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Rick Perlstein: What We Didn’t Understand About Trump

Plus Atossa Araxia Abrahamian on redefining money and Heather Ann Thompson on Attica.

Start Making Sense and Jon Wiener

May 11, 2017

Trump supporters pose with a Confederate flag in Jacksonville, Florida.(AP Photo / Matt Rourke)

The leading histories of the conservative movement don’t account for the Klan enthusiasts and the “tribunes of white rage” that Trump mobilized and that he represents—that’s what Rick Perlstein argues in a mea culpa on behalf of historians of American politics.

Also: the rock-star appeal of Modern Monetary Theory for the Sanders generation. Atossa Araxia Abrahamian says that, if money is understood correctly, “debt is not the end.”

And Heather Ann Thompson talks about the Attica prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy—her book Blood in the Water won The Nation Institute’s Ridenhour award.

Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, and SoundCloud for new episodes each Thursday. Start Making Sense is hosted by Jon Wiener and co-produced by the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Start Making SenseTwitterStart Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


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