Woodward's book makes it clear: We have everything to fear, even fear itself

[jserraglio]

I'm about 50% thru it, but esp. after reading the tale of the South Korea KORUS trade-deal withdrawal letter Gary Cohn swiped off Trump's desk as well as the other documents swiped by Cohn and Rob Porter, I realized the country now has only three options vis a vis this President:

- impeach him
- zap him with the 25th Amendment
- failing those two remedies, pray we can survive thru the 2020 elections.

The cumulative effect of the facts Woodward presents sounds the alarm. The situation is even worse than I had thought, and I am no Trump advocate.

Several times Cohn just asked the president, “Why do you have these views?” “I just do,” Trump replied. "I've had these views for 30 years."

So far, Woodward has taken pains to be even-handed, pointing out the shortcomings of previous administrations, esp that of Barack Obama in the Middle East.

BUT even in his finest moments, as in the missile attack against Assad for using chemical weapons, Trump comes across as shockingly and emotionally unstable--for, example, his first impulse is to launch a "leadership strike" against Assad and take him out. He also seriously considered at one time a leadership strike against Kim.

The other thing that impresses me about the book is the startling amount of sensitive material Woodward reveals about ongoing Trump WH intentions and methods. If I were an enemy foreign national in, let's say, Iran, North Korea, China, Russia or even Saudi Arabia. I would be combing thru this volume minutely.

TRADE IS BAD

I am the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters.

Korea1 korea2

[jbuck919]

Veering slightly off topic, the famous saying by FDR was already wrong in its own time. It was perfectly obvious to any thinking person that we had everything to fear from the Great Depression.

[jserraglio]

Veering slightly off topic, the famous saying by FDR was already wrong in its own time. It was perfectly obvious to any thinking person that we had everything to fear from the Great Depression.

I know it's hard for us to imagine it now, but we really must try: There once was a time when this country had a President that rose to the challenge of leading this nation. Of course, FDR knew, as my parents drummed into my thick head frequently, that we had everything to fear from the Depression: he was not after all like Donald Trump a "f--king moron" (see the Woodward passages I reproduced above).

Roosevelt was addressing not the mind but the heart of the nation, the "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror" lurking inside even the 'thinking person'. He saw his task as persuasion and its vehicle as rhetoric in the very finest sense of the word: thus he asserted his firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. He was asserting that the nation would rise above its fear in order "to convert retreat into advance", a meaning reinforced by the context of the famous phrase, as well as FDR's clarion tone and a swaggering toss of his head.