Professor Dr. John Dean ante Portas – Kolumnen vom DAZ-Auslands­korrespondenten zu den US-Wahlen

Das Redaktionsteam der DAZ freut sich und ist stolz darauf, den Amerika­experten Prof. Dr. John Dean als Auslands­korrespondenten zu den US-Wahlen gewonnen zu haben.

Lehrkräften dürfte Dr. John Dean insbesondere durch Fort­bil­dungen an der Akademie Dillingen und der Evan­geli­schen Akademie Tutzing bekannt sein, wo er seit vielen Jahren als Dozent für ameri­ka­nische Kultur und Politik tätig ist. In Augsburg gastierte er mehr­mals im Rahmen des Just Kids Festivals an Augsburger Gym­nasien und an der Uni­versi­tät Augsburg Gast und nahm als Mode­rator an Erasmus-Video­kon­ferenzen und am Augsburger Begabungs­tag teil.

In den nächsten 14 Tagen wird Professor Dr. John Dean der DAZ seine Impressionen und Einschätzungen zur US-Wahl in kurzen Kolumnen zur Verfügung stellen. Zukunftsmusik: Im Dezember wird Professor Dr. John Dean dank des SchulePlus Förderprogramms an drei Augsburger Gymnasien (MTG, Jakob Fugger und Holbein) Workshops und Vorträge zu den US-Wahlen halten.

John Dean im April 2022 – Foto: privat

Get Ready for Disconcerting States

What is wrong with America — this egregious situation with its executive leadership, its presidency, its federal government and the explosive risks percolating in its 2024 US Presidential Elections? As of today, November 3, 2024, the calm before the storm is about to break in the United States. How does it feel? What does it mean? This is what I’m after and part of what I hope to help both you and I understand from on the ground, in country, in that land, Stateside as of this Monday, 4th November 2024.

Why should I write about this? Why me?

Because Yours Truly has lived & worked half my life in the USA and half in Europe, mainly in the business of public intellectual, essayist, and university professor here in Paris among the contentious French and there in the USA that’s ever trying to be united.

I’ve worked at this exhilarating, taxing and challenging job without end to try to explain Europe and the USA to each other, and each other to the one alliance of Euro-American civilization in my role of Cultural Historian, Cross-cultural Studies, American Studies veteran who loves to play the ever-tantalizing game of understanding and knowledge. Good luck.

And what have we now — with this 2024 US Presidential Election? Are we at a totally new stage of the national and international political culture game? Do we hear a turning point creak ? Or not? Dry thunder before the storm? Will that 5th November 2024 event merely be a wet firecracker? Or will a bomb — the likes of which we’ve never seen before — go off? A cultural, civilizational Alamogordo?

Will the coming days for the USA be momentous, negligible, or some strange new grayish in-between thing? As the poet wrote: vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle…what rough beast, its hour come round at last…slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Starting tomorrow, get ready. I’ll send daily witness reports of the perplexing state of the United States with a hot-off-the-press, day-by-day series of short essays: ”Disconcerting States”.

Look forward to seeing you reading me there.

Thank you.

© John Dean, 2024