Beautiful Country Burn Again

Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution

Ben Fountain

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780062688750
• eBook ISBN: 9780062688767
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In a sweeping work of reportage set over the course of 2016, New York Times bestselling author Ben Fountain recounts a surreal year of politics and an exploration of the third American existential crisis

Twice before in its history, the United States has been faced with a crisis so severe it was forced to reinvent itself in order to survive: first, the struggle over slavery, culminating in the Civil War, and the second, the Great Depression, which led to President Roosevelt's New Deal and the establishment of America as a social-democratic state. In a sequence of essays that excavate the past while laying bare the political upheaval of 2016, Ben Fountain argues that the United States may be facing a third existential crisis, one that will require a "burning" of the old order as America attempts to remake itself.

Beautiful Country Burn Again narrates a shocking year in American politics, moving from the early days of the Iowa Caucus to the crystalizing moments of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and culminating in the aftershocks of the weeks following election night. Along the way, Fountain probes deeply into history, illuminating the forces and watershed moments of the past that mirror and precipitated the present, from the hollowed-out notion of the American Dream, to Richard Nixon's southern strategy, to our weaponized new conception of American exceptionalism, to the cult of celebrity that gave rise to Donald Trump.

In an urgent and deeply incisive voice, Ben Fountain has fused history and the present day to paint a startling portrait of the state of our nation.  Beautiful Country Burn Again is a searing indictment of how we came to this point, and where we may be headed.

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¹ Further to this, the comment of Gould’s contemporary Henry Adams: “Politics is the systematic organization of hatreds.”

² See “American Crossroads: Reagan, Trump, and the Devil Down South” and “A Familiar Spirit,” infra.

³ One looks long across the span of American history for the rare instance when it didn’t work.

⁴ “Happiness” in the eighteenth-century sense of prosperity, economic well-being.

⁵ See “The Long Good Deal,” infra, for reference to the riots, strikes, and armed insurrections of the era. Communism and fascism competed with liberal democracy for space in America’s political mainstream. See Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (Liveright Publishing, 2013), pp. 43–57.

¹ “The Trouble with Iowa: Corn, Corruption, and the Presidential Caucuses,” Harper’s, February 2016.

² In a few weeks, Nicholas Kristof will report in the New York Times that 32 percent of Iowa children show elevated levels of lead in their bodies, compared to 4.9 percent of children testing positive for elevated lead in Flint, Michigan. “America Is Flint,” the New York Times, February 7, 2016.

³ By Randall Rothenberg, Esquire, February 1982.

⁴ For more on the neoliberal transformation of the Democratic establishment, see “Hillary Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” infra.

⁵ Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley.

⁶ See “The Clintons and Their Banker Friends,” TomDispatch.com, May 7, 2015, http://tomdispatch.com/blog/175993/, and “Waking Up in Hillary Clinton’s America,” TomDispatch.com, October 27, 2016, http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176203/, both by Nomi Prins.

⁷ “Propinquity and excitement,” as my Southern aunts used to say. This is the primal impulse underlying the grand tradition of the debutante ball. Herd all those birds of a feather into one room, and let nature take its course.

⁸ Happily, there is a book on this heartening episode of ex-presidential life. See the charming Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure by Matthew Algeo (Chicago Review Press, 2009, 2011).

⁹ Laurence Tribe, “Under Ted Cruz’s Own Logic, He’s Ineligible for the White House,” Boston Globe, January 11, 2016.

¹⁰ Ashley Parker, “A Wife Committed to Cruz’s Ideals, but a Study in Contrasts to Him,” New York Times, October 13, 2013.

¹¹ Perhaps his most famous comment to date was this July 2013 characterization of undocumented immigrants: “For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another hundred out there who weigh 130 pounds, and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” Responding to HUD secretary Julián Castro’s comments on the Republican Party’s difficulty in attracting Hispanic voters, King tweeted in July 2015: “What does Julian Castro know? Does he know that I’m as Hispanic and Latino as he?” (King is not Hispanic.) Of Barack Obama’s candidacy for president, King remarked on March 7, 2008: “I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaeda, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11.” Obama’s decision to include his middle name “Hussein” when swearing the presidential oath of office was described by King as “bizarre” and “a double standard.” King has voiced support for racial profiling as “an important component of legitimate law enforcement.” Even though Iowa was a stalwart Union state during the Civil War, King sees fi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Prologue: The Third Reinvention
• Book of Days: January
• Iowa 2016: Riding the Roadkill Express
• Book of Days: February
• The Phony in American Politics
• Book of Days: March
• American Crossroads: Reagan, Trump, and the Devil Down South
• Book of Days: April
• American Exceptionalism and the Great Game: At Play in the Fields of the Lord
• Book of Days: May
• Doing the Chickenhawk with Trump: Talking Fast and Loose in the Time of Endless War
• Book of Days: June
• Cheerleaders of the Star-Spangled Apocalypse: Fear and Loathing with the NRA in Louisville, Kentucky
• Book of Days: July
• Cleveland Fear Factory
• Book of Days: August
• Hillary Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
• Book of Days: September
• Two American Dreams
• Book of Days: October
• The Long Good Deal
• Book of Days: November
• Trump Rising: King Donald Saddles Up with the Wrecking Crew
• Book of Days: December
• A Familiar Spirit
• Acknowledgments
• Credits
• Index
• About the Author
• Also by Ben Fountain
• Copyright
• About the Publisher