Before there was Coronavirus, before there was the contentious 2020 election or the entire Trump presidency, there was a turning-point year that proved momentous and transformative for American politics and the fate of the nation. "The Year That Broke America" (Harper) is the new book by Andrew Rice.
According to him, the year 2000 was the moment when the authority of the political system was undermined by technical malfunctions; when the legal system was compromised by the justices of the Supreme Court; when the financial system was devalued by deregulation, speculation, creative securitization, and scam artistry; when the mainstream news media was destabilized by the propaganda power of Fox News and the supercharged speed of the internet; when the power of tastemakers, gatekeepers, and cultural elites was diminished by a dawning recognition of its irrelevance.
Back at the start of the new millennium it was easy to laugh and roll our eyes about the crazy events in Florida in the year 2000—but what happened then and there has determined where we are and who we’ve become. Andrew Rice is a contributing editor at New York magazine.
