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Conversation group with d.a.i. teacher Scott Stelle. Well, it certainly feels like things are spinning out of control in America. A pandemic is raging across the country while the economy is crumbling and the body politic is being torn apart.
While most Americans are relieved that Trump is leaving (where to is not yet clear), millions of his followers believe the election was stolen. Will President-elect Joe Biden, once he takes office, be able to heal the cleavages that Trump has exasperated on top of decades of foreign wars, deindustrialization, financial crises, and rising economic inequality? Biden will be taking his presidential oath amid lockdowns and widespread disbelief in the legitimacy of democracy, because Trump has for months been openly laying the groundwork to contest the results of the election. “The only way we're going to lose this elections is if the election is rigged,” said Trump, who has since the election doubled-down on his “voter fraud” narrative.
Yet, while there is no end to the “culture war” in sight, we would like to turn our attention to the battles within the respective two fractious parties. In this post-Trump era, will the G.O.P. become more populist or try to restore its optimistic rhetoric and conventional positions on free trade and immigration as well as resume its internationalist foreign policy? And will President Biden follow the restorationist leanings of the pre2016 corporate Democrat establishment or will he side with the progressive leftwing of the party that helped him narrowly get elected?
In English
Location: online via Zoom @ www.dai-tuebingen.de/studygroup
Admission: free
Further date: Fr. 26.3.
