A Journey Into the Heart of Trump Country

A Journey Into the Heart of Trump Country

A Journey Into the Heart of Trump Country

Arlie Hochschild on her new book, plus Amy Wilentz on Trump’s high road and Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser on Command and Control.

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For her new book, sociologist Arlie Hochschild listened to Trump supporters explain their world in their own words. She spent five years in southwestern Louisiana searching for their “deep story,” which she recounts in Strangers in Their Own Land—it’s been shortlisted for the National Book Award.

Plus: The battle inside Trump’s campaign about whether to take the low road, or the high one. Amy Wilentz analyzes the role of the Trump children—who, we are told, are trying to get their father to campaign on actual political issues.

And we’ll also hear about a chilling disaster at a Titan II missile complex in Arkansas in September, 1980, where the most powerful nuclear warhead in our arsenal was almost detonated. That’s the subject of the new documentary Command and Control—director Robert Kenner and writer Eric Schlosser explain. The film rolls out this week across the nation.

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We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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