Tag: Trump

The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy by Michael Lewis-Book

From a Google image Search – Facts.net

Michael Lewis’ book The Fifth Risk is nonfiction. It examines what happened in several government agencies when Trump won the 2016 election. Presidents usually put their own people in as heads of our government agencies, and they tend to do it quickly and strategically. A team is generally sent in to make a smooth transition in services that benefit key groups which in turn benefit American citizens.

When Trump took office several department/agencies saw no transition team arrive and if a new head of agency had been appointed, they tended to arrive alone and late and to ignore the transition materials prepared by outgoing staff.

By now Americans have heard plenty about the Heritage Foundation’s agenda for the RNC if Trump wins in 2024 in the nearly 1000-page Project 2025 pdf. Lewis in his book The Fifth Risk takes a deep dive on a few areas where Republicans already showed us what changes they plan to make in programs that Americans rely on, programs that Republicans want to shut down. Trump, in his first term as President, tended to replace career people who were experts in their fields with loyalists who planned to deconstruct the departments they led.

One of these departments was the Department of Energy. Trump and Republicans are climate deniers. They do not want to implement alternative energies; they would rather rely even more heavily on fossil fuels. Employees in the Department of Energy expected people to be sent by the new administration to the department for the transition. They had all the transition notebooks ready to bring the new staff up to date on things like how to stop a virus, how to take a census, how to tell if a foreign nation has nuclear capability. No one showed. A man named Pyle finally showed up but would not listen to experts in the department. He suggested weekly meetings but never attended them. He sent a list of 24 questions which asked for lists of attendees to energy meetings. All DOE scientific experts were told to leave despite the need for national nuclear security.

Chapter II tells the story of Ali Zaidis whose parents moved him from Karachi to a small American town with no Muslims. Ali became a Republican until he traveled with the America’s Promise Board to help in New Orleans after Katrina. He was shocked by the poverty he saw. He asked himself how anyone could “lift themselves up by their own bootstraps” when there were no bootstraps. This question also came up – “If you’re a store owner after a weather crisis, should you hike up the cost of flashlights.” Members of the Republican Club said yes. Ali said no. So, Ali joined the Obama campaign and took a job at the White House. He was using data from the Department of Agriculture. It was a month before anyone showed up in 2016 from the Trump administration. The appointee was a hunter and gun enthusiast. He wanted a list of employees who worked on climate change. The Trump administration sent in employees with little or no agriculture experience and everyone was instructed not to say “climate change”. Sonny Purdue finally arrived in April.

The USDA had a particularly complicated budget. They oversaw food services and school lunch programs and WIC. Trump cut food stamps over 25%. People are convinced that food stamp recipients buy things that are not acceptable and sell their food stamps for cash. Since the EBT cards were put into use cheating was rare. Hungry people are not always fed. The states get the money, but they don’t have to use it to feed people. “We are proud to do the absolute minimum,” said one state leader. I haven’t told you all the sad anecdotes. It’s the Department of Agriculture after all and we haven’t even talked about farms yet. Changes in ag-science drive changes in society.

The third department discussed by Lewis is the department that keeps track of the weather. Before the technology developed and computers were able to handle complex data, there was very little data available about the weather. After a deadly hurricane hit Joplin, Missouri it was noted that tornado warnings often came too late. We have seen the improvement in weather data since early days. When the Trump team came in to the agency employees were not allowed to say the word “tornado”, because I guess if you don’t say it then it won’t happen? (Ridiculous) Since the arrival of weather channels like AccuWeather people tend to think that their weather reports come from private endeavors, and they don’t realize the role of government and science in supporting the collection of weather data. Republicans want to stop sending out weather data for free and to sell it to private enterprises that will then sell it to us.

Although this book is about the first Trump administration the author warns us of what might happen in a second Trump term. Michael Lewis covers information that many citizens don’t have access to in his book The Fifth Risk. Be informed.

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner – Book

Cover of The Topeka School by Ben Lerner from KCRW.jpg

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner covers a lot of ground, both culturally and politically. It is one of those novels that jumps around in time, which at first makes it seem disjointed and a bit obscure. Once we manage to focus on the characters and let them guide us through the social commentary there is great depth to the content, which is made more effective by the nonlinear presentation. If you lived through the sixties, seventies, and eighties, if you smoked pot or dropped acid, if you got caught up in the movement those psychotropic substances engendered of self-analysis, of getting rid of personal baggage, and eventually professional analysis, then you will get Lerner’s book. Perhaps you remember therapies like Reiki, Feldenkrais, Transactional analysis – “I’m OK, You’re OK, and Primal Scream therapy.

The Topeka School is a foundation that applies Freudian and other psychological methodologies to treat adolescents who stray from acceptable societal norms, or whose behaviors will short circuit future success. Even the therapists often end up analyzing each other. Kansas is an odd location for a foundation full of political liberals. The children of the resident therapists attend a school known as Bright Circle (sounds a bit cultish but is actually more a combination of hippie philosophy and southern conservatism – a mix that already builds in an element of schizophrenia). Jane is the main therapist character we follow, although she is not the key figure at the Foundation; that is the mythic Klaus. Jane is married to Jonathan and her son is Adam. Adam is relatively well-adjusted, has plenty of friends and fits in well enough that he can also buck the culture by being a debate nerd. He has a few setbacks that require parental and psychological intervention, but nothing major. What bothers his mother the most is a culture of toxic male behavior which is a rite of passage for young men in the South, even more so than in other corners of American culture. Darren is another character involved with the Foundations whose behaviors are less well adapted to the cultural experiences of schooling in America and whose trajectory contrasts with that of Adam.

The novel is actually taking place in the days of the Trump administration, although given the many flashbacks, the commentary on right-wing politics and Trumpian behavior, however insightful, is intermittent. Obviously Trump is not responsible for the manly code in Topeka that requires physical violence when another male disrespects you in any way, but Trump’s own behaviors work against therapeutic attempts to change male behavior and to help men evolve into humans who handle personal interactions in less pugilistic ways. The Foundation and the Topeka School is a clever convention that allows the author and the reader to consider modern male behavior and the reasons we are bothered by the Trump administration and to revisit therapeutic models that have been taken to the edge of obsolescence by modern pharmaceuticals. Interestingly enough in The Topeka School the Foundation leaves Kansas and moves to Texas. Why the school chooses to embed itself in places where American culture is such a mismatch to the culture of the Foundation is left for us to decide. The Topeka School by Ben Lerner was a trip, a trip worth taking.