The Room where IT Happened? Is IT still happening? What is IT?

Just days after Mary Trump's book about the emotional and psychological dysfunction that made the current president the most dangerous man on the planet, my turn came up to borrow a Kindle version of John Bolton's book, The Room Where It Happened, through the Scottsdale Library.

Reading the first page of Bolton's book, I also have listened to a couple of interviews with Mary Trump. It has been blatantly obvious from the beginning that the president's mental condition is far from healthy or normal for well socialized humans. Yet, I now feel like I have far more insight on the last three and a half years of turmoil than I did just a week ago.

My impression is that the following passage is the bottom-line description of the Trump presidency, from the perspective of a public policy veteran (Bolton) at the highest levels of American government.

The axis of adults in many respects caused enduring problems not because they successfully managed Trump, as the High-Minded (an apt description I picked up from the French for those who see themselves as our moral betters) have it, but because they did precisely the opposite. They didn’t do nearly enough to establish order, and what they did do was so transparently self-serving and so publicly dismissive of many of Trump’s very clear goals (whether worthy or unworthy) that they fed Trump’s already-suspicious mind-set [probably the better word here is "paranoia"], making it harder for those who came later to have legitimate policy exchanges with the President. I had long felt that the role of the National Security Advisor was to ensure that a President understood what options were open to him for any given decision he needed to make, and then to ensure that this decision was carried out by the pertinent bureaucracies. [use of "bureaucracies" rather than agencies suggests Bolton's contempt for the American federal government in general. This, if true, seems to reflect the view point that GOP elected and appointed officials as well as legislators are inherently dangerous to the actual conduct of government. Thomas Paine, in Common Sense, referred to government as a necessary evil. The Republican Party of today acts like it simply considers government evil.] The National Security Council process was certain to be different for different Presidents, but these were the critical objectives the process should achieve.

Because, however, the axis of adults had served Trump so poorly, [was it even possible for any Trump staffers to do anything but kiss his ass, knowing that if they did not, they would be quickly and unceremoniously fired, setting up an inevitable Catch-22?] he second-guessed people’s motives, saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House [it seems reasonable at this point to surmise that Bolton was woefully unequipped to even recognize the psychological pathologies causing Trump's tragic inability to even come close to handling the job he was elected to fulfill], let alone the huge federal government. The axis of adults is not entirely responsible for this mind-set. Trump is Trump. I came to understand that he believed he could run the Executive Branch and establish national-security policies on instinct [in other words, he was incapable of recognizing wise counsel, as he has publicly articulated himself on numerous occasions], relying on personal relationships with foreign leaders, and with made-for-television showmanship always top of mind. Now, instinct, personal relations, and showmanship are elements of any President’s repertoire. But they are not all of it, by a long stretch. Analysis, planning, intellectual discipline and rigor, evaluation of results, course corrections, and the like are the blocking and tackling of presidential decision-making, the unglamorous side of the job. [This Trump has never and will never even attempt to do] Appearance takes you only so far.

Bolton, John R. . The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir (pp. 1-2). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Note, beyond Bolton's introduction, which makes clear that Trump is acting like he's from a different universe, I'm not sure there's really much reason to buy or even read this book. We KNOW Trump is not a normal person. We know that Trump conned the American electorate. We also now know, more from Mary Trump's disclosures, details of the underlying pathologies at work in the mind of the person now (rightfully... only because of the American electoral system AND wrongly... because of the con he passed off as truth and reality) entrusted with the full power of the American federal government.

Each day he does something more egregious than that last. Therefore, there can no longer be any reasonable doubt about the outcome of the November 2020 general election for president. Of course, that doubt can be and still is imagined. We're far too close to November 3, 2020 to produce a major story about what that doubt would, if the unthinkable was to happen, look like...

But... he will cheat. But he will suppress the vote. But he will not accept the outcome of the election.

To each of those statements I suggest that the voter turnout will reach record territory, in a good way.

There will be minimal apathy this year.

Declaring Trump's defeat is no longer an invocation of superstition-based bad luck.

We're not looking for a miracle. We're looking for the natural consequence and ramification of everything he has done since January 20, 2017.

Will he accept the outcome of the election?

Will he, when compared with the end of the reigns of his archetypes and models Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, be able to claim that not being immediately shot to death or committing suicide in lieu of capture makes him a winner?

Perhaps.