Instructor: Professor Emeritus Alvin Finkel, Ph.D. Fee: Members $65 | Non-Members $75

Liberal critics of Donald Trump suggest that his regime amounts to a rejection of the “liberal order” that the United States supposedly stood for in past decades and centuries. From that point of view, the retrograde policies of Donald Trump represent the overthrow of the United States as a beacon of democracy and enlightened thought. This course suggests that such viewpoints are based on carefully designed mythologies of the pre-Trump United States that don’t stand up to historical scrutiny. The course takes a close look at the United States from the founding of the Thirteen Colonies to the Civil War to the world wars, the Cold War, and the Cold War aftermath to search for the precedents that have created the openly anti-democratic, paranoid, racist, and misogynistic Trump regime. The course does not deal with Trump himself or his time in government, but rather with the realities of pre-Trump America that should have prepared us for what is now happening in the United States and with the United States’ dealings with the rest of the world.