The United States vs. Whatever This Is

De: Ken Schenck

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Concerned about what is happening in America, I did a sweep through the last 250 years of our history with a view to the present. What I found was that every era of American history is shouting to us, warning us that we are headed in the wrong direction.

The Founding Fathers insisted on a Bill of Rights, which is currently being thrown out the window. People are abducted without warrant or trial to concentration camps. The Founders protested autocracy, yet the current administration has shut down independent checks and balances. We have a rogue Supreme Court throwing century-long precedents in the garbage. The Congress is simply rubber stamping things it knows are horrible.

Freedom of press is slammed as the more objective channels are shut down. Meanwhile, the wall between church and state is increasingly torn down as one particular form of evangelical Christianity is given free reign -- a destruction of the freedom of religion for everyone else. Hard fought advances in civil rights are being thrown out as if white people are the ones who have it hard. There is talk of "all white communities" and even taking away the right for women to vote. These are voices we couldn't have imagined just months ago. In addition, the lessons of the Gilded Age and the Great Depression are ignored, preferring rather the horrible conditions of the late 1800s and 1930s.

In this book, I work backward from the present to the past, unfolding the history we have forgotten or never knew. To this point, we have been able to rely on a system that embodied the built-in insights of the past. But this administration is bulldozing everything, including the Rose Garden. It is unclear if it is too late to stop it. But if we still have time, we desperately need to reverse course now. This book is a plea to return to the Constitution and the United States of America rather than let "whatever this is" continue to destroy us.

Should be titled, “Why I hate Trump, and you should too.”

As an amateur historian, I recognize that history is complicated. Not only are there events, but there are also consequences, implications, and interpretations. Even with first person accounts there are different perspectives and biases. Historians have to deal with all this, as well as their own biases. Responsible historians acknowledge this, and where possible, they consider alternative interpretations to challenge their own. I have to believe that the author chose not embrace that approach in this work.

I largely agree with the author in that the level of knowledge exhibited by the average American on topics of history and civics is appalling. The implications associated with this lapse are frightening. The author notes, "You can't defend what you don't understand. You can't protect freedoms you don't know you have. You can't tell if someone is bending the rules if you don't know what the rules were in the first place." Amen to that. But is that truly what the author has in mind? The stated purpose of the book is to provide the reader the opportunity to accompany the author on sweep through 250 years of our American history in which the author provides correlations to current events. The author claims to have found that "every era of American history is shouting to us, warning us that we are headed in the wrong direction." While the author cites historical examples to support this thesis, it boils down to an explicit bias against President Trump. "This administration", claims the author, "is bulldozing everything”; A point that is revisited in the summation of each chapter. Other assertions are equally skewed, but less overt.

In discussing the Bill of Rights, for instance, the author covers the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eight amendments. Why would the author omit 40% of the Bill of Rights after criticizing the average American knowledge of constitutional rights? The second amendment of course, addresses the right to keep and bear arms. The third amendment indirectly applies to property rights, and the ninth amendment reserves unenumerated rights to the people of the United States rather than the federal government. One can speculate as to why the author omitted these facts, but with regard to the tenth amendment, which pertains to states rights, the author later claims more than once, "states' rights almost always means, let us do something awful."

In another example of bias, the author attributes the Trail of Tears to President Andrew Jackson and the Philippine-American War to President William McKinley. He also attributes withdrawing from the Paris Climate accord and the attack on Iran's nuclear facilities to President Donald Trump. These attributions are not necessarily inaccurate, but when considering the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, he generally attributes this shameful act to the people of the United States. The same is true of the turning away of Jewish refugees during World War II. The president and key driver in both of these instances was President Franklin Roosevelt. After avoiding this correlation, the author presents FDR in an extremely complimentary manner in connection with the New Deal. Incidentally, McKinley's vice-president was Theodore Roosevelt, who took over prosecution of the Philippine-American war upon McKinley's death in 1901. The author does not note this, nor does he mention that Teddy Roosevelt was steadfastly opposed to what he called, "hyphenated Americans", and he was a staunch proponent of assimilation - something to which the author appears to object to, while praising "diversity" and defending lax immigration policies. The author does, however, praise Teddy Roosevelt for being a progressive.

Clearly the author has no love for President Trump, but he also other Republican presidents criticizes other Republican presidents while praising Democrats like FDR, Clinton, Obama, and to some extent, Biden. The author criticizes Jackson and Trump for challenging the courts but fails to note that FDR actually threatened to "pack" the court in order to advance his signature legislation - something that many Democrats continue to support even today. Nor does the author consider that President Joe Biden went around the Supreme Court in violation of its decision to address student debt when loan forgiveness was found to be unconstitutional in 2023. Worse, the author condemns "originalism" and "constructionism" while soft peddling "judicial activism". In one of the most egregious misrepresentations in the book, the author claims that the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision was based on "originalism", rather than the gross judicial overreach that it was. Meanwhile, the author asserts that we currently "have a rogue Supreme Court throwing century-long precedents in the garbage."

The author has clearly done his research, displaying a fairly good knowledge of American history, but the presentation presents a biased representation. I would not recommend this book to anyone looking to inform their own opinion based on fair analysis.