“It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates.  The daily news fills one with wonder and awe: is it possible? is it happening? And of course with sickness and despair. The fixes, the scandals, the insanities, the treacheries, the idiocies, the lies, the pieties, the noise …”

Philip Roth wrote these words in 1961.  They are a reminder that the ability of American reality to disgust, to appall, and to confound didn’t begin with the election of Trump. One of the great achievements of Michiko Kakutani’s new book, The Death of Truth, is to hold up to our eyes two complementary truths: politicians lying and distorting for their own purposes is nothing new (think of Bush and his cabal justifying the war in Iraq); and the Trump administration’s mendacity is at a level so unparalleled that it represents a threat to the future of American democracy itself.

The central point of the book is simple enough.  Trump’s relentless lies add up to a planned and systematic distortion of reality and a carefully constructed narrative designed to exploit the fears and prejudices of his supporters. Deploying powerful technological tools unavailable to the ideologues of the past – right and left, fascist and communist – and aided by the trolls and bots of hostile foreign actors, Trump has tapped into segregated America’s relativism and narcissism to advance an Orwellian program designed to centralize power and wealth in the hands of a small minority.  Kakutani offers few remedies to withstand the onslaught: don’t give in to cynicism and defeatism, stand up for the institutions that have served America so well and for so long (especially a free press), and commit to the pursuit and expression of truth.  That last part looks especially tricky right now …

As you would expect from someone as well-read as Kakutani, the range of sources deployed to support her arguments is wide and varied but this is no dry academic thesis. There’s no attempt here to be cool, distant, and dispassionate.  This isn’t the calm and measured analysis of the Trump presidency that will come in time.  It’s a book hot with outrage and incredulity. That might prove to be its lasting value: a passionate but coherent indictment of terrible and dangerous times written up-close while the storm is raging around us.