Book Review of Schiff’s Midnight in Washington…
Midnight 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.
Mr. Schiff’s prose often reads like a thriller novel. He states somewhere that, as Californians are wont to do, his only previous experience at writing was with screenplays. I can’t believe that. (I’m a native Californian, and I’ve never written one!) Like all good thrillers, thia book is a page-turner. The reader knows what will happen next—ir’s all recent history—but the story is told by the man who was there, and it’s full of details that none of us could have ascertained only from news reports, so often lost in headlines and devoid of the details of the scurrilous crimes perpetrated by the Trump administration. This should be required reading in any political science or civics course. (It won’t be, of course, especially in states controlled by Trump’s acolytes.)
I only have one criticism of this book: Mr. Schiff, champion of morality, honesty, and integrity that he is (i.e. exactly the opposite of Trump), still fails to call the Good Ole Piranhas the Fascist Party of America and that “f*&^ing moron” Donald J. Trump the Fascist-in-Chief (the quote is from SecState Tillerson, whom Trump fired—most of those firings aren’t mentioned in the book). There’s more than enough evidence in this book to make those descriptions perfectly appropriate. Speaking truth to power requires using strong words. We need to call a spade a spade before Il Duce and his evil minions bury us with it (is that a “political pun”?).
I do have another criticism, a nit to pick, not of the book, but of Mr. Schiff and his staff. I wanted to send them a preview copy of this post—after all, authors of books can use reviews for marketing purposes, if only for excerpts—but they only accept emails from Mr. Schiff’s California district. Given that I grew up in California and that he’s a national celeb, you’d think that exceptions could be made! Our leaders should be available to receive feedback from anyone who’s not a crazy Trumper, actually even them (that’s what spam filters are for!).
This book isn’t for everyone, of course. Most of Trump’s followers can’t read or won’t, getting their “truth” from Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity (the real “fake news”!). There’s more than one moron marching along with the evil Pied Piper over the precipice now. Otherwise, everyone else who’s a responsible American should read this book before it’s too late.
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Gaia and the Goliaths. Of course, Trump was just a dumb weapon the fascist plutocrats of America used. In Russia, the plutocrats don’t try to hide. We often call Putin and friends oligarchs. I suppose the difference can be found in their numbers (one is too many). But the world’s small enough now that they can do a lot of damage in America and worldwide. This novel is about that worldwide menace. It’s also about global warming, something Putin doesn’t seem to worry about, even though Russia’s many square miles of permafrost are warming and ready to cause havoc in an already failing economy based on oil exports. Read about it here…or just enjoy a mystery/thriller that’s also a page-turner!
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
