Fire and Fury (book)

Light (before) reading.

I was sitting at breakfast in Orlando, on the third day of the new year, when I discovered and then read those first, tantalizing excerpts from Michael Wolff’s now-notorious book on the first few months of the Trump presidency, Fire and Fury.

Wolff has had the advantage of being first, if not the most accurate, chronicler of the current unpleasantness. Like many who are appalled by the current occupier of the White House and his entire cast of unsavory characters, I looked forward to buying the book when it was released, if only as another sign that the status quo was unacceptable and that we will never stop making it clear that it is.

Interesting that Wikileaks would release a PDF of the entire book the day before its release. I remember when Assange pretended to promote transparency in all governments, instead of transparency only for those he has decided are his enemies. Violating the copyright for an entire written work is not the same as releasing the Pentagon Papers, it’s just a crime, and one obviously intended to drive down sales.

Why am I writing about this now, when Fire and Fury is last month’s news? Well, the fact is, I hoped to read the entire thing in just a few day and write about it then, but I got through a few chapters and it just languished on the pile.

The fact is, it’s a bit dry. The book succeeds primarily for being first. It made the President very angry, but he’ll be angry again, and many times over, as each subsequent book is written, by journalists, his former colleagues, and his countless accusers.

Following the initial “Oh, boy!!!” factor of reading about Election Night, and how terrified the Trump camp was coming to terms with that fact that they had actually won, I realized something very basic about this book which has also tamped down my interest in reading to the end.

We know all this. We have known all of this. There is nothing in this supposedly explosive book that is a revelation. I have been saying for the better part of a year that everything that has happened makes complete sense when you consider that absolutely no one in Trump's campaign, including the man himself, thought he would win.

That’s why they were unprepared to govern. That’s why they front-ended accusations that the election was rigged -- to slander the presumptive victor, Hillary Clinton. And that’s why they blithely committed crimes against the state which would pay staggeringly great dividends -- political and financial -- after their loss, and go entirely uninvestigated. It all makes sense, and this book simply corroborates what was and is clearly evident.

It is all obvious, it has always been obvious, and it is all true. Doesn’t matter how the author presented himself to his subjects. They told him their version of the truth, and it was the same stuff  that was coming through their official channels, their constant leaking, and the president’s uncontrollable need to tweet.

As a preemptive defense, Wolff restates, again and again, how everyone in the White House desperately wanted to talk. And not just to him, every member of the staff -- not the White House staff, not underlings, but Trump’s own advisors, his inner-circle, even adjunct members of his own family -- talked, all the time, to everyone, about everything. Wolff is not presenting himself as some kind of insider with exclusive knowledge. He was just smart enough to be there and to make sure everyone had his cell number.

One of the most satisfying pleasures (if you can call it that) of reading Fire and Fury is knowing what happened immediately after its release, and that was the humiliation of Steve Bannon. A reprehensible turdshirt whose photographic image emits a discomfiting pong, his name is all over this book, his quotes are most-attributed. This man, who delighted in his own ability to send liberals to the fainting couch, proved himself to be an over-confident clown whose belief in his own magnitude left him confident enough to speak on the record, and at length, about absolutely everything.

Either that or he's so insecure he needs to constantly let everyone at the party know that he's someone. The most intimidating villains are the quietest. It's the difference between Bob ("Twin Peaks" reference) and Windhom Earle. One is scary, the other isn't. You talk too much, Windom. You never shut up.

Bannon lost his position, he lost the president’s confidence, he lost his job at Breitbart, and he lost his sugar mommy. He made a comic mistake and has paid a steep price. We feared him when he was in the Oval Office, and justifiably so. Bannon is an embittered, creepy, right-wing opportunist with angry, racist tunnel vision, and he had the ear of the President of the United States. It was awful.

Now, we can’t hope he’ll go to prison, because he's probably the only person associated with Trump who hasn't actually broken a law. But he's out, out of everything. Who can trust him? He’s a joke.

There’s one thing he did say, however, it’s a quote from the book, and it gave me a great deal of clarity and hope in this difficult time.

So Bannon’s at this dinner party (yes, thrown by Michael Wolff himself, very clever) going on about what he, or rather Trump, needs to do to roll back the tide of international American permissiveness. Halting immigration, pulling out of treaties, abandoning influence in the Middle East -- letting them just kill each other. More walls, stronger borders, America first. Yadda yadda. He mocks Obama. A lightweight, a fool.

"I don't know what Obama does," Bannon said. "What has he accomplished, what does he do?"

What does Obama do. This man, Bannon, who had a hand in electing the new president, admits ignorance as to what Obama did, what Obama does, about who Obama is, about what Obama represents.

It's not that he dismisses Barack Obama and that sizable percentage of Americans who admire him and were and are affected by Obama's Presidency. It's that Bannon doesn’t get it. He doesn't see it. He sees an America he wants to create, but he has absolutely no idea what America actually is.

Steve Bannon and his kind fear a future they cannot fathom nor comprehend and are certainly incapable of altering or controlling. That is why they are dangerous. It is also why they are doomed to failure.

Happy President's Day.

Hall of Presidents

One of them.

New Year's 2011 my family and my folks took a vacation at Disney World. The girl was almost eight, the boy was five and a half. They are each, by nature or nurture, cautious. The boy has a healthy streak of self-preservation; when he senses danger (from perhaps an ominous musical cue) he will choose to remove himself from a situation to avoid being scared. These things have changed recently, as they each are exposed to the thrills of fantastic literature or movies with a lot of action.

So, it was not a weekend of thrill-rides or anything even approaching a roller-coaster. Even one look at Goofy's Barnstormer was enough to make the girl shake her head and walk away.

We were meeting my parents for lunch at the Liberty Tree Tavern (an 18th century-inspired family dining experience no doubt refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants) and had time beforehand to experience what Liberty Square had to offer. Somewhere along the line, however, my wife decided it would be fun for she and the girl to take in the Haunted Mansion.

There was no question that the boy was too young for that. Instead, we chose to explore the Hall of Presidents. Now, I had visited WDW three times before (really? that many?) in 1982, 1990 and 2000. Previously, the idea of watching an animatronic pageant of our white male chief executives struck me as only slightly more interesting than sitting in on a board meeting at British Petroleum.

Roll call of Presidents, early 2008.
Notice the cheers and boos around 2:49

But the boy loves history, like his father. Like his grandfather. And there would be life-size robot puppets. After spinning in teacups and the horror that is woozles (aaugghh ... the woozles ...) sitting in a dark room to watch sounded like the right thing at the right time.

Now, it has been suggested that Walt Disney World is attended largely by white people and international tourists. I am not going to get into any urban legends as to why this might be the case. Perhaps it is enough to say that, upon observation, I did feel that the percentage of people of color attending the parks, at that time, to my unscientific eye, represented something less than the national average, How's that?

However, upon entering the oval-shaped waiting hall for the exhibit, I was immediately struck by something blatantly obvious. The room was full of people, and with African-American and other people of color representing at least half of the crowd. Having never stepped into this exhibit before, I cannot vouch for how popular it usually is. But it was still morning on New Year's Day and the park was not yet at teeming capacity. Was it usually this popular, among a diverse crowd? Or was there something ... different?

Oh, yeah. That happened.

I am not going to make any sweeping generalizations about why this president is different, those are obvious, some might say irrelevant. Our visit was in the middle of Obama's first term, perhaps at the nadir of his popularity (actually, that would come later, in August when it reached something like 38%) and one must be judged on their accomplishments, or their perceived accomplishments, anyway. As the man whose day we celebrate today once said, it's character not color, stupid.

However, when you are being taught the history of America, and at the top of the list of special people whose names you must memorize there are 43 men who look an awful lot alike, and with few exceptions come from backgrounds of privilege, to wit; money, well there are a large number of people who may feel that they have little or no interest in that. Not in general, certainly not on vacation.

But when that small minority or minorities who do make the pilgrimage to Buena Vista, Florida all make a point to see the same attraction, you have to wonder whether or not they are saying, with their feet, this is important. This means something. It's not about him. It's about us.

And they, and me, and so many others, said it again on November 6. Happy Inauguration Day, America.

One footnote ... the Haunted Mansion broke down, stuck in the middle of horrifying exhibits which keep repeating and repeating and repeating. My daughter was traumatized. But it could have been worse. It could have been on It's A Small World After All.

I snorted milk through my nose.

Campaign Stop

President Obama paid a visit to CSU today.

It rained a lot.

A reported 9,000 people stood in the rain for hours to see the President.

Thanks to Deonna K. for the ticket.