A View From Abroad, as Biden Stands Between the Survival of Global Democracy and the Rule of Law and Dictatorship
We countdown the last days of 2024 with a retrospective of programs throughout the past year, starting back in January and ending this month, moving through the major stories of the year as they evolved to the present. We begin today with a broadcast of Background Briefing from July 4, 2024 titled “A View From Abroad, as Biden Stands Between the Survival of Global Democracy and the Rule of Law and Dictatorship” when, on the day we celebrate the nation’s founding, we went to London to speak with Sarah Churchwell, a Professor of American literature and humanities at the School of Advanced Study of the University of London. She is the author of Behold America: The Entangled History of America First and the American Dream; her latest book is The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells. We discuss how much of the rest of the world sees American democracy hanging by a thread, with President Biden standing between the survival of global democracy and the rule of law and dictatorship. Meanwhile, Trump and a pantheon of fascist wannabes in France and across Europe and the world are at the gates of power, jutting out their chins like Mussolini with America’s Orange Duce leading the pack.
Beyond Biden, America Has a Problem With Gerontocracy
Then we go to a broadcast of Background Briefing from July 18, 2024 titled “Beyond Biden, America Has a Problem With Gerontocracy,” when we spoke with Samuel Moyn, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and Professor of History at Yale University. He has written several books in his fields of European intellectual history, human rights history, and law, including Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. His latest book is Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times. We discuss his article at The New York Times, “America’s Gerontocracy Problem Goes Far Beyond the President.”
How a Reality TV Star Living in His Own Reality Captured the GOP and up to Half of Americans Now Living in a Phony Reality
Then finally, we go to a broadcast of Background Briefing from August 14, 2024 titled “How a Reality TV Star Living in His Own Reality Captured the GOP and up to Half of Americans Now Living in a Phony Reality.” We began then with an analysis of how a reality TV star living in his own reality propagated an unreality that has captured one of our two political parties and has up to half of Americans living in a phony reality. Joining us to discuss how George Orwell’s 1984 could become the United States in 2025 is Steve Benen, the producer of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC and the author of The MaddowBlog. He has received two Emmy Awards and has been nominated for four more and is the author of The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics,a national bestseller. We discuss his latest book, Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.