Jared Yates Sexton - How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People

On the first anniversary of the disastrous election of 2016, I drove a few hours to a discussion about my recent book chronicling the rise of Donald Trumps movement, The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage. It was a cold and rainy night, and the audience came dressed for warmth and armed with questions about the sorry state of political affairs. Like most Americans, they were starving for hope. Already they were dismayed by Trumps cruel presidency and questioning whether the America they had known and loved would ever return. I did my best to give cogent, interesting answers, grabbed a coffee for the road, and braved the drizzle to find my car.

As I was about to step into the shimmering street, a hand landed on my shoulder. I jumped. Id been getting death threats for months. People had shown up at my house in the middle of the night, and hardly a day passed where I didnt receive an odd, fascist message detailing murderous fantasies. When I spun around, I half expected to find a jackbooted neo-Nazi thug looking to make good on those threats. Instead, it was a kind-faced middle-aged woman I recognized from the crowd.

Im sorry to bother you, she said, but I had a question. Something I didnt want to ask in front of anyone else.

Sure, I said, gripping my to-go coffee for the heat.

I have to ask... is this the end of America?

Since lighting off on the campaign trail in 2015 and watching Trump form a movement girded by white identity politics and despotic rhetoric, a movement unburdened by shame or the onus of truth, Id been wondering the same thing. It was an anxiety I never wanted to give voice to lest I gift it weight. A man like Donald Trump winning the presidency meant that something was very, very wrong with the United States of America.

Before I could answer, the woman asked another question: How did we get here?

This one I had covered. Id been answering it at every book tour stop and in every interview. I rattled off something about the radicalization of the Republican Party, the effects of polarization, the medias insatiable desire to turn politics into entertainment, the corrosive influence of new technologies, and the betrayal of the American people by a government bought and sold. It all came out in a practiced stream that sounded rehearsed and performed.

The stranger winced. Yeah, she reluctantly agreed, that makes sense, but how did all that happen? How did we get here?

I wrestled with that on my long drive home. For the most part, I could trace the explanation through Richard Nixon, the civil rights movement and social revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, and the struggle of the Cold War. But as I continued to think about it, that story devolved into simplistic parody. Over the course of those hours on the road, I realized that while I had a working understanding of American history that Id gleaned through the years, I lacked a deeper grasp. The history I understood was the history featured in television shows, popular movies, textbooks that meant to guide students with as few bumps along the way as possible.

The past year had proven that this history didnt work anymore. When Trumps victory was added at the end as yet another twist, the narrative Id subscribed to lost all sense and meaning. The arc of time that Id heard spoken about so eloquently fractured under the weight. I could explain Trumps victory politically, demographically, and socially, but historically, I was at a loss.

By the time I pulled into my driveway in Georgia the next day, I had resolved to overcome my ignorance and relearn history from the very beginning. I had learned dates and surface-level details about the most important events, amassed an extensive repertoire of facts about wars and leading figures, but was lacking in a coherent and comprehensive understanding. What I knew was a privileged version of history that had been crafted to showcase America as the moral protagonist of a larger narrativeand now that narrative had all but collapsed.

I knew American history but needed to learn the history of America.

I grew up in a rural Indiana community in a poor family of factory workers and laborers. Coming of age in the 1980s, I was surrounded by all the pageantry of idyllic America. Every Fourth of July a giant parade flowed through the center of my sleepy town. My neighbors waved bright American flags as bands played The Stars and Stripes Forever and God Bless America. In school I was taught that an exceptional country founded by revolutionary fathers conquered a continent, overcame its vices in a terrible civil war, and then healed to spread its message of freedom and liberty to every corner of the globe. My family was impoverished, dysfunctional, abusive, but at least Id been lucky enough to be born in the United States of America, a divine blessing repeated by my elders and teachers and stressed by my preacher every Sunday morning as he pounded his pulpit.