Class preparation (optional): Watch the 90-minute movie Lions for Lambs, available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x24XpF8Kuiw

Why is Donald Trump our President and why is half our country firmly loyal to the MAGA message? In this course we do a deep-dive, exploring how disruptive changes over the past half century generated MAGA grievances. This complex story weaves together the effects of changing social values, business relocation, the ‘diploma divide,’ cost of living, immigration, social media, globalism and loneliness. Importantly, we examine how these changes have affected Americans differently, benefitting some, while hurting others.  As a result, resentment and distrust exist against ‘other’ Americans, our government and big business.  Are there really two incompatible Americas?  Is Constitutional government evolving into something different?

• Week 1 - Seeing American history as a ‘Stream of Time’

Make America “Great Again” - Return to the 1950s?

• Week 2 - Benefits and Grievances

MAGA and Liberalism, MAGA and Conservativism   

• Week 3 - Early MAGA candidates - Wallace, Perot, Buchanan  

Post 9/11 chaos - Iraq to 2008 Crash  

• Week 4 - Movie Review - Lions for Lambs (attitudes about citizen engagement in society)

Rural attitudes towards government

• Week 5 - 2008 - Obama’s election and its aftermath - bailouts, healthcare, Tea Party  

2016 - Why Trump won

• Week 6 - Trump’s first term - Disrupter-in-Chief  

2021-25 - Biden and the Return of MAGA