Impeachment: Catharsis and Impunity

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Senate’s trial and acquittal of Donald Trump left many with mixed emotions. But did it move us any closer to a reckoning with the worst of America’s political culture? Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Blight returns to the show to help Kai put the trial in historical context. Blight has warned that the former president is trying to create a Confederate-style Lost Cause mythology. So where’s that project stand now? Then WNYC’s Brian Lehrer and The Nation’s Elie Mystal join Kai as he checks in with listeners about the impeachment trial. Did it serve any meaningful purpose in your life or community, or was it a disappointment? The answer, it seems, is both. COMPANION LISTENING: “The ‘Indoor Man’ and His Playmates” (10/02/18) One caller reacted to the impeachment trial by making connections between domestic abusers and Donald Trump. Her call reminded us of this episode, in which Sara Fishko offers a history of the men’s liberation movement, and we consider its echo in the Trump era. “MAGA, the New Confederate Lost Cause” (11/16/20) Our first conversation with historian Douglas Blight, in which he explains how secessionist mythology survived after the Civil War and echoes in Donald Trump’s movement today. “The United States of Anxiety” airs live on Sunday evenings at 6pm ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts. To catch all the action, tune into the show on Sunday nights via the stream on WNYC.org/anxiety or tell your smart speakers to play WNYC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the United States of Anxiety, a show about the unfinished business of our history and its grip on our future.
0:08.0	January 6 was a culmination of the President's actions, not an aberration.
0:14.4	The attack was done for Donald Trump,
0:17.1	at his instructions, and to fulfill his wishes.
0:20.2	We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell hell you're not going to have a country anymore.
0:25.0	Thank you.
0:27.0	Every foreign adversary, considering attacking this building, got to watch a dress rehearsal.
0:35.0	It was almost like I was in those halls all over again reliving it.
0:40.0	This is a moral moment.
0:42.0	What happened in our country will be talked about for generations to come.
0:46.0	If we do nothing, we invite this horror back on our country again.
0:52.0	Good luck in your deliberations.
0:57.0	Welcome to the show.
0:58.0	I'm Ky Wright.
0:59.0	If there is one theme we've hit over and over and over again on this show. It's the idea that we can't just
1:05.1	act like the worst of American history never happened and move on. We have to confront the demons we share as a country.
1:11.3	We have to face the anti-democratic and white
1:13.8	nationalist elements that were so strikingly on display at the Capitol building on
1:18.1	January 6th. We got to take them in as part of our national story and we got to do something about them.
1:25.0	All of which is fine and good for me to say, but what is the something we're supposed to do about at all?
1:30.0	I do not have the answer to that question. I really and truly don't at least not in a concrete or programmatic way
1:37.6	but for a lot of people a big part of the answer had been to impeach the former president and bar him from pursuing office again.
	...

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