I'm almost through Bob Woodward's FEAR.  One of the most entertaining, enlightening books I've ever read.  It confirms everything I suspected about life and America since I was in college.  

Woodward describes and exposes the back-office shenanigans going on 'til this day. Unbelievable but true.  The Jews of Lower Manhattan had an expression:  ONLY IN AMERICA!  And for my whole life I've seen over and over again.  Now Trump!

In a nutshell, it's like having an incorrigibly spoiled fifth-grader as president of the nation and one of the most powerful people in the world. The only historical equivalent I can think of is Caligula or perhaps Nero. Both were teenagers when they came to power and both went insane with power. Now we have Donald: listen to his locker-room remarks.

Here's the kind of stuff Woodward brings out. A short time after coming to power Trump regretted all the money spent on maintaining troops in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, so he asked one of his bodyguards his opinion. Since the Invasion of Iraq under Bush, the war in the Middle East cost this country over a trillion dollars. Is this surreal, what did we get for our money? The kid was in his twenties. The bodyguard told him, “Gee, I dunno. Why not ask one of the generals?” The president of the United States answered, “I tried that. That's why I'm asking you.” (They didn't tell me want I wanted to hear.)

How would you like to be one of the “boots on the ground” reading this? Your life is devoted to keeping your country safe for democracy and the president is asking the advice of a kid. If it weren't so tragic and true, “Fear” would be the most entertaining book you've read this year. To me, it confirms the thesis of my favorite writer since college days, Franz Kafka: LIFE IS SURREAL. One year after Kafka's death Rene Magritte, the first surrealist, in 1929 presented his first exhibition in Brussels. As in the Trump administration, “The Son of Man” shows that what we see is only a caricature of what we don't.