Scott Rhee's Reviews > Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America

If you’ve had the sense—especially within the last four years but even long before November 8, 2016—-that something in the world has broken and will never be fixed again, then you may find a quantum of vindication (solace would, of course, be asking for too much) in Sarah Kendzior’s vitally important new book, “Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America”.

You may have sensed it in the growing disgust and displeasure towards schoolteachers and public education in general. You may have sensed it in the frightening complexity and ridiculously outlandish medical billing involved in the health care system. You may have sensed it in the ever-widening gap between what our elected officials promise their constituents and what they actually deliver in terms of policy. You may have sensed it in the gradual realization that goods and services continue to rise in cost while our average take-home has remained stagnant if not decreased considerably in the past decade.

You may have noticed it in the degradation of respect of institutions such as newspapers and journalism in general. You may have noticed it in the completely out-of-control lack of accountability and basic impunity of corrupt politicians, business people, police officers. You may have noticed it in the idiocy of the anti-intellectual anti-science hordes who continue to deny basic truths like climate change and the importance of vaccines.

It is the sense—-correction: the knowledge—-that things are definitely worse than they appear to be. It is the knowledge that we are witnessing a cascade of canaries in the coalmine leading to an inevitable end. It is the knowledge that saying our prayers and going to church regularly and doing the right thing still isn’t enough for our salvation.

Kendzior has had this seventh sense for a long time. As she noted in her first book “The View from Flyover Country”, Trump’s presidency was an inevitability long before Obama made fun of him at that Journalist’s Ball. Trump was being groomed by a segment of the population that had grown weary of both parties ignoring them. Trump was being groomed by a foreign actor who knew what lies and misinformation on Facebook would turn the tide of the election without having to hack into a single ballot box. Trump was being groomed by a cabal of super-wealthy people who had no empathy for poor working people and immigrants. Trump was our destiny.

I don’t hold out much hope for humanity, which is not a flippant statement. Trust me: I have a seven-year-old that I would love to see grow up. I’m just speaking truth: I don’t foresee the way things are going in the world ending on a good note. A phrase that my wife has latched on to lately: “Nothing good will come of this…”

This is pretty much the take-away of Kendzior’s book, which examines the nepotism that now infects our government (Jared and Ivanka weren’t the only catastrophically unqualified people filling powerful positions in government.), the successful kleptocratic attempts to steal from the poor and give to the rich, the woefully ineffectual attempts by Democrats to check Trump’s numerous abuses of power, the completely horrifying cyber attacks by Russia that have yet to be addressed, the white nationalist racism that undergirds our justice system and law enforcement.

This country is fucked up. It’s going to take more than an infrastructure bill that barely scratches the surface, a handful of indictments of brutal police officers, and a build-up of nuclear submarines in Australia to turn it around.