Book Review: Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man…
Confidence Man. Maggie Haberman, author (2022). Unlike other books about Donald J. Trump and his MAGA fascism, this one is more of a standard biography. We see the making of a sociopathic leader who led an unsuccessful coup against the US government on January 6, 2021. Unfortunately, he’s not unique because there are many others now on America’s far right and they could accomplish what he set out to do: Turn the USA into the FSA, the Fascist States of America. In fact, he might return in 2024 to lead MAGA maggots on.
Like many pundits and analysts studying the extreme right-wing of the Good Ole Piranhas, Ms. Haberman is afraid to use the words fascist and fascism. I’m not, and I challenge any intelligent person to read this book and not see the parallels with 1930s Germany and the rise of the Nazi party. Germany’s fascism wasn’t the creation of Hitler; America’s is not the creation of Trump. They’re both just examples of two charismatic and narcissistic leaders’ abilities to brainwash millions of citizens and turn them into lemmings who follow them over the cliffs into the abyss of fascism.
But this is a book review, so let’s get some technical details out of the way first. This book is badly edited—you can tell it was hastily put together. The publisher, Penguin Press, did Ms. Haberman no favors. This applies to content-editing as well as copy-editing. And I understand the intention of the front and back images on the flyleaf cover: They wanted to state in images that the biopic considers all of DJT’s life from his time as a spoiled yet tortured brat in the household of a sociopathic father (a mental illness DJT also suffers from, according to many mental health professionals, including his own niece) to the incompetent businessman and fanatical, narcissistic, and paranoid fascist. But the back pic and its sentence (see below) would have been better on the front.
With the chaos DJT has created and is still creating, it’s of course difficult to content-edit and maintain a more rational feel in a book about him. A man who can go from one topic to another in minutes and rarely seems focused was always a real challenge for anyone trying to “manage him,” as the huge turnover in his administration indicated. That chaos is also any challenge for any biographer too, so the majority of pages in this tome are roller-coaster rides, a whacka-mole reading experience.
More disconcerting for me, though, were the copy-editing errors that often interrupted my reading when I would need to stop and say “Huh?” until I figured out what was meant. I shan’t blame the author for all of these errors—she’s an accomplished journalist and probably a better writer than anyone in Penguin’s editorial staff—so I blame the latter. At the retail price of $32 as indicated on that flyleaf cover, Penguin will make a killing with this book everyone’s been waiting for, so they should have delivered a more polished product. (Unfortunately, this critique is all too applicable to traditionally published works today, especially from the Big Five publishing conglomerates that are anxious to make their money as fast as possible.)
Still, the reader has here a well documented portrayal of the man who is out to destroy American democracy. You see here no positives about Trump or his rabid MAGA maggot followers, or inept and chaotic administration, or his wild and incoherent policies—only negatives. It is indeed “…the book that Trump fears most” because it portrays the most dangerous person American government has ever known while being at the same time the most moronic one.
Most of this biography is well known to those who care about American democracy (too many don’t give a damn, from being indifferent to wanting to destroy it, their hero being Trump). But there are many nuggets that broaden that knowledge. If only for his almost total ignorance of how government and international geopolitics works, he and his MAGA maggot minions are a clear and present danger to freedom and democracy, and he has been that from his boyhood years to his failed coup motivated by his claims that the 2020 election was stolen, claims he still uses to spur on the MAGA hordes after being blown away at the ballot box in that election, both in the popular and Electoral College vote (he didn’t win the first in 2016 and was already was claiming then that was because the election was rigged).
While many people who are tuned into the current and ugly bifurcation now existing in America’s divisive politics, most of the damage being orchestrated by Trump’s acolytes among the Good Ole Piranhas, others are either oblivious, unconcerned, or ignorant of the existential danger this means to democracy in the US and worldwide. The latter people really need to read this book! If they do, they might realize that they are channeling the same attitudes that allowed the Nazis to come to power in the 1930s.
Fascism is not an ideology because all too often it revolves around a paranoid and sociopathic leader and becomes cultish. Trump is on the level of Jones, Koresh, and Manson, only he encourages the millions in his cult to do his dirty work for him. (He can say that he could walk down Fifth Avenue, kill someone, and get away with it, but he doesn’t have the balls to do it!) This can even be seen when he blatantly lies and his followers believe him. They blindly believe he can do no wrong. He’s their hero and savior. He could turn his famous Apprentice show into something listeners thought indicated real business acumen (his many bankruptcies showed the lie of that) and get away with it; and many stupid investors, including major banks, swallowed that lie as well. (Deutsche Bank stuck with him until the end.) He could have mistresses like any two-bit dictator around the world in one of his “shithole countries” or otherwise—one was a Playboy bunny and another a porn star—and hypocritical right-wing Catholics and evangelicals still laid hands on him to anoint him as their leader. He could attend church during the Iowa caucuses and confuse the communion plate with the offering plate. He can express love for Putin; break the law by withholding military aid to Ukraine to get them to go after Biden’s son and get away with it; and, as a final act (so far), stage a coup against the US government.
I waited to publish this review until after the midterms. Whatever their results and any chest-thumping or claims of fraud from DJT and his MAGA maggots in reaction to them, he isn’t running until 2024, if he does. Like 2020, that presidential election might again be a choice for American voters: Do you choose a future of fascism for America, or do you choose a future of freedom and democracy? You’ll surely will want to read this book before then, especially if Il Duce Trump or any of his acolytes is running for president.
Yes, this is his biography, where the reader will be reminded of and learn more about DJT’s perfidy; it’s the biography of a wannabe dictator. The scary question? What comes next? I’d like to hear Ms. Haberman’s opinions about that! I suggest she use the word fascism and fascists in her analysis. They’re appropriate.
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Speaking of fascism…. It gives me great pleasure to announce the release of the third novel in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series, Fear the Asian Evil. Here’s a summary:
Former Scotland Yard Inspector Steve Morgan’s next case at Bristol PD involves the attempted murder of a journalist who happens to be the sister-in-law of one of his sergeants. Its prelude, though, involves a fishing trip made during a vacation when Steve and his girlfriend’ father find a dead Chinese spy afloat in the North Sea. That leads to frictions with MI5 that distract from solving what should be the routine case of the woman’s attempted murder. The hunt for spies and ordinary policework clash until they come together.
All three novels deal with fascistic and disturbed individuals. Book One, Legacy of Evil, considers the autocratic Putin; Book Two, Cult of Evil, a sociopathic con man like Trump and many others; and this new third novel, the autocratic Xi. Fascism is an existential problem that our world must face in order to survive. All these novels are distributed by Draft2Digital and available wherever quality ebooks are sold (just on Amazon, which I boycott now).
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
