The bad, the ugly and the rotten

The Empire always strikes back. Britannia may rue the waves that relocated the Crown from the “Sceptered Isle” to the capital of the New Imperium across the Atlantic. Subject peoples, however, have a way of getting back — in the Crown’s own coin, when the Empire’s currency is demonetised or devalued.

History gave us, in the 1970s, that monster President of Uganda, Idi Amin — a pervert that only the colonial-imperial British of that period could have produced. Now, in an ironic twist, the “white” West — which jeered at the decolonised “blacks” and the “browns” for the “apes” in their midst — has to bear the burden of Donald Trump at its helm. And Trump, without doubt, is born of the US need to push back the great unwashed immigrants from poorer countries, stirred by what the Statue of Liberty represents.

Consider this: “Racist, erratic, unpredictable, brutal, inept, bellicose, irrational, ridiculous, and militaristic”. It brings to mind US President Trump. But, this is how a US ambassador had summed up Amin before Washington shut its embassy in Kampala back then. Trumpisms today — such as, “Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking” — are actually Amin originals. Like Trump, Amin was also suspected of being pure “bone from the neck up”, who needed everything explained in one word.

When history repeats itself thus, it is hard to tell farce from tragedy. Yet, few chroniclers would dare trace parallels between the “civilised” in the advanced industrial West and the “underdeveloped” in the poorer continents of colour. Therefore, it is not surprising that Michael Wolff, for all his proclaimed baring of President Trump, his family members and factotums, and the deplorable goings-on in the dysfunctional White House, is most mindful of American sensibilities, self-image, and, of course, exceptionalism.

Wolff’s Fire and Fury is an entertaining rehash of gossip, rich in nasty details and catty comments, leavened with a lot of facts, brought alive by a known cast. The central figure of the narrative is the top dog (Trump) and his fleas — Jarvanka (fusion of Jared Kushner and Ivanka), chief strategist Steve Bannon, chief of staff Reince Preibus, his deputy Katie Walsh, communications chief Sean Spicer, his overseer and successor Scaramucci, media meddler Hope Hicks and message carrier Kellyanne Conway. Wolff has reduced them to caricatures and cartoons with names that even make them sound so.

The book tells us all that is already well known about Trump. That he is, in his own words, “a very stable genius”. In the words of other venerables, Trump is, variously, a “f***ing idiot” (Rupert Murdoch), a “f***ing moron” (Rex Tillerson), a “terrible collection of traits”, and “some weird shit” (George W Bush). Expletives are undeleted throughout the book. The language of Trump’s team many of his “buddies” is, for him, at best execrable, and at worst, scatological. Trump’s team, apart from keeping an eye on their main chance, remain preoccupied with their own jealousies, rivalries and leaks to media (against their colleagues). They hardly come through as public officials who are actuated by any pretence at public service.

Trump is the self-aggrandising titan, who strides like a colossus amidst this wretched crew of sycophants. As Wolff the muckraker tells it, Trump seems to be made for his team. He is unstable, self-absorbed, intellectually unsound, incapable of paying attention to issues or engaging in discussions, a bundle of revolting eccentricities and least interested in policy, legislation, foreign affairs and matters that occupy heads of state. All that he wants is to be “famous” and to be left to his tweets and cable TV channels, where he wants to watch himself in action; and, talk to “buddies” over phone at night. In short, Trump is unfit — by any yardstick — for the job and incapable of presidential conduct.

Although there are many interesting lines, Wolff’s writing is bad, boring and repetitive. Bannon, doubtless, is his source. And, like Trump, Bannon may not be entirely unhappy with the book and what it says.

Fire and Fury Inside the Trump White House Michael Wolff Non-fictionLittle, Brown₹699

Trump, the author says, never expected to be president and was terrified when he won. Wolff often describes a scenario and gives different versions of a crisis or event, but never sets down a single authoritative account. He does not say how he gathered the information he’s put together or who his sources were — besides Bannon. Nor does he reveal what he saw or heard first-hand and which is hearsay.

Wolff almost absolves Trump and his team of their sins of omission and commission by holding up Trump as “a symbol of the media’s self-loathing”. That, however, is not Wolff’s only failing. True to American form, he roots for all the corrupt, coercive and secretive arms — such as the CIA and FBI — of the techno-corporate state. He calls a meeting of Trump’s men with Russians as “treasonous” — which shows unprofessional prejudice for an informed journalist. When the US has full and formal diplomatic relations with Russia, how can such a meeting be called “treasonous”? Besides, in the process of deploring Trump, the CIA and FBI are painted almost as institutions of infallible moral virtue rather than instruments of covert operations and dirty tricks.

The author, by implication, exonerates Americans of the “stupidity and cupidity” of electing Trump. Wolff would have us believe the subtext that Trump won because of the “evil Russians”, and not because Americans wanted him!

The book, like earlier ones on US presidents, takes an insider’s institutional view and upholds the myths of presidential power, majesty of the White House, and the US being solely a force for good in the world. In fact, Wolff appears to revel in Trump’s White House for the opportunity it provided him to write such a book; and set himself apart from the credible liberal media (which exposes the Trump administration through intrepid matter-of-fact reporting). Yet, his book was possible because he was a permitted voyeur in the political hothouse; and, there’s nothing in this book that sets him above or apart from the rest of the media.

And then, there is the parting scare that the dismissed and discredited Bannon may well run for President in 2020. After Trump, anything appears plausible.

Shastri Ramachandaran is a New Delhi-based journalist and an independent political and foreign affairs commentator

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