What We Learned about Trump and Forgot

Each day we hear about another mind-blowing Trumpian disaster. They are now beyond shocking. Trumpworld Begins traces their beginnings in his first term. You’ll learn how it was all predicated and primed in the years 2016-2018—if only we’d been smart enough to read the signs.

After months of difficulties getting the book live with Amazon, it’s now ready for purchase. You can buy the paperback at Amazon’s US site—or the one in Mexico. Or get the free ebook. Post a review—complimentary or critical―on Amazon, and be my friend forever.

Trumpworld Begins consists of entries and comments from a former blog in the years 2016-2018. My voice is different from most of the other Trump commenters. I come from an academic background, but this is hardly academic prose. It’s the voice of someone who’s worked long in the backstages of politics and written pungently about it—the frivolities, profundities, stupidities of its principals, their virtues and vices. I write using a lot of links so you will hear other voices too. The book will entertain as well as inform.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

Dr. Ronny Jackson Interview

3/31/2018

You can imagine how difficult it was to get him on the phone, but the doctor was cooperative if not overjoyed to hear from me.

JG: Admiral, should we congratulate you or offer condolences on being appointed to head the Department of Veterans Affairs?

RJ: I will accept both. It will be a pleasure to serve at the pleasure of the President, who is in great health by the way. We had a rollicking time together when I gave him his physical in January. Ordered in Filet-O-Fish sandwiches from McDonalds.

JG: You know, that physical caused quite a flap when you said hopeful things like “with a healthier diet he might live to be 200 years old.” And predicting he will be fit for duty for a second term.

RJ: The President has great genes, and our cognitive test showed he was pretty damn smart too.

JG: Some say you got the VA appointment as payback for those sweet exam results. But tell us how you’re going to handle administering Veterans Affairs, a very challenged agency with 370,000 employees, 1,200 health care facilities, and maybe 9 million veteran patients. It’s the second-largest federal agency. How are you going to handle all that without any management experience?

RJ: I have no fucking idea. And of course I might well get dumped in the Senate confirmation hearings. Really, I just want to be the White House doctor. You can’t imagine what fun it is to give a president the cough test.

JG: Hmm. We hear that the political side to your appointment will be working to privatize the VA, a terrible idea that has the backing of the Koch brothers. Do you buy into that?

RJ: Well, the private sector represents everything good about America—free markets, trickle-down economics, social progress, low taxes, and a lot of smart people beating out the dumb ones. Government stifles initiative and gives some a free ride who don’t deserve it. We ought to try to make America great again, don’t you think? But I’m not into politics.

JG: Appreciate your candor, doc. Let me give you some back. I think Trump appointed you for strictly political and personal reasons—and because he could manipulate you. Everyone says you’re a good doc but they said the same thing about Ben Carson. Trump put him in charge of HUD, about which he knows nothing. Ditto Betsy DeVos in Education and Rick Perry in Energy. Scott Pruitt wants to gut and kill off the EPA, which he heads, at least for now. Maybe your appointment is a way for Trump to kill off or disable the VA.

RJ: You’re imputing some dark motives to a good man, Goodman. The President commands and deserves respect from us all—even if he’s slothful, obese, sclerotic, hair-obsessed, and prone to anger. Victim of an out-of-control ego, a wretched diet, and incipient cardiovascular disease, the man is completely careless of the dangers of his physical lifestyle. But don’t quote me and don’t print that!

JG: It’s all on deep background, doc, and . . . thank you, it’s been a pleasure.

__________

Chaos Theory

8/13/2016

I read something recently that attempts to delve into the murk of chaos and dysfunction: Jonathan Rauch’s “How American Politics Went Insane.” This is not just a history of polarization; it records the disintegration of our political institutions.

It’s a fascinating read. Rauch says we’re in the midst of “chaos syndrome,” a “psychiatric disorder,” much of which was brought on by our eagerness to vilify politicians and the many ways that parties and various intermediaries at all levels used to broker candidates and causes in order to get things done.

We’ve lost the intermediaries—like national, state and county parties, party committees, congressional subcommittees, the old kinds of party machinery, smoke-filled rooms, careerists and hacks. For all their flaws, these “structures” organized and represented voter groups, filtered money, kept the system functioning, and kept the extremists at bay.

But we threw them all out, reformed the nominating process, political financing, eliminated pork and private deal-making—to the point where most everyone now hates politicians and all they do or fail to do. . . . Rauch says, “Neurotic hatred of the political class is the country’s last universally acceptable form of bigotry.”

Trump was the predictable outcome.