as ever.

America, the author argues, is in danger.

“As we lose the sense that governments can work for the greater good, we will inhabit a world of hyperpartisan and polarised communities, a country of simmering resentment, boiling anger, and growing political polarisation.”