Novelist Ben Fountain on Trump, Clinton and America’s Future

America has been shaped by the Civil War and the Great Depression. Ben Fountain says we may be in for an “existential crisis” of comparable magnitude. To reach that daunting conclusion, he calls on a rich knowledge of history to go well beyond the circus of the 2016 campaign. Backing him up on this podcast, a poll showing that 49 percent of Republicans think it’s ok for a president to lie, “to do what’s right for the country.” Is that the seed of authoritarian government?