Tomorrow evening (Tuesday, January 14), in the cult Washington D.C. Politics and Prose bookstore, Mark Leibovich, The New York Times Magazine’s chief national correspondent will be in conversation with Bob Garfield on the occasion of his new book The American Manifesto: Saving Democracy from Villains, Vandals, and Ourselves being published.
As Garfield demonstrates in this brisk, no-nonsense book, Trumpism has been fifty years in the making, the product of heightened individualism and the disintegration of mass media into partisan reporting—all overseen by Facebook and Google and fomented by technology’s proclivity for identity bubbles. None of this is cause for despair, however, and Garfield, cohost of WNYC’s Peabody Award-winning On the Media, follows his analysis with six clear, actionable steps we can take to counter divisiveness and pull our country back together. Garfield will be in conversation with Mark Leibovich, chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine.
Do you fear for our democracy? Are you perplexed by Trumpism? Are you ready to throw in the towel? Don’t This is your guidebook to reassembling our hyperpolarized American society in six (not-so-easy) steps, written by cohost of WNYC’s On the Media Bob Garfield.
As is often observed, Trump is a symptom of a virus that has been incubating for at least fifty years. But not often observed is where the virus is imbedded: in the psychic core of our identity. In American Manifesto: Saving Democracy from Villains, Vandals, and Ourselves, popular media personality Bob Garfield examines the tragic confluence of the American preoccupation with identity and the catastrophic disintegration of the mass media. Garfield investigates how we’ve gotten to this moment when our identity is threatened by both the left and the right, when e pluribus unum is no longer a source of national pride, and why, when looking through this lens of identity, the rise of Trumpism is no surprise. Overlaying this crisis is the rise of the Facebook-Google duopoly and the filter bubble of social media, where identity is insular and immutable.
But fear not WNYC’s On the Media cohost Garfield has ideas about how we may counter the forces of fragmentation–the manifesto itself: six steps to take to reassemble our fractured society. A quick, fascinating read, American Manifesto offers not only a vision of a country in extremis, but also a plan for how to address the ways in which our democracy is imperiled. Provocative, profound, and sometimes hilariously profane, American Manifesto is a call to action like no other.
Bob Garfield is the cohost of WNYC’s weekly Peabody Award-winning On the Media. Garfield has been a columnist/contributing editor for The Washington Post Magazine, The Guardian, and USA Today, as well as an author, lecturer, podcaster, and broadcast personality on ABC, CBS, CNBC, PBS, and NPR. He lives in suburban Washington, D.C. Learn more at www.bobgarfield.net.
