Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy Hardcover – May 26, 2020

This book was well organized, relevant, well documented, and interesting—as one would expect from an author who is an articulate observer of political life. Here are some things that impressed one reader:Culture changes: “About 60 percent of Americans under age thirty-five live without a spouse or partner.” “…older Americans have been radicalized.” Fox is culpable, and the Sinclair Broadcast group with 193 stations in 100 markets reaches 40% of the TV market. “Facebook and YouTube are the most important conduits for alt-Right and pro-Trump disinformation.” The Trump campaign was the biggest advertiser on Facebook in the summer of 2019.Trump’s movement is “radically masculinist and misogynist.” The cultural change for less-educated white men follows because “professions have been thrown open to women,” and “the ancient domestic division of labor has been upended. Men and women are more likely than ever to live apart.”Trump won the election through the Electoral College, but not the popular vote. The author points out that “by 2040, 70 percent of the American population will live in fifteen states. Thirty percent of the population will live in thirty-five states.” That 30 percent will be disproportionately white, nonurban and older than fifty. This will influence the balance of power in the Senate, as well as the Electoral College. Republicans have artfully gerrymandered some districts, further influencing legislation. “In 2016, only seventy-two seats in the House were considered ‘competitive,’” with primaries often going to ideological extremes of the parties. The Supreme Court bowed out of interfering with gerrymandering.The two parties have different priorities, e.g. health care, higher education, the difference in population brought about by increased immigration, Social Security. “Former liberals and progressives have veered sharply leftward, especially on issues of race, gender, and immigration.” Some of these positions, like Medicare for illegal aliens, can offend large numbers of Americans who are not for Trump. Political correctness and rule by the “elite” are sore points for Trump supporters. Some people are for Trump simply because they resent the way he is demonized. Frum notes the Parties use issues to fund raise off one another!The author lists a series of suggestions to make politics fairer, with insightful explanations as to why they would help:Publish tax returns for all candidatesNuke the filibuster (Since the Republicans control more states/Senate seats, it is increasingly unlikely the Democrats could muster 60 percent for much of anything, and thus the metropolitan majority of voters will lose! Plus it is sadly easier for big donors to influence Senators from less populous states.)Statehood for the District of ColumbiaAdopt a Modern Voting Rights ActDeter GerrymanderingDepoliticize Law Enforcement (Department of Justice)“…the Republican brand has cratered among every group but rural voters, white evangelicals, and white Catholics.” “The Trump campaign plan for 2020 is all culture war, all the time.” Leave the country open to Russian interference, suppress minority, youth and poorer votes, and raise and spend dark campaign funds. “Lie without remorse. Always be polarizing. Speak only to your base. Never admit error. Grab every buck. Conceal every record.”Frum warns that democracy disappears not because people don’t like democracy, but “democracy disappears because people grow tired of unemployment and insecurity, and choose “to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat.” “He ends the book with a call against revenge. “You do not beat Trump until you have restored an America that has room for all its people. The resentments that produced Trump will not be assuaged by contempt for the resentful.”

I always look forward to a David Frum book in the same way I am always happy to see him post on Twitter. I appreciate that David Frum narrates this book. His voice and posts are eminently readable and are almost always in complete sentences.He knows MANY words. MANY.He uses MANY of them in this book.David Frum speaks plainly and clearly about how we begin to put our world back together again when there has grown a subset of people who believe there is no role in the future for them. They seem to delight in the destruction of our values and norms and enjoy the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Maybe they think then there will be space for them in the world: maybe they think they have carved out a role for hatred and bigotry?While Trumpocracy tried to warn us of the danger our democracy and values were in, Trumpocalypse tries to give us a vision for how to get out of the disaster.Frum details the way Trump failed the nation by golfing and holding rallies while the virus invaded us from every side. He shows us how:“We have to believe this shameful episode will end soon.”It surely must.

Author, David Frum, is hiding behind a mountain of data and stuff that’s already been said. There’s absolutely nothing new in this book, it’s just a collection of left wing media headlines that have been pounding the outlets for the last three years. Frum has gathered them all, organized them and made sure credit hopefully goes to the right source. Based on the endnotes section, the author didn’t write much at all...Frum apparently did write the introduction where he claims: “This book is dedicated to...those who share my background in conservative and Republican politics. We have both a special duty - and a special perspective. We owe more; and we also, I believe, are positioned to do more.” Wonderful sentiment, if everything else if the book didn’t speak against it; and I’m NOT talking about the regurgitated antics of DJT. This is not the time or place for a political debate only to shine a light on potential inequalities, IMO.“Trumpocalypse” is written in 2 sections. The first focuses on all the things Trump has already done, how & why they happened. I’m not going to take the time to list them - you’ve been hearing about them 24/7 for years🙉 In the second half of the book, Frum moves his focus to what can be done about all the issues? How do we restore democracy? There is much from others by way of proposing solutions. Many of the same looks at other countries and the same examples we’ve heard countless times before; nothing new, again.Altho’ the book is well written and professionally published, it’s nothing special. According to the author, the word apocalypse originally meant - an uncovering, revelation. It wasn’t an end but a beginning and justice would triumph over injustice. In terms of this book, I’m sorry to say, epic fail📚

I listened to David Frum on Sam Harris' podcast recently and found him very nuanced and open-minded. Given that Frum is a conservative it was really interesting to hear him give ideas for market-driven solutions to climate change, ideas about health care reform, tribalism in US politics and more. Just wish it was a bit longer but I enjoyed it.

Halftime report- just reaching part two: the book is a good fast read but it seems our Canadian Never Trump hero couldn't possibly prepare a manuscript for publishing and write fast enough to keep up with events. Covid 19 is retroactively incorporated but the latest fascistic moves by Trump are sprinting so far ahead it's hard to keep paper in the printer, but even so, Trump is so predictable that an analyst of Frum's expertise anticipates many of the events we now see, consistent and clear. Excellent quality Trump bashing.

David Frum offers rays of hope.

God I miss conservative voices like David Frum’sI first became familiar with David Frum as I was browsing through a list of Sam Harris’s podcasts where I found a conversation between him and Frum and decided to give it a listen. I knew he was a conservative and had heard him referenced before, but I really didn’t know much about him.I was instantly struck by the intelligence of the guy and the facility he displayed in formulating complex verbal constructions off-the-cuff; no wonder he was a speech writer for a president. And he managed to get his views across without denigrating those who may take opposing views, something increasingly rare in the popular conservative world these days. I got the sense that this was a guy who understood the motivations of the ‘other side’ and recognized the need to find common ground, even though he had a particular point of view. Frum’s mode of interchange stands in stark contrast with way too many contemporary conservative voices; as Stuart Stevens remarked in “It Was All a Lie”, conservative thought these days is defined by the few who speak the loudest and with the most outrageous views, like the sports fan that paints his face and runs shirtless around the field.From “keeps his shirt on”. I knew I wanted to read more from him.Happily, that David Frum is in full display in Trumpocalypse, which I’m on my second read-through. There’s a lot to unpack here, and even a liberal-minded fellow like myself can find lots of common ground with Frum. That isn’t to say he isn’t able to create some discomfort: for example, although he builds a pretty well reasoned argument around the need to throttle back immigration in favor of ensuring that there is enough to go around for natives of the US, it still gets a bit uncomfortable when he skirts into stating that excessive immigration threatens social cohesion (my paraphrase). But making me uncomfortable doesn’t make him wrong, it just means that I have some thinking to do, and it provides the basis for a conversation regarding what the ‘right’ and ‘best’ things to do are. Personally, I find this kind of view welcome in these heatedly polarized days, and it would be great not to spend so much time trying to get those with other views to calm the f*** down first before a reasoned conversation can be had.Trumpocalypse doesn’t spend too much time reviewing Trump’s actions and holding them up for criticism; Trump’s already proven guilty in Frum’s eyes, so don’t come here looking for material like that. He does spend a lot of time looking at various impacts of the Trump presidency (see the table of contents) which he contrasts with past administrations and alignments with US goals, showing how Trump is consistently working against many important US best interests. He often has prescriptions for what needs to be done in a post-Trump US, and in fact the number of policy ideas he comes up with makes you kind of wonder why he isn’t running for office.I really enjoyed the writing in this book; I groped for a while for a decent pithy description, and I’ve decided that I’m happy with characterizing it as ‘richly textured’. Each sentence from Frum advances his thesis in a way that requires the reader to understand a fair collection of ideas; the language isn’t flowery, but it isn’t simple either. There is a depth to it that I find I really appreciate, and that new rewards are brought out with repeated readings, as if there is such a density to it that I couldn’t really take it all in the first time through.There’s three things from the book that stand out in my mind:One is the connection that Frum makes between immigration and overall societal benefit, and why providing benefits for illegal aliens instead of making sure Americans are cared for first is such a big driver behind Trump’s ‘America First’ position. It may not be the case that this is the whole appeal, but it does give one something tangible to hang the otherwise inscrutable appeal that he provides for so many, and it does raise a good area for reaching compromise between broader humanitarianism and duty to one’s own countrymen. I found this to be a measured and reasonable discussion of the issues, and unless you’re politically inclined to condemn anything that deviates from a party position, it’s a good place to start to consider how to reach a reasonable compromise.Two is the observation that to reduce the attractiveness of a Trump-like candidate, you need to address the problems that makes a Trump-like candidate attractive. Frum often has solutions to some of the issue he highlights that should pretty progressive to my mind, which says to me that there’s hope for finding common ground between the parties if only the drive for power is overshadowed by a sense of duty to country.Third is the recognition of so many Republican-driven counter majoritarian efforts to remain in power. This is often the scariest stuff in the book, as it drives home the point that Republicans are willing to use any means necessary to ram their agenda though and remain in power, heedless as to what the majority of the country wants, thus truly undermining democracy. Without a charismatic conservative leader to lead Republicans closer to the center and base their actions on core principles, it doesn’t bode well for the health of our democracy.Overall I wasn’t disappointed with this book at all and got a lot out of it, and I think it will stand up to repeated readings over time.

The Author is no fan of Trump, but if only half is true, you can see why America is in such a mess.

"Better to light a candle than curse the darkness". David Frum lights a candle with Trumpocalypse, offering a point of view about how to respond to the current environment of divisiveness and tribal politics. Although you may not agree with all of Frum's recommended solutions, his well-articulated ideas help us all better understand the forces at play in our neighbour to the south.

Frum is a great writer. While this is less of an inside view of Trump’s unprecedented disaster of a presidency, and was published just ahead of the racial reckoning in the wake of George Floyd’s death, it doesn’t suffer for it. Frum’s insight and analysis is focused more on a path forward from Trump, which is inevitable. That a book about “restoring” democracy, has to be written at all, is reason enough to read it.

An amazing intelligent piece of writing about the worst and scariest President in US history! The author, A Republican , was a speech writer for George W Bush, This makes what he talks about all the more credible in my mind! He paints a very troubling scenario related to how Trump will refuse to go if he is defeated! I hope the US military has a good plan to remove Trump if necessary! An excellent logical read!