Rick Perlstein: 'If you're not writing about the berserk, you're not writing about America'

[marmar]

Rick Perlstein: 'If you're not writing about the berserk, you're not writing about America'
The historian has completed his epic on the rise of the US right – just in time for Donald Trump’s attempt to hold on to his throne

@MartinPengelly
Sat 15 Aug 2020 05.00 EDT


(Guardian UK) Less than three months before the most consequential American election of modern times, Rick Perlstein has completed his epic history of the forces that ultimately put Donald Trump in power. Reaganland, Perlstein’s fourth volume on the rise of US conservatism from 1960 to 1980, is out on 18 August.

Including notes, the book runs to more than a thousand pages. An hour or so before we speak, however, Perlstein puts out a rather shorter statement: a tweet.

“Open letter to press. I’ve given my last interview about the ’68 election’s lessons for 2020. Given Trump’s tweet on postponing, the political media’s determination to bound its discussion within the frame of normal politics is downright dangerous, and I won’t be complicit.”

So I don’t ask Perlstein to compare Richard Nixon – the subject of volume two, Nixonland (2008) – with a president repeating his “law and order” message and who the same day says “universal mail-in voting” will lead to “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT election in history”, and therefore suggests the US might “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”

Trump can’t delay the election. But he can fight and lie and cheat, as Nixon did, and that seems likely to keep reporters knocking on Perlstein’s door. His tweet, he says, came “from a frustrating interview in which I said over and over again: ‘The real thing you need to be talking about as a reporter … is parallels to what was going on in South America in the 1970s and Europe in the 1930s.’” ..............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/15/rick-perlstein-reaganland-donald-trump-nixon-republicans

[SheltieLover]

1. K&R!

[I_UndergroundPanther]

2. I would love to

Get my paws on that book.

[SharonAnn]

3. Yes, I have been comparing this to Pinochet in Chile.