Member Discussion for “American Midnight” — February 2023

We want to hear from you while you’re reading “American Midnight.”

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We want to hear from you while you’re reading this month’s book. To ask questions, share thoughts, and interact with other members use the comment section on this page.

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Comments (41)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Ljgiblin

    Am I the only one who having read about Wilson hiding his awful health condition for more than a year, wondering every time I hear a leader is ill or falls? Hearing about Speaker McConnell today falling last night, I'm wondering if it really is more than that! Will never be the same now when I hear a politician is sick.

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    JohnD

    Sarah et al - I heard your podcast about a week ago with the author and really wanted to read this book. I am now about 1/2 way done with the book and love it. So readable and informative. And what a fascinating and little remembered part of our history. While I am not a Wilson fan (and snicker every time Jonah plays the Darth Vader music) he is a complex individual who brought an overarching morality to his White House role. Think George W Bush and the war on terrorism…very Wilsonian! Thanks for the recommendation.

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    Ljgiblin

    I listened to this book on Audible and really learned a lot about that time period. One thing I kept shouting at the radio was 'who was Wilson's vice president???' why didn't anyone suggest that wilson step down after his stroke??? Listening now to 1920 The year of 6 presidents and finally heard that Marshall was Wilson's vice president and wasn't involved. I also watched a movie recently from the same time period called Queen Marie and its about the Paris peace conference and Romania's desire to have a unified government again that they had before WW I. It was fun because I recognized a lot of the characters that are in these books!

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    Aaronmcp

    I really enjoyed the podcast. I was only able to get through about half of the book, although I did skim the whole thing, so this was a helpful summary. I didn't miss as much as I thought I might have.

    The thing that struck me the most is how war changes a people. The Civil War is surprisingly influential on so many of the political figures in the book, as was the Spanish-American War and the Philippine War. Hochschild does a good job showing how these antecedents contributed to the near unanimous support for the US entry into the Great War, but also how so much of the brutality shown towards blacks and labor activists came from veterans' experiences of those wars.

    In our own time, I see an echo of this in the veterans of the Afghanistan War and Iraq War, a number of whom have figured in the January 6 insurrection, as well as various attacks on politicians and election workers and pundits. Wars are easy to start and hard to end, and the effects reverberate down through generations.

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  5. Anand Dharan

    While I agree with some of the critics below that Hochschild could have been better about separating his personal commentary from the facts about the disturbing authoritarianism at home during the WWI era, those facts are nevertheless damning, and I’m very glad I read this book. It does leave me with a question that I wanted to pose to this group, though. It’s pretty obvious that we’re reading this book now because of the parallels to the rising negative partisanship, illiberalism and censoriousness that we’re experiencing now. One could read this book and take comfort that we’ve been here before and we got through it. Or one could read this book and come away deeply concerned that our society seems to have this persistent illiberal streak in it that is so easily activated, because there is never a guarantee that “this, too, shall pass”. Or maybe both are true. Where do others come out on this?

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      Gennimarietw

      I don’t think it’s a case of either/or, as you said, both are true. We can be concerned about where we are at, yet take great comfort from the fact that we *have* been here before.

      In the humble opinion of this random person on the internet, I think it will go dormant again.

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  6. LesB

    The reader should be prepared for a polemic instead of a history. I hope Mr. Hochschild welcomes the hands going up in his classes with "But. but, but..." The pervasive tone of this book causes me to doubt it. There is no balance here that allows for the possibility that legitimate concerns could be raised regarding a period of left-wing terrorism by organized groups of radicals, syndicalists, anarchists etc. Hindsight with a century of perspective tells me that the reaction was extreme and in no way justified demolishing the constitutional guardrails. But then tell that to the Tsar.

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    James Spiller

    I commend the Dispatch on its thoroughgoing effort to steelman the arguments against its positions, but I was nonetheless surprised to find a tankie’s guide to why Russia was right all along coming up on our reading list. In the same way that MASH used Korea to oppose Vietnam, of course, this uses the Great War to argue for the unreasonableness of those who oppose war crimes in Europe.

    It does so in ways that are dishonest both directly and indirectly. So, for instance, when we are told that Americans are just taught a pro-WWI view in school, in which Americans fought valiantly and then were greeted by a grateful public, an accurate lesson that I am unaware of being taught anywhere, he says that there is no Ken Burns documentary about African Americans at this time. I highly recommend Jazz, Ken Burns’ documentary about African Americans at this time to anyone interested in the issue.

    When he discusses the IWW, he writes like a Reason article on criminal justice reform, every claim of a supporter being reported as fact, every problematic fact either minimized or, more often, unmentioned. The failure to convict specific individuals for the destruction of a railroad bridge is held up as proof that the IWWs were not guilty of it, implying a belief that CSI was considerably more advanced at the time than was the case. The reader is not told that the IWWs were openly calling for the bridge to be sabotaged at the point that it was sabotaged, nor that they were otherwise striking and attempting to impede the provision of oil to American troops at the front. The reader is led to believe that they were attacked because the locals were ideological bigots manipulated by big business rather than because the locals saw no other way to protect the lives of their loved ones.

    This slander about motives arguably reaches its height on page 19 when Hochschild claims that Americans were outraged *because of nativism* when Germany attempted to persuade the Mexicans to invade the US in return for Germany ensuring that they would receive Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. One wonders whether a sophisticated, morally decent, thoughtful person would object to this sort of thing.

    There’s the standard tankie stuff, of course. He doesn’t say that the decision to go to war was the result of the munitions lobby, but he does repeatedly raise the question. He claims that the US wasn’t democratic under Wilson because African Americans lived under Jim Crow, so the people who claimed to be fighting for democracy were lying. I don’t know how anyone with an adequate middle school knowledge of civics and specifically the understanding of the term “democracy” at the time could read that and then trust him on issues with which they were less familiar.

    That said, when it transpired on page 95 that he does not know what “race riot” means. “Despite books, articles, and museum exhibits that continue to use the phrase “race riots of 1919,” the events that now unfolded almost all began as white riots.” Of course they did; that’s what the term meant for the most part before African Americans had the political protection required not to be murdered en masse if they engaged in black riots. I’d somehow gotten the impression that he had a background in history, but discovering that he doesn’t really claim to be much more than a journalist did help.

    The more I read, the more it seemed that he was less like a cynical Reason journalist and more sincerely failing to see why anyone would think the IWWs objectionable. More like an undergraduate libertarian, he really seems to believe all government action against anarchist assassins to be intrinsically illegitimate. As such, he describes bombings and attacks as excuses for law enforcement to take action against them. Time and again he either pathologizes or sexualizes interest in protecting America against revolutionaries and terrorists, or implies it to be corrupt.

    I think this is probably a helpful book for understanding how sincere people could be a fan of Putin today, giving the same friendly support to alt right groups or code pink that Hochschild does to the far more virulent IWW (I don’t think there’s any group in the US today as harmful to the country so I can’t think of a parallel), and taking the same approach of complete disinterest in foreign wrongs combined with a belief that American wrongs make support for America illegitimate. Having the distance from the subject helps with this.

    I don’t think it’s a good book on any of its putative topics, though. Hochschild is too ignorant and too much of a hack to leave one with any real understanding of the topics. One is left with the impression of battles between racists and others, for instance, with anti-asian and anti-black racism being implied to be different flavors of the same thing. The people who were best on African American issues, though, such as Teddy Roosevelt, were often also the people at the forefront of anti-Asian racism (TR made the Chinese Exclusion Act permanent). It’s not a coincidence that people who supported African Americans tended not to be fond of Irish Americans, the latter having formed the backbone of northern pro-slavery sentiment. Hochschild talks about a leading progressive being similar to modern Tea Partiers and it looks like he really doesn’t have any thought behind that other than both being bigoted white people. Are they radically pro-life or pro-choice? Do they want a lot more government or a lot less? Are they big tax the rich people or opponents? Doesn’t matter; Hochschild is thinking about racism when he’s writing so he knows his villain and his hero and other villains are similar because basically all bad people are the same.

    This isn’t always about race. I don’t think that Trump can really be called a red baiter, for instance, because he’s just not that ideologically aware. The suggestion that he’s similar to Wilson in this is absurd; Wilson and his goons were concerned with the substance of Bolshevism, with terrorism, revolution, and spies. Trump when he complains about communism means someone with a little authority or social clout being woke. While Hochschild constantly suggests that concerns about terrorism were unreal, despite his covering the attack on Palmer’s home, Wilson won his election against Taft and Teddy Roosevelt, and TR became President because he was VP when McKinley was killed by an anarchist terrorist. We haven’t had anything like that happen since JFK, so it seems less important, but between Andrew Jackson and Wilson more Presidents are assassinated than serve two consecutive terms. For later historians it has been a famous mystery that America hasn’t had a revolution, but it was not irrational for Americans, particularly not the most likely first targets, to fear it.

    Sometimes I felt like the book descended into active immorality. Dismissing German war crimes that are admitted in a different chapter to have actually happened as “American propaganda” seems to have been something that Hochschild put to paper either while Bucha was happening or while it was being uncovered. At some level he must have felt uncomfortable with his position. There’s a lot of silly partisanship; everything bad is likened to Republicans or right leaning media, including the Wilson press that pushed the creation of what would be recreated as the New Deal. But a lot of the time he talks about the importance of rising above bigotry and seeing the truth. At the same time he writes things like his claim that among the forces feeding violence in America today is “a military that had picked up brutal habits waging war on guerrillas in Asia”. Perhaps he has some evidence for what he’s talking about, but to me that sounds like straightforward bigotry, a falsehood that precisely encapsulates the flaws he’s talking about.

    If you want a book on this subject by a historian, I highly recommend both the other books in this book club series and David Kennedy’s Over Here. I don’t think there’s anything in Hochschild’s book that is true, significant, and not covered better in Kennedy’s work. Also, depending on your membership, the Audible audiobook version of it may be free. It is drier, though, so I recommend it without too many reservations because I feel like the Dispatch’s readership is mostly comfortable with moving beyond YA literature. Also better is the start of Jonah’s Liberal Fascism, but that’s so much shorter that it does skip some of the detail.

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    1. LesB

      Good review, thanks for the recommendation. I have started Kennedy's Over Here and welcome the palate cleanser.

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  8. Stonylonesome

    This is like uncovering a long-lost era in American history. Both of my parents were born in these four years (1917-1921) and I have always pictured it as a rosy, optimistic time. Couldn’t have been more in error! Thanks for introducing me to this book and I look forward to the discussion and podcast.

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    1. Richard R de Villiers

      Thomas Fleming’s The Illusion of Victory has a similar take but the author was more of a critic from the right. It was a long time ago but I recall enjoying The Last Days of Innocence by Meirion and Susie Harris. If I recall correctly, slightly more balanced. Yanks by John S.D. Eisenhower is a slender volume that focuses on the Army during the war.

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  9. Lbardsley

    In the book, the analysis of President Wilson is fair because the author acknowledges the positive idea of the League. On the other hand, the author shows the President’s dark side as he expands the power of the federal government (Espionage Act) to eliminate dissent and uses rhetoric that incites the mob. As President he does nothing to stop the vigilantes and mobs from attacking the so called “domestic enemies” (German Americans in the beginning of the war and Socialists and Communists during the Red Scare) Also, he highlights President Wilson’s narcissism.
    Even though he does not state it, the author demonstrates why the Founders feared mob rule. Historically the mobilized “mob” is to be feared because it does become judge and jury and is prone to violence as Hochschild aptly records in his narrative. However, politicians or authorities tend to look the other way when it serves their interests even in democracies.
    The narrative highlights there was a cultural war too. The mainstream American ideals (Americanism) promoted at the time versus the German culture brought over by immigrants (always a problem throughout our history) – hamburger became a liberty sandwich, kind of like French fries into Freedom fries. Later, it is the Reds who are usually immigrants which reinforces the latent fear of immigration. It seems clear the author’s agenda is comparing the 1916-1920 period to recent politics.

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  10. Ruth.Lochary

    Just finished the book -- thanks for picking something to give me exposure to a different perspective. It certainly highlighted a time in our history that I don't know enough about. I'm going to do some digging to read more. Other suggestions from the group? Thanks!

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