The Forever War: America's unending conflict with itself

This book is largely a study of the extent of extremism in the United States of America and how it affects politics and daily living in that country. It is also a study showing that this situation is not new. In fact conflict has been rife in the USA for the past 250 years and the situation, unfortunately, is unlikely to change. In The Forever War: America's unending conflict with itself Nick Brant has written a history of issues which have always affected and divided American politics in the past and will probably continue to do so in the future.

The Forever War begins with a brief account of the events of 6 January 2020 when Donald Trump tried to over-rule the results of the election. Joe Biden was now the President and Trump had returned to Florida but would politics be the same again? 

Nick Bryant dispels myths that the confusion and mayhem occurring around Donald Trump and his followers was a new development. In this book he outlines the many events that have occurred in America involving assassinations and attempted assassinations, American gun laws, treatment and marginalization of people of colour and immigrants, women's rights particularly the right to abortion, the power of the supreme court, to name a few. 

The author examines the original documents on which American law is based and demonstrates weaknesses in the original documents which are interpreted in a different way from what was intended by those who wrote them. America has changed dramatically in 250 years and the founding fathers could never have foreseen how the original documents have been interpreted over time and certainly not in this century.

History and politics are intertwined and perhaps the world would benefit if more people examined past events in order to avoid continuing making the same mistakes. This particularly applies to the United States of America but also to the world in general. 

Nick Bryant is a British journalist who worked in the USA for many years but has now relocated with his family to Australia. In the final chapter of the book he describes what has caused him to make this change and decide to watch American politics from afar.