Boxing on
Noughties telly all about escapism
A Warning, by Anonymous. Little, Brown. RRP $34.99. Reviewed by Josh Glancy.
In September last year, an author known only as Anonymous exploded into the Trump era with a New York Times op-ed that went viral, headlined: ‘‘I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration’’. Anonymous assured readers that there was a group of diligent patriots, described as the ‘‘steady state’’, who were working to frustrate some of President Trump’s more apocalyptic tendencies. The republic might yet be saved. Exercising his usual temperance, Trump responded by suggesting that the op-ed might be ‘‘treason’’. And so, according to the iron laws of publishing in the Trump era, a mighty book deal was spawned.
The result is a longer treatise on the profound dangers of the Trump presidency, a reminder, as the common mantra goes, that ‘‘this is not normal’’. A Warning is a surprisingly readable account of life inside the Trump administration: snappy, colourful and alarming. None of it will shock close observers, but it’s intriguing to hear the story told by someone still on the inside.
So what’s it really like? Lurid metaphors abound. According to Anonymous, the so-called ‘‘adults in the room’’ are like ‘‘glorified babysitters’’ for a president who resembles a ‘‘12-year-old in an air-traffic control tower, pushing the buttons of government indiscriminately’’.
‘‘It’s like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly at the cafeteria food’’, is the description of how Trump makes officials feel. His advisers conduct a ‘‘daily face-palm ritual’’ in response to the president’s erratic ideas, before gently trying to inform him that ‘‘the law cannot be shaped like Play-Doh’’.
Officials seek to ignore, sidestep, frustrate, and hoodwink the president so that they don’t have to pursue whatever whack-a-doodle scheme he’s concocted that morning.
For his part, Trump views this book as irrefutable evidence of the socalled deep-state conspiracy. The president wants to enact a radical populist agenda, but is endlessly frustrated by cunning, unelected bureaucrats. A more valid critique is that Anonymous, like many implacable Trump opponents, doesn’t give the president’s backers a fair hearing, describing them as ‘‘docile’’ and ‘‘gullible’’.
The author fails to acknowledge that for all Trump’s pinball politics, he has several consistent impulses that many Americans support: isolationism, protectionism, immigration restrictionism, and rejection of liberal mores. Oppose these views by all means, but dismiss them at your peril.
Still, reading this book you can’t help but feel grateful for the presence of the ‘‘steady state’’ bureaucrats in the administration, and troubled at their equally steady rate of departure. Those who remain tend to be sycophants and flunkeys who ‘‘let Trump be Trump’’, which is how he landed himself in the entirely self-inflicted Ukraine scandal. In the book’s most memorable passage, the author complains the government increasingly resembles Trump’s property empire: a ‘‘badly managed enterprise . . . rife with infighting, embroiled in lawsuits, falling deeper into debt, allergic to internal and external criticism, open to shady side deals, and servicing its self-absorbed owner at the expense of its customers’’.
Whoever wrote this bleak polemic has been labelled a ‘‘coward’’ and a ‘‘hypocrite’’ for failing to reveal their identity.
So who is Anonymous? Possible candidates include FBI director Chris Wray and former acting secretary of homeland security Kevin McAleenan, though fan favourite is a collaboration between White House spin doctor Kellyanne Conway and her Trumphating husband George. All will probably be revealed soon: the author has promised not to keep their identity ‘‘shrouded in secrecy forever’’, and warned that ‘‘Donald Trump has not heard the last of me’’.
The book immediately became a No 1 bestseller in America, but it’s noticeable that Trump is no longer tweeting furiously about his hidden detractor. Despite all their dire warnings, Anonymous is fast becoming just one more broken guard rail. And, for now at least, the Trump train rolls on.