Book: State of Terror

Damn it all to hell I just had to order a new book I saw on Rachel.  It's a novel by accomplished spy novelist Louise Penny, IN COLLABORATION WITH first time novelist -- but fabulous source -- Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It's a story about a female Secretary of State and her assistant who find out about an authoritarian plot to overthrow American democracy.  They must mobilize forces to prevent the plot, while simultaneously battling right-wing forces inside the US who do not want to ruffle feathers and maybe are in on the plot.

Yeah.  I had to get that.

Wow, the thinly-veiled descriptions of the Trump administration in this book are withering.  

Quote :

The previous administration had purged anybody who criticized policy. It punished dissenting voices. It silenced all critics, from Senators to members of Congress, from cabinet secretaries to chiefs of staff to janitors.

Total loyalty to President Dunn and his decisions, no matter how ego-driven and uninformed and downright dangerous they were, had been demanded.

Competence was replaced by blind loyalty as the determining factor for employment by an increasingly deranged administration.

Quote :

"We're the greatest nation on earth.  We have the best surveillance equipment, the best intelligence network, and you bring me this shit?"

"You're four years out of date, Doug."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The former administration screwed up everything it touched. It poisoned the well, poisoned our relationships. We're the leader of the free world in name only. That effective intelligence network you're so proud of no longer exists. Our allies distrust us. Those who'd do us harm are circling.  And we let it happen. We let them in.  Russia.  China.  That madman in North Korea."

Talk about unputdownable.  I started the book just after dinner, just to get a feel for it.  Before I knew it I was half-way though and it was 1:00 a.m.

I'm back at it at 6 this morning.

She-he-it. This book is not "thinly disguised" at all. It's such an indictment of the Trump Administration it could be enetered as evidence in his upcoming trials.

There is no effort to hide who they're talking about. The events described really happened.

The shifting fluid alliances and enmities between the Iranians, the Pashtuns, the Pakistanis, the Muhujadeen, Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Israelis, Mossad, Russian Mafia, god knows who else -- they appear to be accurately drawn.  They make as little sense on the pages of this novel as they do in real life.  "Pit of vipers" I believe is the term.

How anybody survives in that environment -- nor even stays engaged rather than running away at full speed -- is beyond my understanding.

The book *is* a little self-serving. In it, the Secretary of State is serving a feckless president, following a hugely-damaging former administration. It's up to Ellen Adams-slash-Hillary Clinton to jet all over the world, repairing broken alliances, calling out duplicitous foreign leaders, and out-thinking all the diplomats who are supposed to be in charge. I suspect Louise Penny had the outlines of this story all mapped out, and simply used Hillary to add realism and detail. The portrayal of her as superhuman probably made the offer irresistible to her.

But, oh my god.  I don't know exactly when this book was written -- supposedly before the Afghanistan withdrawal, which was 30 August 2021 -- but she NAILED the Trump administration's withdrawal, the collapse of the U.S. built government, the chaos that ensued, the Russian involvement, Trump's legal troubles since then, his reactions, his personality...

The insurrection, and the frighteningly large movement in the US that wants to overthrow liberal democracy and return to the 1950s. At any cost.

This thing really doesn't read like fiction.  It reads like the most "insider" account of the Trump Administration you've ever read.

It's absolutely SCATHING.