Got democracy? A book review by Greg Palast
As Hartmann warns, the end of democracy in America won’t roll in on tanks, it will come “packaged as entertainment.” He notes, chillingly, that, “It wasn’t just Trump, it was the system that fed him.” Trump’s beguiling fibs, his mayhem-making, his troops-in-the-street diktats are all spectacle to satisfy the desire for retribution of America’s working class wounded.
Trump is a symptom, notes Hartmann, not a cause, of what I’d call the New Hate. We don’t want to win arguments anymore. We want to hurt those who don’t share our politics. Trump revels in it.
“Democracy,” Hartmann concludes, “doesn’t announce its departure with trumpets. It slips away in silence, one institution at a time.” But we do have Hartmann’s bugle blast. Hopefully, it’s a wake-up reveille and not Taps for this fragile experiment called America.