An American Tragedy

Pluralistic: Preparing for a post-Trump internet (03 Sep 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

I know, it's tempting to think of Trump as a cause, rather than an effect – as an aberration who dragged America into fascism. Trump is exceptional, but the thing that makes him exceptional isn't his corruption, recklessness or cruelty. What makes Trump exceptional is his ability to cajole, intimidate and flatter America's most corrupt, reckless and cruel people into a coalition.

Views of American politics, polarization and tone of political debate

In many ways, Americans’ emotions toward politics today are as negative as their evaluations of the country’s political system. Majorities say they always or often feel exhausted (65%) and angry…

Pluralistic: Making sense of Trump’s unscheduled sudden midair disassembly of the American empire (16 May 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

For generations, the American empire was the most powerful force on earth, and so we tended to assume that it was the most durable force on earth – surely anything so powerful must also be eternal?

American Ambition | Marc Cenedella, Author | Substack

“An informed patriotism is what we want. Are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? She is a shining city upon a hill.” - Ronald Reagan ~Largest Substack on the Right~. Click to read American Ambition, a Substack publication with millions of subscribers.

Grand Delusion

The Trumpist Intellectuals Wake Up

Pluralistic: Comrade Trump (20 Apr 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

There aren't a lot of things I agree with Mark Carney about, but there's one area where he and I are in total accord: the old, US-dominated, "rules-based international order" was total bullshit:

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

It’s not just a phase.

The Arc That Rarely Bends

On Revolutionary Optimism and Its Victims

Pluralistic: EU ready to cave to Trump on tech (04 Apr 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Crises precipitate change. That's no reason to induce a crisis, but you'd be a fool to let a crisis go to waste. Donald Trump is the greatest crisis of our young century, and the EU looks set to squander the opportunity, to its own terrible detriment.

Americans Have One Very Strange Cognitive Bias

Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love The People.

The Politics of Humiliation

The politics of humiliation has moved to the center of the reactionary project under Trump II.

Pluralistic: Post-political (09 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

There's plenty of reasons to be skeptical of centrists who bemoan "political polarization" and call for a politics that abandons the "tribalism of left and right."

Donald Trump: A Critical Theory-Perspective on Authoritarian Capitalism

This paper analyses economic power, state power and ideological power in the age of Donald Trump with the help of critical theory. It applies the critical theory approaches of thinkers such as Franz Neumann, Theodor W. Adorno and Erich Fromm. It analyses changes of US capitalism that have together with political anxiety and demagoguery brought about the rise of Donald Trump. This article draws attention to the importance of state theory for understanding Trump and the changes of politics that his rule may bring about. It is in this context important to see the complexity of the state, including the dynamic relationship between the state and the economy, the state and citizens, intra-state relations, inter-state relations, semiotic representations of and by the state, and ideology. Trumpism and its potential impacts are theorised along these dimensions. The ideology of Trump (Trumpology) has played an important role not just in his business and brand strategies, but also in his political rise. The (pseudo-)critical mainstream media have helped making Trump and Trumpology by providing platforms for populist spectacles that sell as news and attract audiences. By Trump making news in the media, the media make Trump. An empirical analysis of Trump’s rhetoric and the elimination discourses in his NBC show The Apprentice underpins the analysis of Trumpology. The combination of Trump’s actual power and Trump as spectacle, showman and brand makes his government’s concrete policies fairly unpredictable. An important question that arises is what social scientists’ role should be in the conjuncture that the world is experiencing.See also the related blog post "How The Frankfurt School Helps Us To Understand Donald Trump’s Twitter Populism"http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/christian-fuchs1/how-the-frankfurt-school-_b_14156190.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-donald-trumpThe German translation of this shorter piece was published in Der Falter 5/2017: 21-23.

Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Regime Change is exceptional. It transcends its genre...the book is packed with news that will stay news...This is reporting of consequence.” —David Remnick, The New Yorker “A flabbergasting feat of political reporting.” —Tina Brown “Riveting and richly textured...What the authors add is the vivid detail that makes these events feel actual. They wrest reality itself back from the distorted world of entertainment, illusion, fantasy, and denial that Trump has generated around himself. It is this flood of provocation, atrocity, self-dealing, and fabrication that makes Haberman and Swan’s counternarrative so vital.” —Fintan O’Toole, The New York Times A riveting, intimate, and revelatory account of the most radical and consequential presidency of our time.From the two reporters who have covered him more closely than perhaps anyone else over the past decade comes this definitive portrait of Donald Trump in the White House. Regime Change covers the first year of Trump’s second presidency—a term liberated from every constraint that defined his first. The generals who once told him “no” are gone, and the lawyers who remain have learned to pick their battles. His administration has flouted court orders and he has claimed powers that Congress once checked. What remains is a President willing to take enormous risks that have upended global markets and toppled heads of state; an imperial President operating almost entirely on instinct alone. Based on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented reporting from deep within the administration’s most closely guarded rooms, Regime Change takes the reader inside the Situation Room and into the secret Oval Office deliberations that have launched a new war in the Middle East and seen Trump seal the border, surge National Guard troops into cities, and send immigration agents into deadly clashes with protestors. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan bring us behind the scenes of a presidency that has transformed the culture, turned the Justice Department into an agent of retribution against the President’s enemies and the office itself into a brazen vehicle for profit. They reveal a second term propelled by a historical irony that Trump himself has come to understand: that the indictments, the convictions, the assassination attempts, and four years of exile made him not weaker but far more powerful, more vengeful, and more willing to gamble than any President in modern history. This is the story of how Trump has used that power, who has tried to stop him, and why nearly all of them have failed. It is also the story of something American journalists are more accustomed to chronicling in distant capitals than in their own: a President who has fundamentally altered the nature of the office he holds—and, with it, how the rest of the world understands American power. It is an account of Regime Change right here in America—a landmark real-time history of a modern presidency like no other.

Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences

POLITICS AFTER THE END OF THE END OF HISTORYWhat happens when politics is everywhere, yet nothing seems to change? From the abandoned dance floors of Thatcher’s London to the mass mobilizations of Black Lives Matter, Anton Jäger traces how pub­lic life has become infused with protest, spectacle, and moral urgency — while the old infrastructure of parties, unions, and civic solidarity has been hollowed out.Hyperpolitics revisits the illusions of the “end of history” and dissects the strange energies that replaced them: viral outrage, endless culture wars, and the digital rush of causes that flare and vanish overnight. Jäger shows how the promises of post–Cold War liberalism gave way to a restless, unsteady public sphere where private pas­sions overflow into politics but rarely build enduring power.Ranging from Guy Debord and Wolfgang Tillmans to Houellebecq’s disenchanted fictions, Hyperpolitics makes sense of a world in which collective action remains fragmented and the social fabric thinner than ever. For anyone trying to grasp why our age feels so charged yet so incon­sequential, this book offers a vital map through the new contradictions of our hyperpolitical moment.