It isn’t always easy to keep up with what’s happening in the US. “Shorter America” is a series where Dr Emma Shortis loops you in on what’s going on in America and shares news and analysis that you can trust.
Fri 31 Jul 2026 10.29 AEST
Photo: The White House/Flickr
A recurring theme of this column is that it is possible for two things to be true at once: the Trump administration and the movement behind it are both very, very dangerous and also very, very embarrassing. That’s the whole story this week.
This week:
Fascism, authoritarianism – whatever you want to call it – needs an enemy. One of the (many) basic mistakes the Trump administration made when it went to war with Iran was failing to understand that war would give the authoritarian regime in Iran a familiar outside enemy around which it could (re)consolidate its power. The regime had been, according to some experts, on shaky ground. And then Trump handed it a way to consolidate power again. Not that US administrations have ever really been interested in learning the lessons of their own history.
Anyway. The Trump administration is no different to other regimes in its desperate need for an enemy.
The one they’re really trying on now is “communism”. As reported here in Truthout, specifically of the Cuban variety. According to a recent State Department report, “Castro’s ideological project now enjoys something approaching ideological hegemony in leftist circles both within and beyond the West.” I’m sorry, what? (You can read the whole report here, though I don’t recommend it).
The On the Media podcast did a good episode on this (which inspired my title – it’s called “The Red Scare, but dumber”). And Bhaskar Sunkara has a really interesting interview with Cuba’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, in The Nation.
Speaking of embarrassing. Did you see Elon Musk’s interview with The Economist? I can only do it in short clips because he’s so unbearable.
But this analysis of it in The New Republic is excellent. And it’s worth noting how critical it is to lay it out like this – and how, because of Australian defamation laws, I probably couldn’t do the same here without significant risk.
And speaking of embarrassing take two – try this Vanity Fair piece on Senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral. Oh my god, these men.
On a more serious note, I found this review of the Supreme Court’s recent term in the NY Review of Books quite interesting. I think it’s sort of right. But I also think it says a lot about American analysts and commentators who remain so desperate to believe that the old game of politics still applies.
If you’re even a little bit online (which you must be, given you’re here), you’ve probably already taken some delight in reading Emily Wilson’s review of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in the London Review of Books. If you haven’t, here it is. Or if you have, why not read it again? As a little treat.
And for a slightly different take on complicated men, here’s a lovely, thoughtful review from my colleague Greg Jericho.
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