I feel a bit like the kid who tries to read the book the night before the report is due and can’t keep his eyes open long enough to slog through enough chapters to fake it. I started reading Bolton’s book last night with the intent of providing a well thought summary of what he had to say. I’m still in Chapter 3.
Reading Bolton’s self-congratulatory drivel about how he got tRump to blow up US involvement in the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal is tedious. Bolton is completely full of himself. He is also demonstrably full of shit. And it’s difficult to get past that.
Bolton is one of the classic chickenhawk republicans, all bluff and bluster with no actual experience at the sharp end of the horrors he proposes. He’s a rabid, extremist shoot first lunatic, who would fit in as a happy hardliner in any politburo. It pains me that a man like Bolton got within a continent of the levers of power in our country.
Some observations before I’ve even managed to finish Chapter 3 (They are all in Singapore getting ready for the first summit with Kim):
This is not a fascinating page turner from inside the halls of power. Bolton wants us to see him as the hero of the piece, bravely fighting all the cowardly wrong-headedness, not just in the tRump administration, but in American society in general, I haven’t found anything remotely heroic about Bolton at all. He mentioned having to, “put up with eight years of Obama’s mistakes,” and called Mattis, “an accomplished bureaucrat” for successfully blocking Bolton from instituting a policy of burning Syria to the ground.
So far, he’s spent a lot of the book taking little backhanded snipes at most everyone, including Obama, McMasters, Haley, Pompeo, Kelly, Kudlow, and Mnuchin, all the while proclaiming the unfulfilled Gospel of Bolton. Bolton did tell us he had bonded quite well with tRump. Perhaps it’s because of the incessant sniping and belittling of everyone around him. Birds of a feather and all that.
So far the best thing I can say about Bolton is that Rand Paul hates him.
He sprinkles in Latin phrases in order to make himself appear erudite and less of a bloodthirsty warmonger.
Praising himself for his part in blowing up the Iran deal: “It had taken one month to shred the Iran Nuclear Deal.”
On the usefulness of tRump’s intelligence briefings: “I didn’t think these briefing were terribly useful, and neither did the intelligence community, since much of the time was spent listening to tRump, rather than tRump listening to the briefers.”
To this point he hasn’t gone after tRump very hard. He’s described him as fickle to the point of distraction, unwilling to do his homework, and uninterested in hearing things that don’t fit tRump’s preconceived notions. [Those are my distillations of Bolton’s shots at tRump to this point in the book]
I think Bolton is describing tRump as all foam and no beer, while exposing himself as all testosterone and no wisdom. This is not great literature. Bolton is the Paula White of the Church of Hulk Bolton Smash.
Up the Resistance!
Memaliciousness
Cut and Paste Department. This is the regularly scheduled plea for readers. I’ve still only had to make two memes. You have it within your power to make me work. If you spread the word about Evening Shade and your spreadee announces themselves in the comments, you will become eligible to receive your very, very special noprize of a meme of your very own. All you have to do is jump up and get out there and start carnival barking, cajoling, proselytizing (or pimping, if you are of an irreligious bent). You could even pester and push. Procrastination is not an option — it’s a way of life.
niftywriter did another of he now patented nifty jobs of writing a GNR today: With Hearts Like Lions, We Will Save The Country - June 23 GNR