“That’s not the America that I believed in and that I chose to merge my fate with.” — David Frum on Trump’s predatory foreign policy
What does it mean to be an American? It’s a slippery question — especially for those of us born outside the United States. Take, for example, David Frum, the Toronto-born writer and Presidential speechwriter who coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” in 2002. Back then, it included Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Today, one wonders if Frum, who has written two powerful jeremiads about Donald Trump, would include what he calls this "fascoid" in his exclusive club.
Frum still lives part of the year on Loyalist Parkway in Ontario — a road honouring British troops fleeing the American Revolution. From his deck, what remains of the Canadian in Frum gazes across Lake Ontario at the American shore. The lights on the other side of the lake, he admits, are more glittering. But unlike Nick Carraway in his favourite American novel The Great Gatsby, David Frum isn’t seduced by all that glitters. Carraway, Frum says, is an unreliable narrator impressed by the gangster glamour of Jay Gatsby. But Gatsby, like Donald Trump, Frum reminds us, is a criminal. And Gatsby, perhaps also like Trump, is at least part of the answer of what it means to be an American.
Five Takeaways
• Loyalist Parkway. Frum lives part of the year on a road named for the refugees who fled the American Revolution northward. Canada is the product of the civil war that nobody calls that: 1776. From his deck he looks across Lake Ontario at the American shore. More glittering. More charged. That outside/inside vantage point is where his career lives.
• Predatory America. Trump wants Iran’s oil. Not freedom, not a better way of life — just plunder. Frum: that’s a president against the American tradition. Bush went to Iraq in the name of ideals, even in failure. Trump invokes none.
• The Axis of Evil Defence. The Iraq war of 2003 was the continuation of a conflict begun when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990. Clinton nearly returned to war in 1994. Bush followed the same path, in the name of ideals. Not the same as going to steal the oil.
• Nick Carraway Is an Unreliable Narrator. Gatsby is a criminal. Nick is seduced by gangster glamour and constructs moral explanations for an attraction he knows he shouldn’t feel. The tell: horrified by the glamour one night, thrilled to fly in Gatsby’s private seaplane the next morning. Gatsby is America.
• Looking Across the Lake. The Canadian analyst of American life. Frum and Zakaria: both naturalized citizens, both rethinking the idea of America that brought them there. July 4 plan: sitting on the deck in Ontario, looking across the water, wishing well to American democracy.
About the Guest
David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic, host of The David Frum Show, and former speechwriter to President George W. Bush. He is the author of Trumpocracy (2018) and Trumpocalypse (2020).
References
The David Frum Show: theatlantic.com/author/david-frum
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Trumpocracy by David Frum (HarperCollins, 2018)
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow
Chapters:
00:00:31 Reversing Fareed Zakaria’s question
00:01:28 Loyalist Parkway: Canada as product of 1776
00:05:41 The axis of evil: defending George W. Bush
00:08:31 Trump’s predatory foreign policy
00:20:00 The Iran war and the oil grab
00:30:00 The Great Gatsby: Nick Carraway as unreliable narrator
00:43:06 Gatsby is a criminal and a symbol of America
00:47:09 The Canadian vantage point
00:48:37 July 4: wishing well to American democracy