One of the beginning chapters, titled “Is it Important Who Rules?” focuses on the perception of who should lead a country and Avramov cites Plato’s, The Republic, to discuss the image of an “honest politician” as a leader. The author does cite an issue with creating an “image of a ruler concerned with the good of society,” stating that “justice” is not an ethical category but a political concept. Avramov claims that in order to do the best for the maximum of our population we cannot concern ourselves with the images of “honest politicians” or “charismatic leaders.”

Chapter VIII titled “America Back to the Old World,” takes an honest approach at discussing President Trump. The author cites Trump’s lack of answering political questions as a result of his politics being based on “reality television.” The last chapter also discusses Trump’s leadership but with the pandemic, citing the government’s “downplay” of the virus but also the different approach that our country took when compared to most European and non-Western cultures. The author argues that those cultures believe in the phrase, “the economy can be recovered, human life cannot.” And as an American living through this pandemic, it has definitely felt like this country has worried more about preserving the economy instead of helping each other–not just our government but the public as well has failed at caring about the lives that this virus can destroy.

I would recommend The New American State to anybody that has a slight interest in our politics. I found my own worries voiced in this piece–specifically those regarding future leaders of this country and the current presidential election. The topic of either Trump or Biden winning the election raises an issue that a lot of younger votes have brought up, and that is the age of the presidential candidates. How do we move forward when the possible leaders are that much older?

Review by Jailyn: “A book that everyone should look into reading” left in Amazon.

Since the beginning of the new millennium, in the countries of the Western world, there has been an ongoing process of unification in values and politics. Traditional political worldviews, ideologies, and approaches to governance are being devalued and replaced by concepts of pragmatism, centrism, and state efficiency. This changes the direction and the quality of the policy conversation and creates new lines of division. With the revival of nationalism in Europe, and especially with the emergence of national populism in the United States, “left-right” competition has been reformulated as “conservative-liberal.”

The main political cleavages have shifted from the sphere of ideology to the sphere of the sociocultural worldview. Individual self-determination, cultural identity, ethnicity, racial divisions, gender inequality, religious prejudices, social exclusion, and all person-centered issues exert a much more significant impact on political motivations than do traditional social divisions such as profession, income, education, or belonging to a particular social group or class. This significantly changes and complicates the process of political identification.

In a number of cases, people do not find their place on the left-right system of coordinates on the basis of traditional political ideas. It is much easier for them to situate their personal views and outlooks in the context of the division between change and the status quo. In many cases, this has led to the return of the “conservative-liberal” political clash of the 19th century. The essence of this clash remains in the background. In the foreground, “liberal” boils down to supporting change, and “conservative,” to maintaining the status quo.