A dystopian world ruled by capricious leadership serving up individual sacrifice
‘WHO are these old fellas, Da?’ Young Persephone was leafing through the book which has been capturing my attention of late. Indeed, ‘Fear’ has been capturing plenty of attention all around the world, riding high in the bestseller charts on both sides of the Atlantic. The hype surrounding Bob Woodward’s examination of the first year of the presidency of Donald Trump must have passed our daughter by. She prefers to head for the section marked ‘Fantasy’ whenever she ventures into the Our Town bookshop, without ever venturing into ‘ Non-Fiction’. Perhaps a concerned father should point out that there are occasionally parallels between the two.
‘A dystopian world ruled by capricious leadership serving up individual sacrifice to a public hungry for sensation.’ Persephone might recognise ‘Hunger Games’ from this description, while her father sees the current regime in the White House.
I set ‘Fear’ aside, taking time to massage my bunion and to digest some of the implications of the contents but he has never seen anything like The Donald. A man more lacking in humility than Trump is hard to imagine. A man less grounded in truth is hard to imagine. His personal vanity and short span of attention give him the personality of a reckless adolescent whose approach to the presidency veers close to being a perpetual game of Russian roulette. As I pondered the implications of US trade policy, I became aware of Persephone’s presence.
‘Who are these old fellas, Da?’
She had skipped the text and turned directly to the illustrations in the middle of the book. And it was true, the line-up of characters floating in and out of the West Wing is dominated by old fellas. The faces in the photographs are overwhelmingly wrinkled. The hair, where it is still in place, tends to be grey though the outlandish coif of their commander-in-chief remains stubbornly orange.
The first picture shows 72 year old Donald Trump with his 48 year old wife and their 12 year old son Barron. The images thereafter are dominated by the middle-aged to old men. Vice-President Mike Pence is at the young end of the scale at 59 compared with, for example, Chief of Staff John Kelly (68) or Trump’s first choice as Secretary of State Mike Tillerson (66).
Then there’s Don McGahn (50), HR McMaster (56), Gary Cohn (58), Mike Flynn (59), Steve Bannon (64), Peter Navarro (69) and John Dowd (77). They sound like men in their prime to her sexagenarian father but must reek of dinosaur to a teenager.
Trump family members such as son-in-law Jared Kushner breaks the doddery trend at 39, while daughter Ivanka is a mere 36 - but they are exceptions along with former Staff Secretary Rob Porter (40). The two other women who merit portraits in ‘Fear’ are election campaign manager Kellyanne Conway (51) and ex press secretary Hope Hicks (30).
By the way, there is little point in memorising most of these names since Trump tends to fall out with those around him and they are soon discarded. The ‘You’re fired!’ line he coined as the boss from hell in ‘The Apprentice’ is generally not required as most of them jump before being pushed.
As Donald Trump emerged in 2016 as a serious contender to become leader of the free world, friends were bemused. In Ireland, we select our presidents to represent rather than to rule. It is hard to imagine that we would feel ourselves adequately represented by someone with such graceless views on the opposite sex and such a talent to divide his nation.
At the time, I recall hearing women acquaintances voice serious concern about the new man in the Oval Office. The notion of a wall along the Mexican border did not worry them, nor the prospect of trade sanctions, nor smutty talk about groping pretty women.They feared his rejection of the Paris Accord on climate change with huge implications for future generations.
Sadly ‘Fear – Trump in the White House’ offers little or no insight into this issue. Author Bob Woodward is 75 years of age and more pre-occupied with the Korean security situation than carbon emissions. The suspicion grows that we middle-aged and elderly men are not the most reliable guardians of our planet.