ABSTRACT
Chapter 4, “In Defense of Democracy,” outlines how Trump’s rhetorical style—in both manner and modality—gravely threatens American democracy, attending to the ways in which it undermines civility and degrades the level of political discourse in the US, erodes democratic norms and institutions, weakens the rule of law, fuels racial hatred and fosters discrimination, favors anti-intellectualism and undermines critical thought, and promotes mistrust of the mainstream news media and facilitates a post-truth politics. To combat the material harms of Trump’s rhetoric, the chapter ends with a call for mobilizing reasonable disgust at Trump’s affective politics of white rage to realize a more progressive politics rooted in James Baldwin’s radical understanding of love.
