Episode 2312: Robert D. Kaplan on the decadence of Trump's America

Keen On

With Trump’s inauguration today, are we really about experience a new “golden age” in America? No. Not at least according to the best selling writer Robert D. Kaplan, author of Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis (out next week), who argues that Trump's inaugural ceremony today, attended by fawning Silicon Valley moguls, exemplifies the moneyed “decadence” that often precedes imperial decline. A new book from Kaplan is always a big deal. But in today’s Trumpian America, Waste Land seems particularly prescient. The book draws heavily from historians of decline like Oswald Spengler and examines how globalization has split American society into two halves: a cosmopolitan, globally-oriented coastal elite and a poorer, more nationalistic hinterland. He argues that this division has eliminated the political center, burdening every election an existential quality. Despite the book's generally Spenglerian pessimism, Kaplan concluded with a note of hope, suggesting that a rediscovery of classical liberalism – characterized by constant questioning and lack of dogmatism – might help us navigate through today’s 21st century Waste Land of anarchic violence.

Robert D. Kaplan is the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the bestselling author of twenty-two books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including The Good American, The Revenge of Geography, Asia’s Cauldron, Monsoon, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. For three decades he reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. He was a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and the U. S. Navy’s Executive Panel. Foreign Policy magazine twice named him one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.”

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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