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Quarterly Essay #95
High Noon: Trump, Harris and America on the Brink
Is the United States disintegrating?
Don Watson offers a report from America that catches the madness and the politics of an election like no other.
This is a deeply historically informed, characteristically mordant account of Donald Trump, Joe Biden and a divided country. Watson considers how things reached this pass, and what might lie ahead.
An essential essay about a crucial moment of choice.
Don Watson offers a report from America that catches the madness and the politics of an election like no other.
This is a deeply historically informed, characteristically mordant account of Donald Trump, Joe Biden and a divided country. Watson considers how things reached this pass, and what might lie ahead.
An essential essay about a crucial moment of choice.
121 pages, Paperback
Published September 2, 2024
23 people are currently reading
39 people want to read
About the author
Don Watson
69 books69 followersWatson grew up on a farm in Gippsland, took his undergraduate degree at La Trobe University and a Ph.D at Monash University and was for ten years an academic historian. He wrote three books on Australian history before turning his hand to TV and the stage. For several years he combined writing political satire for the actor Max Gillies with political speeches for the former Premier of Victoria, John Cain.
In 1992 he became Prime Minister Paul Keating's speech-writer and adviser and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart': Paul Keating Prime Minister, won both the The Age Book of the Year and non-fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year.
In addition to regular books, articles and essays, in recent years he has also written feature films, including The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis. His 2001 Quarterly Essay Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Death Sentence, his book about the decay of public language, was also a best seller and won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year. Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words was published in 2004 and continued to encourage readers to renounce what he perceives to be meaningless corporate and government jargon that is spreading throughout Australia and embrace meaningful, precise language. More recently Watson contributed the preface to a selection of Mark Twain's writings, The Wayward Tourist.
His latest book, American Journeys is a narrative of modern America from Watson's travels in the United States following Hurricane Katrina. It was published by Knopf in 2008 and won both the The Age Book of the Year non-fiction and Book of the Year awards.[4]. It also won the 2008 Walkley Award for the best non-fiction book.
In 1992 he became Prime Minister Paul Keating's speech-writer and adviser and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart': Paul Keating Prime Minister, won both the The Age Book of the Year and non-fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year.
In addition to regular books, articles and essays, in recent years he has also written feature films, including The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis. His 2001 Quarterly Essay Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Death Sentence, his book about the decay of public language, was also a best seller and won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year. Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words was published in 2004 and continued to encourage readers to renounce what he perceives to be meaningless corporate and government jargon that is spreading throughout Australia and embrace meaningful, precise language. More recently Watson contributed the preface to a selection of Mark Twain's writings, The Wayward Tourist.
His latest book, American Journeys is a narrative of modern America from Watson's travels in the United States following Hurricane Katrina. It was published by Knopf in 2008 and won both the The Age Book of the Year non-fiction and Book of the Year awards.[4]. It also won the 2008 Walkley Award for the best non-fiction book.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
December 30, 2024
I read Don Watson’s excellent essay just before the results of the US election was known. He presented a compelling historical perspective about the state of US society, structural economics and how politics is carried out. The 2024 election is presented with an ageing, yet competent President Biden and the character and political behaviour of a disruptive Donald Trump, followed by the entry of Kamala Harris into the race.
Watson sketches Trump in the context of America’s willingness to embrace a political maverick and high levels of dissatisfaction with contemporary politics.
He outlines Trump’s hyper-partisanship and his call for action around some of the most divisive aspects of US society.
It’s is excellent analysis.
Following the result of the US election the essay has stood up well and has helped provide a useful basis for digesting this historically unusual result.
A note on my book reviews in 2024.
This year, I’ve found it especially difficult to read books that require deep focus. My attention has largely been consumed by the ongoing injustice of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli invasion of Gaza following the events of October 2023. As a result, I’ve been immersing myself in news reports, YouTube videos, commentary, podcasts, and background information - sometimes with an unsurprising emotional toll.
These current events have been so absorbing that they’ve made book reading feel less accessible. I do enjoy reading the reviews of others here on Goodreads and wish I were reading more myself. However, this moment in history feels so pivotal that I find myself drawn to focus my intellectual attention on understanding the consequences of these two horrific conflicts, along with other consequential global events unfolding.
That said, I look forward to the day when I can return to my usual reading routine. But for now, this is where my mind and heart are.
Watson sketches Trump in the context of America’s willingness to embrace a political maverick and high levels of dissatisfaction with contemporary politics.
He outlines Trump’s hyper-partisanship and his call for action around some of the most divisive aspects of US society.
It’s is excellent analysis.
Following the result of the US election the essay has stood up well and has helped provide a useful basis for digesting this historically unusual result.
A note on my book reviews in 2024.
This year, I’ve found it especially difficult to read books that require deep focus. My attention has largely been consumed by the ongoing injustice of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli invasion of Gaza following the events of October 2023. As a result, I’ve been immersing myself in news reports, YouTube videos, commentary, podcasts, and background information - sometimes with an unsurprising emotional toll.
These current events have been so absorbing that they’ve made book reading feel less accessible. I do enjoy reading the reviews of others here on Goodreads and wish I were reading more myself. However, this moment in history feels so pivotal that I find myself drawn to focus my intellectual attention on understanding the consequences of these two horrific conflicts, along with other consequential global events unfolding.
That said, I look forward to the day when I can return to my usual reading routine. But for now, this is where my mind and heart are.
October 9, 2024
My first and most profane encounter with Don Watson was when I read Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM. It stands on the shelf with a few other great political biographies. I have often read his journal articles, listened to him on his visits to Late Night Live, and I have seen him at writer’s festivals and other symposiums. I once said to him, when he was signing a book, “Please keep writing.” His reply was, “I will, I need to put food on the table.” I realised that writers write for the love of it but also as a means of income.
His partner is Chloe Hooper, I have read four of her five books, the most recent was Bedtime Story, in which she wrote about Watson’s cancer treatment.
Don Watson writes in the George Orwell tradition, clarity, conciseness and forcefulness are the key components of his literary style. Watson uses unpretentious language, and he is clear and logical. He builds his arguments with logical precision. Throughout the essay there is a smattering of satire and humour.
Over the last decade no other human has been the centre of such media attention as Donald Trump. I remember reading mentions of him in Newsweek magazine in the 1980s. I remember that he and his wife at the time, Ivana (with the sculptured hair) were part of the New York ostentatious crowd, the greed is good sect. I have vague memories of his involvement in the reality television show ‘The Apprentice.’
I read Mary L Trump’s account of her uncle. This book endorsed all the terms used about Trump, like, narcissistic, incompetent, arrogant, misogynistic, racist, ignorant, egotistical. I had hoped that after his defeat in 2020 he would disappear into the never-never world of has been celebrities. Sadly, that has not happened and now we are faced with the possibility of him being president again, and so dominating the airwaves, the social media waves and the print media.
In some macabre way it might be good to see him elected and let Americans suffer the consequences of him in power. The rich would certainly benefit.
To me it is the Trump acolytes who are of more interest than Trump himself. It baffles me that so many white working class identify with him and see in him a savior. Watson argues that this messianic support is based on their hatred of liberals, blacks, migrants, the sexually different. Their belief that they are ‘losing’ and that Trump will put them back in their rightful place in society. The idea of nativism is part of this fear of others who will usurp them. These new people are challenging their world view and they don’t like it. Trump fascism makes the weak feel strong.
For Trump this is all theatre. He lies and lies, his speeches are a rambling collection of lies, boasts, exaggerations, and childish drivel He knows he will cast doubt in people’s minds. He has no empathy for the core of Republicans (white evangelical Christians, the white poor, anti-abortionists, anti-immigrationists, poorly educated, misogynistic men), the only group who will vote for him that he identifies with his the ultra-rich friends, Elon Musk, Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment and many Silicon Valley’s right wing entrepeneurs.
If Trump wins how much of Project 2025 will be implemented? Will Trump use the military against the subsequent demonstrations? IF Harris wins will Trumps accept the result?
At the end watson asks why are we all watching, we can switch it off. Maybe we keeping watching because the ending will be fascinating.
His partner is Chloe Hooper, I have read four of her five books, the most recent was Bedtime Story, in which she wrote about Watson’s cancer treatment.
Don Watson writes in the George Orwell tradition, clarity, conciseness and forcefulness are the key components of his literary style. Watson uses unpretentious language, and he is clear and logical. He builds his arguments with logical precision. Throughout the essay there is a smattering of satire and humour.
Over the last decade no other human has been the centre of such media attention as Donald Trump. I remember reading mentions of him in Newsweek magazine in the 1980s. I remember that he and his wife at the time, Ivana (with the sculptured hair) were part of the New York ostentatious crowd, the greed is good sect. I have vague memories of his involvement in the reality television show ‘The Apprentice.’
I read Mary L Trump’s account of her uncle. This book endorsed all the terms used about Trump, like, narcissistic, incompetent, arrogant, misogynistic, racist, ignorant, egotistical. I had hoped that after his defeat in 2020 he would disappear into the never-never world of has been celebrities. Sadly, that has not happened and now we are faced with the possibility of him being president again, and so dominating the airwaves, the social media waves and the print media.
In some macabre way it might be good to see him elected and let Americans suffer the consequences of him in power. The rich would certainly benefit.
To me it is the Trump acolytes who are of more interest than Trump himself. It baffles me that so many white working class identify with him and see in him a savior. Watson argues that this messianic support is based on their hatred of liberals, blacks, migrants, the sexually different. Their belief that they are ‘losing’ and that Trump will put them back in their rightful place in society. The idea of nativism is part of this fear of others who will usurp them. These new people are challenging their world view and they don’t like it. Trump fascism makes the weak feel strong.
For Trump this is all theatre. He lies and lies, his speeches are a rambling collection of lies, boasts, exaggerations, and childish drivel He knows he will cast doubt in people’s minds. He has no empathy for the core of Republicans (white evangelical Christians, the white poor, anti-abortionists, anti-immigrationists, poorly educated, misogynistic men), the only group who will vote for him that he identifies with his the ultra-rich friends, Elon Musk, Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment and many Silicon Valley’s right wing entrepeneurs.
If Trump wins how much of Project 2025 will be implemented? Will Trump use the military against the subsequent demonstrations? IF Harris wins will Trumps accept the result?
At the end watson asks why are we all watching, we can switch it off. Maybe we keeping watching because the ending will be fascinating.
September 23, 2024
The disquiet and incredulity that many of us around the world are feeling watching the US presidential election is eloquently captured in this essay by Australian author, screenwriter and former political adviser, Don Watson.
Unlike many other writers, Watson has no qualms about using the ‘f’ word (as in ‘fascist’) in referring to the odious Donald Trump and the weird and ugly coalition of white nationalists, Christian fundamentalists, tech billionaires and admirers of authoritarians like Putin and Orban for whom he is the useful idiot.
But Watson also wisely counsels the Democrats about the blind-alley that is ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ - a tendency to spend too much time and energy responding to the creep’s deliberate provocations.
As a social democrat himself and long-term speech-writer to Australian PM Paul Keating, Watson is a fan of Bernie Sanders, the octogenarian self-described ‘democratic socialist’ who offered the best chance of beating Trump in 2016.
Sanders taps into the same resentments among working class Americans about the failures of neoliberalism and globalisation that Trump has divined these past eight years, but he does so without pointing the finger at the already powerless.
Like Trump, Sanders gets the feelings of the masses right. Unlike Trump, he knows who the bad guys are in all of this and he knows the right policy response - fix the injustices and obscene distortions that have led to the most dramatic transfer of wealth and power from the working and middle classes to the already wealthy that the world has ever seen.
Most of all, Watson writes, Sanders does not fall into the trap of fellow Democrats in spending all of his time responding to and rebutting Trump’s latest outrages, smears, lies and distortions - which are deliberately calculated to keep the latter at the centre of public attention and dominate the news cycle.
“(Trump’s) lies are so frequent, his behaviour so obnoxious and his positions so offensive, he demands rebuttal every day, “ Watson writes. “But by incessantly belting away at Trump, the Democrats run the risk of forfeiting a story of their own. “
That, more than anything, is the mistake that Democrats - even under the generational change of Harris/Walz - risk making. This is the Bannon ‘flood the zone with shit’ strategy (as modelled by Putin) that aims to so poison the public arena that people switch off and become terminally cynical about the possibility of positive change.
In contrast, the wily and pugnacious Sanders shows that the best strategy for the Democrats should be emphasising material security and well-being, restoring a sense of agency and hope among working people and disavowing the failed Third Way neoliberalism that the centre left sold out to in the 1990s, while rarely giving Trump more than a single contemptuous sentence.
“Once the Democrats allow themselves to be defined by their opposition to Trump, the fight is as good as lost,” Watson concludes.
Essential reading.
Unlike many other writers, Watson has no qualms about using the ‘f’ word (as in ‘fascist’) in referring to the odious Donald Trump and the weird and ugly coalition of white nationalists, Christian fundamentalists, tech billionaires and admirers of authoritarians like Putin and Orban for whom he is the useful idiot.
But Watson also wisely counsels the Democrats about the blind-alley that is ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ - a tendency to spend too much time and energy responding to the creep’s deliberate provocations.
As a social democrat himself and long-term speech-writer to Australian PM Paul Keating, Watson is a fan of Bernie Sanders, the octogenarian self-described ‘democratic socialist’ who offered the best chance of beating Trump in 2016.
Sanders taps into the same resentments among working class Americans about the failures of neoliberalism and globalisation that Trump has divined these past eight years, but he does so without pointing the finger at the already powerless.
Like Trump, Sanders gets the feelings of the masses right. Unlike Trump, he knows who the bad guys are in all of this and he knows the right policy response - fix the injustices and obscene distortions that have led to the most dramatic transfer of wealth and power from the working and middle classes to the already wealthy that the world has ever seen.
Most of all, Watson writes, Sanders does not fall into the trap of fellow Democrats in spending all of his time responding to and rebutting Trump’s latest outrages, smears, lies and distortions - which are deliberately calculated to keep the latter at the centre of public attention and dominate the news cycle.
“(Trump’s) lies are so frequent, his behaviour so obnoxious and his positions so offensive, he demands rebuttal every day, “ Watson writes. “But by incessantly belting away at Trump, the Democrats run the risk of forfeiting a story of their own. “
That, more than anything, is the mistake that Democrats - even under the generational change of Harris/Walz - risk making. This is the Bannon ‘flood the zone with shit’ strategy (as modelled by Putin) that aims to so poison the public arena that people switch off and become terminally cynical about the possibility of positive change.
In contrast, the wily and pugnacious Sanders shows that the best strategy for the Democrats should be emphasising material security and well-being, restoring a sense of agency and hope among working people and disavowing the failed Third Way neoliberalism that the centre left sold out to in the 1990s, while rarely giving Trump more than a single contemptuous sentence.
“Once the Democrats allow themselves to be defined by their opposition to Trump, the fight is as good as lost,” Watson concludes.
Essential reading.
September 22, 2024
Don Watson writes one of the most lyrical and reflective Quarterly's in a long while. Here is a text that reflects on the cult of celebrity and how it flows into politics, and in doing so, how they both changed America to the state it is in now. Ford, Regan, Trump - these figures of power and pomp are assessed at length while Watson travels Detroit and Kalamazoo in ubers and taxis, and in doing so he witnesses a collapsed state of being brought on by the plentiful falsities that have been spewed forth by these right leaning leaders.
But Biden and Harris don't get through without a series of questions about how they will change America. Where is their plan for Detroit? Where is their vision for dealing with the gun crisis and the tangential opioid crisis? Where is their plan for tackling the rise of Trumpisms outside of calling him 'weird'?
Watson ties these questions together with his powerful expose of modern America, a nation that's stumbling forward in the midst of a tense election campaign. He reflects on the golden age of cinema and how it presented an America of hope, freedom, and faith.
A Quarterly Essay should not be this good. It should not be this emotive, but it is.
This is one of the best in the bunch.
But Biden and Harris don't get through without a series of questions about how they will change America. Where is their plan for Detroit? Where is their vision for dealing with the gun crisis and the tangential opioid crisis? Where is their plan for tackling the rise of Trumpisms outside of calling him 'weird'?
Watson ties these questions together with his powerful expose of modern America, a nation that's stumbling forward in the midst of a tense election campaign. He reflects on the golden age of cinema and how it presented an America of hope, freedom, and faith.
A Quarterly Essay should not be this good. It should not be this emotive, but it is.
This is one of the best in the bunch.
January 24, 2026
I started to read this essay when it was published before the US election in 2024. Even though we know the ending now, and possibly because because we know the ending, Don Watson's observations, fabulous ability to write well reasoned and well structured thoughts, make this an important observation of why the USA is where it is.
December 19, 2024
Considering I have read this with the results known - it is incredible to read how stupid people can be. It is a wonderfully vivid tale of a land that prides itself on democracy and 'being better' yet can elect a man who has broken so many fundamental rules of decency. Watson is eloquent and bemused in his recount. One of the best essays of 2024. It is just a shame it is in such horrific circumstances.
October 20, 2024
Sorry, I didn't get much from this essay. I suspect there was a well-developed argument planned, or maybe already written. This arrangement probably had to be abandoned when Trump's assassination attempt and the change in democratic candidate suddenly happened within about a week of each other. Instead this essay was just descriptive of the current state of affairs, with a heavy bias against Trump; a point of view I both agree with and also found useless to read about. Kamala Harris was only mentioned in any detail in the final ten or so pages. Even with a short time frame for a re-write before publishing, I think the analysis could have come sooner and in more detail. Instead it felt like a recipe blog with long descriptions of American settings (bars, tornadoes) preambling any mention of politics.
October 26, 2024
Don Watson is an author of several books on the social condition and politics. After travelling around the USA for several months talking to people on all sides of politics, he offers a report from America that catches the madness and the politics of an election like no other. This is a deeply historically informed, characteristically mordant account of Donald Trump, Joe Biden and a divided country. Watson considers how things reached this pass, and what might lie ahead. He looks on in amazement that a country "that never stops calling itself the world's greatest democracy" yet half the population "is cheering on a man with contempt for the law and unashamed autocratic ambitions."
It is like they are watching a wrestling match and when you tell the 'fans that what they're watching is all a lie: see who looks silly. Prove it's a fake and you'll look even sillier.' Starting by looking at popular culture, Mr Watson sums it up thus: "Between them, (Raymond) Chandler, (Dorothy B.) Hughes, Dashiell Hammett and a few dozen other writers and filmmakers came up with the whole waxworks of bad actors: chancers, confidence men, hitmen, crooked cops, corrupt politicians and public officials, expropriators, sleeze merchants, mobsters, perverts,pretty boys, pimps, prostitutes,pornographers,parasites, gun molls, tramps, temptresses, cokeheads, debauchees, desperadoes, hucksters, grifters, lowlifes, thieves, suckers. Take a half dozen of them and massage them into a decent suit and you have something like Donald Trump. The quest is to find a Philip Marlow to bring him down." One chapter deals with Detroit, where he points out that for several decades in the 20th century, Detroit was one of the largest cities in the USA with huge factories churning out millions of vehicles, alongside a progressive union movement that negotiated health care, pension programs, shorter work weeks, more paid holidays and everyone prospered. The state had a progressive governor - a Republican George Romney (father of Mitt) who espoused racial integration and social justice. Mr Watson later points out that they don't make Republicans like George Romney anymore and if they did he'd be an outcast, just like his son Mitt. This was a powerful essay on the state of US politics by an interested outside observer. I wish many of my US relatives and friends who've swallowed the Koolaid could read this book.
It is like they are watching a wrestling match and when you tell the 'fans that what they're watching is all a lie: see who looks silly. Prove it's a fake and you'll look even sillier.' Starting by looking at popular culture, Mr Watson sums it up thus: "Between them, (Raymond) Chandler, (Dorothy B.) Hughes, Dashiell Hammett and a few dozen other writers and filmmakers came up with the whole waxworks of bad actors: chancers, confidence men, hitmen, crooked cops, corrupt politicians and public officials, expropriators, sleeze merchants, mobsters, perverts,pretty boys, pimps, prostitutes,pornographers,parasites, gun molls, tramps, temptresses, cokeheads, debauchees, desperadoes, hucksters, grifters, lowlifes, thieves, suckers. Take a half dozen of them and massage them into a decent suit and you have something like Donald Trump. The quest is to find a Philip Marlow to bring him down." One chapter deals with Detroit, where he points out that for several decades in the 20th century, Detroit was one of the largest cities in the USA with huge factories churning out millions of vehicles, alongside a progressive union movement that negotiated health care, pension programs, shorter work weeks, more paid holidays and everyone prospered. The state had a progressive governor - a Republican George Romney (father of Mitt) who espoused racial integration and social justice. Mr Watson later points out that they don't make Republicans like George Romney anymore and if they did he'd be an outcast, just like his son Mitt. This was a powerful essay on the state of US politics by an interested outside observer. I wish many of my US relatives and friends who've swallowed the Koolaid could read this book.
October 2, 2024
High Noon indeed!
Don Watson gets it … well, at least he certainly gets me. I genuinely believe he is one of the best writers on current affairs – certainly from my generation.
Watson’s latest contribution to the Quarterly Essay is, in broad strokes, a commentary on the showdown between Trump and Harris (Biden when he was writing the book), but it’s so much more.
You can only do so much in an ‘Essay’ but Watson takes a deep dive into America’s decline in cities like Detroit which in turn has led to many of the grievances that Trump now rabbits on about.
One of the best paragraphs from the book is undoubtedly : “Trump had established a fanbase of millions of American voters who were excited by a man so willing to kick the racist can”.
The Essay’s title is clearly apt : High Noon. Don’t think for a moment that the November election is just America’s business.
Don Watson gets it … well, at least he certainly gets me. I genuinely believe he is one of the best writers on current affairs – certainly from my generation.
Watson’s latest contribution to the Quarterly Essay is, in broad strokes, a commentary on the showdown between Trump and Harris (Biden when he was writing the book), but it’s so much more.
You can only do so much in an ‘Essay’ but Watson takes a deep dive into America’s decline in cities like Detroit which in turn has led to many of the grievances that Trump now rabbits on about.
One of the best paragraphs from the book is undoubtedly : “Trump had established a fanbase of millions of American voters who were excited by a man so willing to kick the racist can”.
The Essay’s title is clearly apt : High Noon. Don’t think for a moment that the November election is just America’s business.
October 5, 2024
On the last page Don Watson asks, “You have your own life to lead. Why let yourself be lured into theirs? They're writing the script, and they'll decide the ending. We don't have to watch. There's always the off button on the remote.” The trouble is, the USA is still the most powerful nation on earth and Australia is tightly tied to it. We could watch its absolutely insanity from our distance, but we have US military on our continent. I have seen no better explanation of Albanese’s conversion from Friend of Palestine to Apologist for Israeli Genocide than the military connection between Australia and the USA. Policy positions in Australia are affected by our relationship with America, so it matters to us that American is a nation “on the brink”.
Well, I guess we wait and see who will win in November.
Well, I guess we wait and see who will win in November.
October 24, 2024
Okay, admittedly: this took me about a month to finish. Reading three pages of an essay at a time on the tram to work is definitely not conducive to full engagement.
However, I really didn't feel like Watson said much of anything interesting. No doubt the argument he was building up to had to be Frankensteined into something new by Harris taking over from Biden, and by the whole Trump assassination attempt thing. But as it stands -- this didn't really teach me anything new about the state of American politics. It didn't offer me the "a-ha moment" I come to crave from QE's.
Still worth a read for anyone particularly deep in US election discourses. However, for most people, I imagine there's far more interesting and educational texts out there of a similar length and readability.
However, I really didn't feel like Watson said much of anything interesting. No doubt the argument he was building up to had to be Frankensteined into something new by Harris taking over from Biden, and by the whole Trump assassination attempt thing. But as it stands -- this didn't really teach me anything new about the state of American politics. It didn't offer me the "a-ha moment" I come to crave from QE's.
Still worth a read for anyone particularly deep in US election discourses. However, for most people, I imagine there's far more interesting and educational texts out there of a similar length and readability.
December 11, 2024
Insightful and charming episode structure that highlights the diversity of American political thought. However, the Essay tends to describe its characters without deeper analysis of their voting intentions. Simply put, the Essay does little to answer where and how Trump / Harris (especially Trump, noting how his 2016 triumph was a political upset) are mobilising the electorate which would have been an arguably more enticing premise than pure description of the United State’s sociopolitical landscape.
October 5, 2025
Well this was a depressing read. :(
Don't have much to say - this was written before the 2024 US election concluded, so a lot of it is out of date, in as much that we know who won, and what Trump has done to an already weakened American democracy since winning. The writing in of itself is excellent, though maybe a bit too eloquent. What I mean is, for a non-fiction work, sometimes I wish the author would tone down the 'flower language' a bit and get back to brass tacks, but that's really a minor gripe. Overall, solid, and sorrowful, work.
Don't have much to say - this was written before the 2024 US election concluded, so a lot of it is out of date, in as much that we know who won, and what Trump has done to an already weakened American democracy since winning. The writing in of itself is excellent, though maybe a bit too eloquent. What I mean is, for a non-fiction work, sometimes I wish the author would tone down the 'flower language' a bit and get back to brass tacks, but that's really a minor gripe. Overall, solid, and sorrowful, work.
October 31, 2024
(3.5 really)
Could there possibly be anything left to say about Trump? Probably not, at this stage of the game although events continue to highlight some of the points that he makes in this essay, most of which have been also made by other people.
Read my complete review here:
https://residentjudge.com/2024/10/31/...
Could there possibly be anything left to say about Trump? Probably not, at this stage of the game although events continue to highlight some of the points that he makes in this essay, most of which have been also made by other people.
Read my complete review here:
https://residentjudge.com/2024/10/31/...
September 28, 2024
Done with Don Watson's usual aplomb. A well-written discussion of the cultural crises facing the US in an election year. Definitely worth reading as it gives a more personal look at people's views as the nation faces a potential downward slide into chaos. There but for the grace of our electoral system go I!
September 21, 2024
From the pen that wrote the best ever biography of a PM, “Recollections of a Bleeding Heart”, Don Watson gives us the bystander’s view on what passes in American for democratic change. Witty, incisive, insightful and just plain interesting. A triumph, but not for America.
October 15, 2024
While I personally cannot stand U.S. politics and find the amount of attention it gets from Australian media and electorate disconcerting, it is very hard to pass up a book from Don Watson. Interesting read.
January 29, 2025
A very well researched essay by one of Australia's best political writers, Don Watson. A frightening insight into what America can expect once Donald Trump has "Made America Great Again"! A must read for anyone interested in American politics or world affairs.
September 29, 2024
Nothing new, failed to explain why Trump has a following other than blaming social media. Doesn’t address in enough detail, there’s a bit towards the end, the debt situation under the Democrats.
October 9, 2024
Well, yeah. But what is your point?
October 19, 2024
A very interesting and thought provoking book. The psychology around the speeches is fascinating.
November 24, 2024
Very thoughtful snapshot of the US in the lead up to that election. I'm still mystified.....
Some very cheeky jabs :)
Some very cheeky jabs :)
January 13, 2025
High Noon
Thank you Don Watson, a riveting read.
Too bad the result has now been proved to be such an overwhelming win for Trump.
Thank you Don Watson, a riveting read.
Too bad the result has now been proved to be such an overwhelming win for Trump.
February 3, 2025
Interesting, fruitless.
![Profile Image for Kate [catching up].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1748423704i%2F51087392._UX200_CR0%2C0%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
February 27, 2025
This took me about a month to finish. It’s an interesting analysis, especially post-election. I didn’t experience any “a-ha” moments, but it’s a well-researched and engaging essay nonetheless.
July 9, 2025
This was a fantastic essay that analysed some of the key areas of the recent US Presidential election well beyond what other news coverage and opinion pieces I had read - 4 stars!
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