Confronting Political Intimidation and Public Bullying: A Citizen's Handbook for the Trump Era and Beyond

Since the kick-off in 2015 of the last presidential campaign, a climate of fear & intimidation has dominated national life in the United States to a degree rarely seen before, poisoning our politics and reaching into our very relationships with friends, co-workers, and neighbors. "Confronting Political Intimidation" is about how this came to be, how we can see ourselves through it, but also why it is not likely to go away anytime soon. At the core of this political history is a larger U.S. public culture of intimidation & bullying in the workplace, media, and political arena that has been building for 30 years. It is not by chance that in 2017 the U.S. inaugurated Donald Trump, an openly authoritarian president who is an abusive CEO, capitalist folk hero, and Internet troll. The current harsh environment is a direct challenge to citizens & residents, especially those seeking to engage in progressive activism and party politics now and in the years to come. This short book offers a unique guide to the strategies and dynamics of contemporary political intimidation & public bullying: the dangers they present, the snares and traps that envelop their targets, and the lessons to be learned. In the end, it''s about shedding light on the dark side of contemporary national life in order to see beyond it. ADVANCE PRAISE for "Confronting Political Intimidation": "Donald Trump is a bully. His political power, his popularity with one segment of the American people & the dread he inspires in the rest, and his ascent from sleazeball entrepreneur to President of the United States, are all the fruits of a concerted campaign of intimidation and threat. Today, bullying is less a phenomenon of the schoolyard than of the corporate boardroom and workplace; and Donald Trump, the CEO folk hero, has taken it from there and made it into the central principle of American politics, society, and culture. In this book, Roddey Reid brings us the crucial missing piece of the puzzle of Trump: the way that his fear tactics have created a poisonous structure of feeling that is more deadly than any mere ideology." -- Steve Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University "Deeply researched, conceptually sophisticated, & engagingly written, Roddey Reid''s excellent new book makes an indispensable contribution. If you want to understand the current moment of Trump in historical perspective--and if, indeed, you care about the future of the USA--you will find Reid''s work of great value. His outlook is always realistic, and often grimly so, but never without hope." -- Carl Freedman, author of The Age of Nixon "Roddey Reid''s Confronting Political Intimidation is an insightful diagnosis of how we got here, & a potent toolkit to secure a more hopeful future. Reid pulls together a wide range of under-examined material from corporate culture and popular media to source the dark currents now surging through American politics, and finds a fresh vocabulary for democratic renewal." -- Christopher Brown, World Fantasy Award nominee and author of Tropic of Kansas: A Novel "If you have wondered how the President suddenly morphed from the commander-in-chief to the bully-in-chief, this is the book for you. The short answer: it wasn''t so sudden. Reid expertly shows how the Trump phenomenon is the culmination of a decades-long history of transformations affecting not only national political discourse but rooted as well in workplace culture, the neoliberal spirit of capitalism, & the culture of insecurity in the age of limitless war. Trump did not invent this "culture of fear and intimidation." His innovation is to have personified it. "Confronting Political Intimidation" is a wake-up call and a call to action in the name of a livable - and shareable - future." -- Brian Massumi, author of Ontopower: War, Powers, and the State of Exception