America — the good, the bad and the ugly

‘What we all really want is for America to be what it once was,’ said Margaret Atwood at a recent writers’ event organised by the New York Times. She was discussing America’s present and immediate future with Martin Amis and E.L. Doctorow. They each wrote a piece for the New York Times Sunday Review on the subject, and each concluded that America, both as an idea and an entity, has been shaken by divisive and disconnected politics, an overbearing and undemocratic judiciary, a profoundly illiberal response to terrorism, the moral bankruptcy caused by corporate greed, and ingrained racial tensions. America is no longer a beacon of freedom and prosperity; as Edgar Doctorow put it, ‘America has become unexceptional’.

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