Op-Ed Pages #8: Who is the real John Bolton?
John Bolton’s book has made a lot of news (Simon & Schuster likes the free publicity, I’m sure), and he’s been attacked by both Dems and the Good Ole Piranhas firmly in Trump’s greasy, fascist hands now. The book will be published (copies are already distributed and many pundits have one), and we’ll have to see if Trump’s threat of reprisals isn’t just more autocratic blathering (loss of royalties and lawsuits for releasing classified info, although so far I see no reason for this, and the book passed inspection back in April).
So is he just another celeb trying to get rich writing tell-all crap? I hate celeb books. They’re often written by ghost writers (that’s financially good for those writers, I suppose) and replete with scandal and character assassinations. Has conservative hawk John seen the light, trying to save his soul by pretending to worry about the American people? Nah! His gaze has always been outward, a bit like many English leaders lamenting Great Britain’s loss of relevance; Bolton has never worried about social issues, which often affect Americans more. Has he suddenly realized that fascism is morally reprehensible, and the wannabe autocrat in the White House can destroy the country?
Who is the real John Bolton? First, let’s consider who he’s not. He’s not the guy who testified against Trump in the impeachment. He betrayed the American public there. Ho-hum…Trump broke the law some more: Supporting Xi’s concentration camps for China’s Muslim minority shows Trump’s immorality, but asking Xi to interfere in American elections on his behalf is as least as damning as asking the Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. After all, China’s Xi is probably a more dangerous foe than the bumbling Putin. But did you really expect anything else? And did Bolton? Why did Bolton not testify? Because he wanted to save those headlines for his book!
Second, let’s analyze his consistency. He lacks it. If he considered the Ukraine incident a drug deal, what about all those other “deals” and “reality shows” that Trump has orchestrated and that Bolton helped disguise as diplomacy. Of course, John has more diplomatic experience than Pinocchio Pompeo. A diplomat, or any public employee for that matter, who sees behavior that is detrimental to US interests should report it. Period. You aid and abet if you let the SOBs get away with it. His answer to other people who didn’t like what was going on was basically to tell them to go see a lawyer. He didn’t have the courage to do it himself. His book isn’t the testimony of a whistle-blower; it’s the partial diary of an American who didn’t do his job and should be tried for treason, same as Trump.
As an old white duffer who was a social activist, I judge a man by how he acts his whole life. I dislike Biden for some of his errors made as senator, for example, but Biden isn’t a fascist and he’s not a divider. I hate Trump because he’s been an evil moron all his life, most certainly a bully even in grade school, and now a complete fascist who only worries about himself, not the American people. He tries mightily to divide us, in fact. Bolton sits somewhere in between, but he’s a complete weasel…always has been. My God, he even supported Goldwater aka Dr. Strangelove! Maybe you don’t remember Barry. I do. Another fascist psycho.
From what I’ve seen so far, there’s nothing in Bolton’s book that’s really surprising, just more examples of Trump’s egregious behavior, most of them already known if you haven’t turned off the news. We know all about Trump by now. We all know he isn’t qualified to be president. He isn’t even a good businessman. He took daddy’s millions, squandered them, and declared bankruptcy…how many times? Trump isn’t even qualified to shine Biden’s shoes (he’s probably never had to shine his own his whole damn life). Everyone also knows meeting Kim Jong Un at the South and North Korean border was just a photo op. And that Putin plays Trump like a fiddle. We didn’t need Bolton to tell us that.
Will Bolton and his book help defeat Trump? I don’t know. Maybe. What’s in it might have helped the impeachment trial more, but with the Good Ole Piranhas in charge of the Senate, the impeachment results were doomed from the start. (Fortunately Moscow Mitch and Loco Lindsey are having tough 2020 election campaigns—so are many other Good Ole Piranhas. Hopefully we can clean house—correction, clean Senate.)
Instead, by not testifying, Bolton insured we’d have too many more months of the Trump administration, the worst and most corrupt administration this country has ever seen (the mudslinging against Biden has already started, because Bolton wrote one truth—Trump is obsessed with his reelection). Maybe we should charge John for aiding and abetting Trump in the murder thousands? If Trump had been forced to resign after impeachment, the COVID-19 pandemic might have been handled a lot better—there was a time when Pence actually listened to Fauci. (No longer, of course, because his boss told him not to. Forget about the deaths. We gotta fix the economy, don’t you know?)
As Bolton himself warns, we’re now in danger of another four years of Trump. It’s a sure thing that Trump’s fascism will run wild if that occurs. Yes, in my opinion, Bolton has damaged this country a lot in order to sell his book. That’s really being a weasel! Or is he the wolf in sheep’s clothing? One thing for sure: We can’t trust him! And I won’t buy his doorstop of a book.
And by the way, if you’re interested in a better written and honest exposés, try Masha Gessen’s Surviving Autocracy. Mary Trump’s looks like a good one too—she’s a psychologist!. It will be out at the end of July, and maybe it will be a tell-all about the dangerous psycho in the White House. Forget Bolton’s book. That weasel doesn’t deserve your hard-earned money.
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Comments are always welcome!
A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. Readers of this blog know I don’t write romance or erotica, but I’ve met those popular genres halfway with this sci-fi rom-com—that’s sci-fi romantic comedy. Enrico Fermi wasn’t the last physicist who was both an experimental and theoretical genius, but Professor Gail Hoff will never receive the Nobel Prize. She goes time-traveling through several universes of the multiverse, never to return to her little lab outside Philly. Jeff Langley, her jack-of-all-trades electronics wizard, accompanies her. Their escapades, both amorous and adventurous, make this novel a far-out road-trip story filled with dystopian and post-apocalyptic situations, first encounter, robots and androids—those and more await the reader who rides along. An excellent distraction from the pandemic that’s coming soon!
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
