You know the codger loves to read.
Nothing better than sitting here in the “cool” (?) autumn breeze under the River Tree with a good Sandford or Grisham, or maybe even sci-fi, if you can find one.
Non-fiction? Not so much. This old gray matter requires fast moving action to keep focused. Otherwise, snooze alarm.
But the old guy did ask the folks at Riverside Library recently to save him a copy of a non-fiction that’s been on the bestseller list since it came out several months back, Regime Change.
Believe it or not, when apparently nobody but librarians actually read anything beyond shopping lists, menus and texts, the old guy usually has 4 or 5 books lined up. And though he ain’t exactly the fastest reader, harrumph … depending on how good or bad the plot is, he’ll either zip through them, or skim them as his head nods and his eyes glaze over.
For better or worse, he’d recently run through everything on the bed table. The only thing left was this weighty and somewhat tortuous tome.
One of the problems with non-fiction for the old dude is they typically either relate to current events or history and though time has taken its toll on the old galoot’s short-term memory, as long as it didn’t take place yesterday, or last Wednesday; when you’ve lived as long as the old guy, you’ve pretty much got history covered … post Revolution, at least. Hey, just kidding, Sort of.
In this case, the facts spelled out, though mind numbing in the breadth and depth of their malfeasance, were pretty much what was expected. The authors accurately regurgitated the mess we’ve made for ourselves since a certain escalator ride eleven years ago.
It ain’t the relentless restatement that gets you; it’s the realization that this is the character study of an honest to God, world class sociopath.
Not just one of these poor saps who’ve found a hole and role for their societal hatred in criminal or Mafioso gangs leaning on small shop owners, but a goofball who’s clawed his way out of the gutter of his delusions, prurient lusts and hatreds to purported leadership of what we used to call the free world by hoodwinking enough of us well meaning, but often ill-informed and/or fear-tormented citizens by claiming to be able to solve absolutely any “problem” we might have, be they fear of crime, rape, lumbago, Alzheimer’s or Peyronie’s disease or Jews, Muslims, atheists, socialists, Christian Scientists or rampant furries.
He’s a casebook sociopath, folks. He grew up demeaned and ridiculed by a patently racist father who’d openly been part of the KKK and who’d made a mess of money as a slumlord in New York.
What he learned from dear old dad was hatred, how to lie to get what you want and avoid punishment, and to never, ever admit you’re wrong.
He serially pretended to be his own publicist, inflated property values, suffered multiple bankruptcies, eluded lawsuits and prosecutions right and left and would have pretty much been relegated to the flush toilet of history if some desperate TV producers hadn’t come up with the goofy idea of a TV show about a business mogul deciding if their apprentice was worthy of being kept or fired and then, out of the blue, looked at each other and exclaimed, “Hey, the Donald can do that!”
Unaccountably, a whole bunch of us actually watched this “stuff” and became convinced that this overly coifed, blown up and strutting narcissist was “the real thing.”
Yep, he’s “the real thing,” if the real thing is a toothache, a mooching in-law who never goes away, or maybe the bubonic plague or black death.
Unfortunately this character’s going to be the death of us. And he ain’t goin’ away, unless we vote out his cronies, sycophants and fellow grifters Nov. 3.
