Review of Masha Geeson’s Surviving Aristocracy…
Surviving Autocracy. Masha Gesson, author (Riverhead Press, Penguin/Random House). Although I’m a fiction writer, I read a lot of non-fiction, as a glance at the “Steve’s Bookshelf” web page at this website will show. A lot of it has to do with politics. I know many authors are afraid of alienating some of their readership, but I’ve been a political junkie since high school when John Bolton’s hero, Barry Goldwater, ran for president (I was not a Dr. Strangelove fan). Some readers, in fact, criticize me for being too political. Well, sorry folks, I call it morality—there is evil in the US and the world, and my themes are often related to that. In other words, if readers are moral human beings, they shouldn’t have any problem with my prose. Trumpism isn’t a political issue—it’s a bad versus good issue, because Trump is evil. Yes, Trump, Trumpsters, and Trumpism are immoral, and so are all his followers, including the Christian right. They’re preaching evil when they should be preaching good.
Political tomes come and go, but Surviving Autocracy is one of the most incisive, relevant ones because the author basically analyzes why the three Ts mentioned are evil. It not only digs into the Trump’s evil autocratic personality thoroughly, as Garcia Marquez did so well in Autumn of the Patriarch (Otoño del Patriarca), she shows this narcissistic wannabe dictator might be worse than any Third World autocrat—or his handlers, akin to Hitler’s staff, made him that way, although I think they only provided him the tools.
The author doesn’t go into any details; this isn’t an exposé of White House dirty dealings seen through an insider’s eyes. She’s more interested in the big picture, and that is one that makes many people, myself included, fearful that our republic is in grave danger, the moral danger that Trumpism represents. It might not survive another four years of Trump. However, the author doesn’t call him a fascist. This is a failing. It might be that NY Times culture, which has become so antiquated and unable to meet today’s pressing issues head-on, but the author doesn’t want to call Donald J. Trump a fascist. He is exactly that, an evil, corrupt, and perverted one to boot, and that he’s able to be all that and still become president and holder of the nation’s nuclear codes is frightening and an indictment of about 35% of the American population. He’s neither a reader nor a thinker (he’s an unstable moron), and he reacts in the same way as Garcia Marquez’s main character, an amalgam of Latin American dictators (of course, Trump would probably call Latin American countries “$%#^holes” too).
To be fair, the NY Times isn’t the only paper afraid of calling Trump a fascist. And all sixteen reviews of this book on Amazon (incredibly and belying its importance, the last time I looked, that’s all there were), avoided using the word “fascist.” Presumably Amazon’s censors axed all reviews using that word, which is why I didn’t even try to post this one. (Besides, it was purchased in a bookstore, not in Amazon—the online retailer frowns on those kinds of reader-reviewers.)
While I’ve only seen excerpts from that Room book, Surviving Autocracy is a much better study of Trump’s mentally diseased mind than Bolton’s doorstop (see last week’s op-ed). I won’t read Bolton’s book to hone that comparison, but I was happy to read this one in its entirety. It doesn’t really tell us how to survive Trump unfortunately, but it explains why we should. We only have one choice left: Give that man with a sick mind the boot in the 2020 election!
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Comments are always welcome.
Binge-reading #1. Reading an entire series certainly qualifies as binge-reading…and why not? The books in the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” are examples of those rare kinds of thriller David Baldacci, Lee Child, Jeffrey Deaver, James Patterson, and others might want to write but can’t: Each sci-fi novel in this trilogy is a big thrill ride. Full Medical is about a conspiracy where world leaders make sure they have enough body parts as they age; you’ll meet the clones. Evil Agenda is about an evil genius who’s out to take over the world; the clones are still around to try to stop him, and they’re joined by a mutant warrior. No Amber Waves of Grain is about a North Korean industrialist who’s out for revenge against the West; the clones team up with that first evil genius to try and stop him—but Chinese and Russians are lurking around too. The entire series can be found on Amazon and Smashwords and at all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker&Taylor, Gardners, etc.). Many entertaining hours of reading await you.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
