| IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THINK What the Trump Administration Is Doing To America David Cay Johnston New York: Simon & Schuster, January 2018 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-5011-7416-2 | ||||
| ISBN 1-5011-7416-9 | 306pp. | HC | $28.00 | |
David Cay Johnston has spent 30 years researching the unholy phenomenon that is Donald Trump, real estate mogul.1 He wrote The Making of Donald Trump in 2017; as of 16 Feb. 2018, 824 Amazon customers have given it an average rating of 4.6: an unusually favorable number for a book that criticizes Trump.
In It's Even Worse than You Think, he analyzes the behavior of the phenom and his administration in various areas. He begins the book by briefly describing the terms of a number of past presidents — both noble and notorious. These he compares to Trump's character and accomplishments.
"What distinguishes these American presidents from Trump? Some did great deeds and inspired great ambitions among the people, while others got lost in the small stuff. Some were reformers, others determined guardians of the status quo. Some spoke eloquently, lending grace to civic debate, while others were coarse, even verbal clods. Some, like Barack Obama, were personally scrupulous, their administrations free of scandal, while others, like Bill Clinton, couldn't control their impulses. What they had in common was that their administrations were about America and its people. Some presidents made America great, while others tried and missed the mark. Some took great political risks to move the country forward, as when Lyndon Johnson could not abide the oppression of fellow citizens a century after the Civil War just because of the color of their skin. Johnson knew his actions would cost Democrats the South for generations, but did what he thought was in the nation's best interests even if it would harm his party. We can look back at these presidents and applaud or be appalled by their conduct. But we must always take care to judge them by the standards of their day, not by conditions today. Viewed properly in the context of their times, the last forty-four presidents all pursued policies that they believed would make for a better America tomorrow. The Trump presidency is about Trump. Period. Full stop. – Page 5 |
He goes on to assess Trump's performance during his first year, and the performance of some of his appointees — cabinet members and others — in a number of areas. This assessment is filled with well-researched details, and virtually all the details are utterly damning for Trump. There are some curious omissions in the book. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who before confirmation vowed to abolish the Department of Energy, is never mentioned, and the only discussion of the Department of Energy is a brief mention of its plans (never carried through) of targeting and perhaps purging people who had attended climate conferences or worked on that issue. This may be due to the fact that Johnston specializes more in legal and financial areas — or perhaps a tight publication schedule is the reason.
Tempting as it is, I won't reproduce many of those details here. I cannot hope to match the author's thoroughness, and trying would make the review too long. Suffice it to say that Johnston documents problems that go well beyond the greed, mendacity, narcissism, and willful ignorance demonstrated by the current occupant of the Oval Office, which are well known to most of the public. Thus, it becomes even more urgent that Trump be removed or restrained.
Also, the public record is easily available to anyone who cares to look for the facts: facts revealed not only by Johnston's books and articles, but in articles, books and documentary films by others and even in books bearing Trump's name as author or co-author. I will soon list a small number of selected sources in a linked page.
In my opinion this book is a tour de force and among those I think it is vital for every American to read while Trump remains in control of the White House. Unlike some others on that list, it is both well-indexed and thoroughly end-noted. Although it has some grammatical errors, I give it top marks and rate it a keeper.
""For more than two decades I have warned that the frustrations caused by Washington and state capitals adopting stealth government policies favoring the rich would one day explode in ways that would be harmful, not beneficial, to our democracy. In bestselling books, hundreds of articles, columns and speeches I have documented how policies hardly anyone knew about take from the many in subtle ways and concentrate money in the pockets of the 32,000 or so Americans at the apex of the economic pyramid. "Trump is among those beneficiaries of modern America's silent plutocratic system of redistribution upward, a process that in Orwellian terms makes sure the pigs get the apples and milk because they claim they need them to help those animals who only get slop. That I explained these devices in my books Perfectly Legal, Free Lunch, and The Fine Print shows that irony is not dead. Trump masterfully grasped the anxiety and fear among the economically oppressed who had been largely abandoned by the Democrats. His slogans showed his mastery of the art of persuasion." – Page 256 |
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