Perhaps distancing himself from his own country will allow David Rieff (Boston, 72 years old) to make a more accurate analysis, and help him to have a clearer and more complete framework, a broader perspective of the state of things, as if it corrected an American-centric myopia. Since war broke out in 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the editor, essayist, and political analyst divides his time mainly between New York and kyiv. But this is not his first foray into a war zone: in the nineties he traveled to Bosnia, to a war about which his mother, Susan Sontag, also wrote. So armed conflicts and their resolution, international justice, immigration or humanitarianism have focused much of his work, captured in books such as A bed for a night: humanitarianism in crisis, At gunpoint: democratic dreams and armed interventions either Praise of oblivion. Your next book, Desire and Fate,It will be released on November 21 in the US and in Spanish in 2025. Passing through Madrid on the way to New York, Rieff talks about “the nervous crisis that has shaken the US since 2015”, the still unquantified effect of the new place occupied by the media traditional ones versus platforms like TikTok, or the polarization that has reduced the common space that all Americans shared.
Ask. The healing effect of forgetfulness in societies, which he has reflected on in his books, takes on another aspect in these elections.
Answer. The United States has been immersed in a nervous crisis since 2015, when Donald Trump entered politics. And I’m not saying that everything is his fault, because this nervous breakdown has taken many forms on the right and the left, with mini insurrections after the murder of young George Floyd or the rise of the woke up or the resurgence of white nationalism and the rebellion of certain groups of young men disoriented by feminism.
Q.What is your forecast for the elections?
R. The way things are right now the results are going to be really close and that is disastrous because it means that the hardline of each of the candidates will refuse to accept the results. Kamala Harris will win in number of votes, but there is no direct election. A candidate can lose the number of votes resoundingly and, if he wins in certain key states that have a lot of representation, he will be president. This is how Trump won in 2016. And now, if he takes, say, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by just two votes, then he will win again.
Q. How do you explain the uncertainty surrounding these elections?
R. It is not the total number of votes that is important, but how many states vote for you and how many votes those states have. That’s why you enter the electoral fight fighting for 9, 10 or 13 states. And we do not yet know what effect the relative marginalization of traditional media will have. Many things move in media that people like me barely know: we know of their existence, but little else. To what extent is Trump’s TikTok presence effective? This is the type of thing that can be decisive, much more than if the editorial of the Boston Globe or of New York Post. The United States is in a very complicated moment, very polarized.
Q.What would it take to overcome that divide?
R. A true leader capable of speaking to everyone. On the other hand, when talking about social networks… Like anyone who has a historical memory of what the media were in the United States before, say, 1945, I am quite skeptical of this post-truth thing.
Q. What effect will wars have on these elections?
R. Ukraine will have very little impact, and I regret this since I spend a lot of time there and teach in kyiv. The Ukrainian cause arouses sympathy in the United States, even in places that are not obvious, such as among the LGTBIQ community. There is quite a bit of support, but I don’t think that’s going to influence the vote significantly in those states that are in play.
Q. And Gaza?
R. Israel has always been an issue of domestic politics in the United States. Ukraine is a war that is more shocking for Europe than for the United States. In Germany, Poland or Hungary the war is very present, in the United States it is something remote. For him establishment which deals with the country’s security, Russia is secondary. Left and right, what worries and obsesses them is China.
Q. Will a price be paid at the polls for support for Israel?
R. Americans are not that interested in foreign policy. Most, including those who are educated, are not interested in the rest of the world, but there are certain issues like immigration or Gaza that become internal issues. Now, we’ve seen a very vocal and disenchanted group of young people who really feel that the society they live in is horrible, and they want it to change. American aid to Israel is, in their view, what makes the Gaza war possible. Zionism was an American religion as much as it was a Jewish one and now there is a counter-religion: anti-Zionism, anti-imperialism. In electoral terms this does not matter so much, except in the states that are in play, and which have a large Arab American population. If they stay home and don’t vote Democratic, which is what they did in the last election, that could make Trump win, for example, in Michigan.
Q. To what extent are these elections business as usual or to what extent are they absolutely exceptional?
R. It will depend on the results. It is not the election of the century in the political sense, but the problem is that the Republican candidate is not sane. It is one thing to have a bad president and another to have a crazy one. Trump is totally unpredictable. They told me that, when I was in the White House, in the military’s weekly meeting with the president, they had a lot of trouble getting him to pay attention to what they were saying until they finally realized that the only way to do it was to say his name every time. 30 seconds. He is a character that seems straight out of a Nathaniel West book. It is the go,the itFreudian US version, without control, without restraint, all desire and greed, and vulgarity without blushing. He is a nightmarish figure, ruthless when it comes to seeking the satisfaction of his desires and urges. And that’s very American.
Q. Does being a woman go against Harris?
R. No, it is a point in favor because it would be very difficult to convince those young men who are with Trump, so it is better to bet on your strength, which is women. This is going to be an election in which gender will divide the electorate, the racial part is obvious, but sex is going to be more important. There will be majorities of women who vote for Harris and men for Trump, and this includes Latinos, many of whom are surprisingly pro-Trump. What Latina women think is not so clear in the polls, but African-American women will come out to support Harris. Again, with African American men it is not so clear.
Q. Does support for Trump have to do with that Trumpnesia and forgetting the chaos it generated or its management of COVID?
R. Yes, there is a lot of forgetfulness, and it is not the kind I would praise. People are not thinking about Covid. Biden did a good job with that crisis and with many other things, however, he does not get much recognition. In many ways he has been a better president than Obama, who was charming and intelligent and a very attractive figure, but perhaps the most important thing he did was manage to reach the White House. And Trump is that kind of person who has so little shame that he manages to get out of everything. Harris is reasonable, informed, competent, professional, an unexciting centrist politician.
Q. Better candidate than Hillary Clinton?
R. Less arrogant. Hillary lost that election just as much as Trump won it. We know they screwed up in the Midwest. They couldn’t believe that they weren’t going to win or that this guy who they considered a joke was going to get to the White House. I don’t think Harris is that confident in her victory.
Q.What do you expect from a Harris administration?
R. She is a centrist, she is not going to change much, she will disappoint the left but it will be quite woke up like Biden in practical terms. As I argue in my writings on this topic, I woke up It is consistent with capitalism. The interesting thing will be to see if, if he loses, Trump will continue to control the party or there will be Republicans who will reorient it. Has the victory of the extreme right in the party been such that there can be no turning back, that it can never be John McCain’s party?
Q. And the Senate? According to the polls, it seems clear that the Republicans will win.
R. This means that even if Harris wins, there will be many things she will not be able to do: any deep reform will not pass and the judges she wants to nominate will have to be more centrist than her people would want. A Republican Senate with Trump in the presidency would be very different than one with Harris in the White House. The key in any case is for the Democrats to have the majority in Congress. If this happens, well, there will be a tie of forces and, if we look at the history of the country, Americans like this.
Q. Where will you spend election night?
R. I’ll be in New York, so I’ll probably go to a friend’s house.