Welcome to Trump’s America, The i Paper’s World Insight series presenting the sharpest, deepest thinking on an era-defining shift in history and politics, investigating how Donald Trump and his administration have changed the US and the world – and where we go from here.
• The death of cool America – and the cringe that killed it• The US is becoming impossible to live in• I ran for president against Trump. When he fails, America will rise again• Maga leaders want ‘traditional American families’ – but can’t stop having affairs• Sin City has lost its shine. It shows how far America has fallen• The influencer who turned on Maga – claiming it has a dark secret• Inside America’s most loyal Trump town – where people still think he’s ‘a good man’
Few countries mythologise their national stories quite so extravagantly and unabashedly as America. A six-year-old George Washington did not chop down his father’s prized cherry tree, and then confess, “I cannot tell a lie” – a fable which in the early years of the American republic helped elevate this war hero almost to the level of sainthood. Turkey and pumpkin pie were not consumed at the first Thanksgiving feast in 1621, a meal portrayed over the years as convivial proof that Native Americans gladly welcomed the arrival of white settlers who stole their land.
