Intercepted With Jeremy Scahill

Most analysis of Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency in 2016 focuses on immediate causes and, of course, its effects. In a recent speech, NYU history professor Nikhil Pal Singh took a longer historical view, sketching three arcs of U.S. history that have yielded the durable commitments to racism, militarism, and unequal class power that have sharpened over the past two decades. Considering the historical development of the United States as an empire-state, rather than as a nation-state, he argues, is essential to understanding what it has meant, and what it might mean going forward, to bend the future toward greater equality and justice – both in the United States and in its relationship to the wider world. He argues that the election of Trump and the failure of Hillary Clinton may be the clearest signals yet, of the decline of U.S. empire. Rather than a cause for pessimism, he says, this moment is an opportunity to enliven a new politics and begin a new story — but only if we are honest about our