[On July 31, 1875, Andrew Johnson died. Johnson is one of our worst presidents, which means he also reminds me a lot of our current and very worst one. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy echoes of some of our worst presidents in Trump 2.0!]
On one
more obvious and one more subtle echo of Buchanan in 2025.
I imagine each
first paragraph this week will be a request to check out a prior post, and that’s
true today. Please take a look at this October
2022 post on Buchanan’s badness if you would, and then come on back for
more.
Welcome
back! I don’t actually believe (other than in my darkest, doomscrollingest
moments, anyway) that the U.S. is headed for a second Civil War here in 2025,
but that’s not because we don’t have the kinds of violent conflicts and divisions
that could produce (or, pace
Jeff Sharlet, are already producing) such an internal schism; I just don’t
think most of us have the stomach for actual warfare (a good thing, to be
clear). And in any case, I do believe that in such periods of heightened and
potentially violent internal conflict our leaders can either work to unite us
or lean way, way into the divisions; James Buchanan frustratingly and
tragically chose
the latter, and from his extremist first term to his Big Lie electoral conspiracies
to every part of his unfolding, even more extremist second term, Trump has done
so even more fully and destructively still.
The coming
Civil War wasn’t really the focus of that prior post of mine, though. Instead,
I made the case there, as I did throughout my recent podcast (in the post
I called it my next book, but it became the podcast instead), for resisting and
challenging narratives of historical inevitability, especially when it comes to
our worst histories. I’ve seen a lot of responses to Trump 2.0 along the lines
of “Stop saying ‘This isn’t who we are.’ This is who we’ve always been,” and I
understand and to a degree share that desire to push past naïve idealism and
recognize our foundational and enduring worst characteristics and histories. But
if we see our worst as simply inevitable, it becomes almost impossible to keep
on, much less to find our way to any hope and optimism. There will always be
presidents who embody our worst, from James Buchanan to Donald Trump. Which
makes it that much more important for all of us who believe in our best to
resist seeing them and their ilk as inevitable.
Next
baddie tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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