Book Review of Schiff’s Midnight in Washington…
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2022Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could. Adam Schiff, author. (Random House, 2021). This important book (and a few others like it) does a great service. Here we learn the details about how some people—not just Mr. Schiff and his colleagues who ran the first impeachment trial prosecuting a psychotic sociopath who still poses a great danger to American democracy (he’ll forever be impeached—the only US president to have the stain of being impeached twice!)—but also others who have the courage to speak truth to power. We all should be so brave; otherwise, we’ll lose our precious republic to the dark forces of fascism. (I do my small part by blasting my representatives in Congress with emails, telling them to act, as well as by writing my political blog at http://pubprogressive.com. We should all do what we can. Democracy is worth saving!)
While this is mostly the story of the first impeachment trial and briefly the second, it’s a book that shows how Trump aka Il Duce has completely destroyed American conservatism, turning the GOP into his acolytes and morphing them into the fascist Good Ole Piranhas. This orange-skinned devil in four short years (which seemed like an eternity!) also decreased our stature in the world, much to the delight of autocrats like Putin and Xi and other two-bit fascist leaders who would tell you that representative democracies can’t get anything done and that a strong man, a president-for-life like those two servants of evil, are necessary. Perhaps many in the world are sad to see that America, that shining beacon for democracy and freedom, is all but extinguished as the US now looks more and more like 1930s Germany, but what’s sadder is that many Americans don’t see that and are hastening our slide down into the cesspool of fascism.
This book validates all my fears I’ve had since Trump walked down those stairs in Trump-the-Chump’s Tower to launch his presidential campaign by calling immigrants murders and rapists, a standard tactic used by the worst dictators, including Hitler: Create a minority all the disgruntled morons can blame for their problems! (Those problems often caused by fascists and the plutocrats who control them.) Many readers will find the details in this story as scary as I did. What I find even scarier, though, is that we’re still letting the fascist Good Ole Piranhas spew this vitriol and hatred.
Mr. Schiff takes us through all the events that too many of us paid no attention to; others purposely tried to forget; and still others, most of the Good Ole Piranhas, celebrated. It’s required reading for every respectable US citizen who might be wondering what can be done to save our democracy in the sense that it’s a list of things we shouldn’t allow to happen. The most obvious now: Never trust a Republican! Mr. Schiff’s subtitle is a reminder of the danger that’s still with us.