I have been utterly negligent by failing to write and say to you how much I've enjoyed this series (if "enjoy" is the right word) and how meaningful it has been to me in the period before the election. Thank you so much for undertaking the work and sharing it so generously with the world.
I've been reading your chapters from our home on the UK's North Norfolk coast. Every day as the campaign updates have come in I've had some part of your manuscript in mind. All along I have been thinking to myself, "It's wonderful that Richard is writing this, and after Kamala is elected it will instantly be a period piece that future students of American history may look back on with wonder and dismay." Today of course, many of us look on with another sort of wretched wonder and dismay, at a minimum, as we prepare to be saddled with and grimly endure four more years of the dystopian future you've previewed over the summer and early fall.
I found your closing paragraphs of the Oct 29 chapter to be particularly clarifying. You said, "Trump gives all of us permission to be our lesser selves. All the laws he has broken and all the norms he has violated give us the freedom to break the rules in our own lives. This is why no revelation can shake the loyalty of his supporters. Each new scandal appears to be viewed as freeing each of us from the rules which heretofore defined – or perhaps constrained – us." That struck me as such a precise, accurate and lacerating explanation for the Trump phenomenon. God knows how this perceived liberation, especially after Tuesday, will manifest itself now. I'm so, so worried -- and living across the Atlantic from it doesn't seem like a safe distance at all.
I hope this finds you well. You are clearly still one of the shining lights of American history and I hope you keep it up.
Dear Richard,
I have been utterly negligent by failing to write and say to you how much I've enjoyed this series (if "enjoy" is the right word) and how meaningful it has been to me in the period before the election. Thank you so much for undertaking the work and sharing it so generously with the world.
I've been reading your chapters from our home on the UK's North Norfolk coast. Every day as the campaign updates have come in I've had some part of your manuscript in mind. All along I have been thinking to myself, "It's wonderful that Richard is writing this, and after Kamala is elected it will instantly be a period piece that future students of American history may look back on with wonder and dismay." Today of course, many of us look on with another sort of wretched wonder and dismay, at a minimum, as we prepare to be saddled with and grimly endure four more years of the dystopian future you've previewed over the summer and early fall.
I found your closing paragraphs of the Oct 29 chapter to be particularly clarifying. You said, "Trump gives all of us permission to be our lesser selves. All the laws he has broken and all the norms he has violated give us the freedom to break the rules in our own lives. This is why no revelation can shake the loyalty of his supporters. Each new scandal appears to be viewed as freeing each of us from the rules which heretofore defined – or perhaps constrained – us." That struck me as such a precise, accurate and lacerating explanation for the Trump phenomenon. God knows how this perceived liberation, especially after Tuesday, will manifest itself now. I'm so, so worried -- and living across the Atlantic from it doesn't seem like a safe distance at all.
I hope this finds you well. You are clearly still one of the shining lights of American history and I hope you keep it up.
Best personal regards
John