Chapter 28 · Reading ledger

Notes on
American Carnage

43 citations, collected away from the main text for uninterrupted reading.

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Section 28.01

I. Introduction

Scott Bauer, Todd Richmond, Christina A. Cassidy, Marc Levy, and Ali Swenson, “Trump’s Drumbeat of Lies About the 2020 Election Keeps Getting Louder. Here Are the Facts,” Associated Press , December XX, 2021, updated August 27, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/trump-2020-election-lies-debunked-4fc26546b07962fdbf9d66e739fbb50d; Hope Yen, “AP Fact Check: Yes, Trump Lost Election Despite What He Says,” Associated Press , May 6, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-michael-pence-electoral-college-elections-health-2d9bd47a8bd3561682ac46c6b3873a10; Sarah Longwell, “Trump Supporters Explain Why They Believe the Big Lie,” The Atlantic, April 18, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/trump-voters-big-lie-stolen-election/629572/; Gary C. Jacobson, “Donald Trump’s Big Lie and the Future of the Republican Party,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 51, no. 2 (June 2021): 273–289; Philip Moniz and William B. Swann, “The Power of Trump’s Big Lie: Identity Fusion, Internalizing Misinformation, and Support for Trump,” PS: Political Science and Politics 58, no. 3 (2025): 363–368; Kevin Arceneaux and Rory Truex, “Donald Trump and the Lie,” Perspectives on Politics 21, no. 3 (2023): 863–879.[]

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Calvin Woodward, “AP Fact Check: Trump’s Team Glosses over His Jan. 6 Tirade,” Associated Press, February 12, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-donald-trump-capitol-siege-violence-elections-507f4febbadecb84e1637e 55999ac0ea.[]

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Peter Hermann, “‘We Got to Hold This Door’: How Battered D.C. Police Made a Stand Against the Capitol Mob,” Washington Post , January 14, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/14/dc-police-capitol-riot/.[]

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Luke Broadwater and Nicholas Fandos, “‘A Hit Man Sent Them’: Police at the Capitol Recount the Horrors of Jan. 6 as the Inquiry Begins,” New York Times, July 27, 2021, updated August 26, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/us/jan-6-inquiry.html.[]

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William Faulker, Requiem for a Nun (New York: Random House, 1954), 73.[]

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Section 28.02

II. September 11 and the War on Terror

Dexter Filkins, The Forever War ( New York: Vintage Books, 2009).[]

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See, for instance, Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11(New York: Knopf, 2006).[]

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Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane, “Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds,” Washington Post , September 5, 2003, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/09/06/hussein-link-to-911-lingers-in-many-minds/7cd31079-21d1-42cf-8651-b67e93350fde/. The Bush administration began pushing for a “preemptive” war in the fall of 2002. The administration alleged that Hussein was trying to acquire uranium and that it had aluminum tubes used for nuclear centrifuges. Public opinion was divided. George W. Bush said in October, “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” See Thomas R. Mockaitis, The Iraq War: A Documentary and Reference Guide (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2012), 26.[]

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Judy Keen, “Bush to Troops: Mission Accomplished,” USA Today, June 5, 2003.[]

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Section 28.03

III. The End of the Bush Years

“LGBTQ+ Rights,” polling data, Gallup , https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx.[]

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Bruce Nolan, “Katrina: The Storm We’ve Always Feared,” New Orleans Times-Picayune , August 30, 2005.[]

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Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (New York: HarperCollins, 2006).[]

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Section 28.04

IV. The Great Recession

On the Great Recession, see Joseph Stiglitz, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy(New York: Norton, 2010); and Michael Lewis,The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (New York: Norton: 2010).[]

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Harold Meyerson, “Corporate America’s Chokehold on Wages,” Washington Post, July 19, 2011.[]

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Section 28.05

V. The Obama Years

Thomas J. Sugrue,Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).[]

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Kate Zernike and Megan Thee-Brenan, “Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated,” New York Times , April 14, 2010; Jill Lepore, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).[]

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Section 28.06

VI. Stagnation

Kerry Close, “The 1% Pocketed 85% of Post-Recession Income Growth,” Time , June 16, 2016, http://time.com/money/4371332/income-inequality-recession/. See also Justin Wolfers, “The Gains from the Economic Recovery Are Still Limited to the Top One Percent,” New York Times , January 27, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/upshot/gains-from-economic-recovery-still-limited-to-top-one-percent.html.[]

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Julia Queen and Christian Hilland, “2008 Presidential Campaign Financial Activity Summarized: Receipts Nearly Double 2004 Total,” Federal Election Commission, June 8, 2009, http://www.fec.gov/press/press2009/20090608PresStat.shtml; Andre Tartar and Eric Benson, “The Forever Campaign,” New York , October 14, 2012, http://nymag.com/news/politics/elections-2012/timeline-2012-10/.[]

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Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014).[]

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Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Global and Sectoral Aspects (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014).[]

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Nathaniel Rich,Losing Earth: The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change (London: Picador, 2019).[]

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Section 28.07

VII. American Carnage

Philip Bump, “A Quarter of Americans Dislike Both Major-Party Presidential Candidates,” Washington Post, July 14, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/14/a-quarter-of-americans-dislike-both-major-party-presidential-candidates/; Aaron Zitner and Julia Wolfe, “Trump and Clinton’s Popularity Problem,” Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2016, http://graphics.wsj.com/elections/2016/donald-trump-and-hillary-clintons-popularity-problem/.[]

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“In Four Years, President Trump Made 30,573 False or Misleading Claims,” Fact Checker feature, Washington Post , last updated January 20, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/. See also David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson, “Trump’s Lies,” New York Times, updated December 14, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html.[]

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Megan Brenan, “Americans’ Views of Trump’s Character Firmly Established,” Gallup , June 18, 2020, https://news.gallup.com/poll/312737/americans-views-trump-character-firmly-established.aspx.[]

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See, for instance, “Trump’s Coattails,” press release, Reuters/Ipsos, April 2, 2021, https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2021-04/topline_write_up_reuters_ipsos_trump_coattails_poll_-_april_02_2021.pdf.[]

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Clare Hymes, Cassidy McDonald, Eleanor Watson, “What We Know About the ‘Unprecedented’ Capitol Riot Arrests,” CBS News , August 11, 2021, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/capitol-riot-arrests-latest-2021-07-27/.[]

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Matthew Rosenberg and Ainara Tiefenthäler, “Decoding the Far-Right Symbols at the Capitol Riot,” New York Times, January 13, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/video/extremist-signs-symbols-capitol-riot.html.[]

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Michael Kaplan and Cassidy McDonald, “At Least 17 Police Officers Remain Out of Work with Injuries from the Capitol Attack,” CBS News, June 4, 2021, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/capitol-police-injuries-riot/; Michael S. Schmidt and Luke Broadwater, “Officers’ Injuries, Including Concussions, Show Scope of Violence at Capitol Riot,” New York Times, February 11, 2021, updated July 12, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/us/politics/capitol-riot-police-officer-injuries.html.[]

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Section 28.08

VIII. The Pandemic

Alan Feuer and Andrea Salcedo, “New York City Deploys 45 Mobile Morgues as Virus Strains Funeral Homes,” New York Times, April 2, 2020, updated April 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-bodies.html.[]

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Derrick Bryson Taylor, “A Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic,” New York Times , March 17, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-timeline.html.[]

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Section 28.09

IX. New Horizons

Paul Taylor, The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown (New York: Public Affairs, 2014).[]

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“Gay and Lesbian Rights,” Gallup , December 5–7, 2003. http://www.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx.[]

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Janet Hook, “Support for Gay Marriage Hits All-Time High,” Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2015.[]

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Ibid.[]

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Monica Anders, “Technology Device Ownership: 2015,” Pew Research Center, October 29, 2015, http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/02/22/smartphone-ownership-and-internet-usage-continues-to-climb-in-emerging-economies/.[]

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Monica Anderson and Andrea Caumont, “How Social Media Is Reshaping News,” Pew Research Center, September 24, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/24/how-social-media-is-reshaping-news/.[]

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See, for instance, Nicholas G. Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains(New York: Norton, 2010).[]

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Bijan Stephen, “Social Media Helps Black Lives Matter Fight the Power,” Wired , November 2015, http://www.wired.com/2015/10/how-black-lives-matter-uses-social-media-to-fight-the-power/.[]

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Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.[]

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“2016 ACS 1-Year Estimates,” U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/technical-documentation/table-and-geography-changes/2016/1-year.html.[]

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David D. Kirkpatrick, “The Number: How Much Is Trump Pocketing Off the Presidency?” The New Yorker , August 11, 2025, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/08/18/the-number. See also Peter Baker, “As Trumps Monetize Presidency, Profits Outstrip Protests,” New York Times Magazine , May 25, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/us/politics/trump-money-plane-crypto.html.[]

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Andrew Daniller, “Americans Take a Dim View of the Nation’s Future, Look More Positively at the Past,” Pew Research Center, April 24, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/americans-take-a-dim-view-of -the-nations-future-look-more-positively-at-the-past/.[]

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“Satisfaction With the United States,” polling data, Gallup, https://news .gallup.com/poll/1669/general-mood-country.aspx.[]

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