Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Chapter 19
It’s been a wild ride. Now it’s time to draw a curtain over this phase of my political life.

And before you ask: No, I have not been fired in the latest round of White House purges, and I am not running scared from Jeff Sessions’ empty threats to stop the leaks. (Force the President to lead by example and those threats might mean something.)
Nor am I resigning, despite the many temptations brought on by rage, frustration, and the latest examples of extraordinary stupidity. The truth is, I’m exhausted by the whole process of being both inside the machine and setting myself up as a chronicler of the insanity. Looking back over the past five months or so since I began The Bigly Book, I’ve been shocked by how dark my tone and how miserable my outlook have become. I’m generally fairly optimistic, but I see I’ve been worn down by the seemingly endless destruction of the values I hold to be important, from truth-telling to honor and service to country.
It’s time for me to draw breath, recover my equilibrium, and rededicate myself to the reasons I came into this administration in the first place: service above self; a wish to make a difference, however small; and a solid belief in the overall goodness of this great country and its wonderful people.
I leave you with some perspectives from the recent past and for the future. First, some truths:
1. Our President is the adult least qualified to lead anything, let alone run our country, that I have ever come across: dishonest almost as a reflex action; immature, with a knowledge and understanding of self and others appropriate for a child in junior high; a narcissist who can never receive enough praise to fill the void within; a bully who beats his wife and belittles everyone around him in a vain attempt at self-aggrandizement; a coward who has not once had the guts to fire anyone in person; a man of no discernible beliefs, and therefore of no moral compass; a man charged with guarding our nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic, who has no understanding of the law, the constitution, or duty to either. A man well named by one of my colleagues as That Fucking Child (TFC). Even his election slogan, “Make America Great Again,” seems now to be a betrayal, as leaders at home and overseas mock what we have become under Trump.
2. The ideologues who rode into the White House on Trump’s coattails (Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn) have found life much tougher than expected. Some have gone, and others will follow, as the process of government that has been tried and tested over generations survives and expels the alien invaders.
3. Politics has become the enemy of the people: the very few in Congress ignore the popular will, in favor of partisan resentment. This is not an argument of Democrat vs. Republican, but a reflection of the cynical reality of today’s Washington. I don’t know any leader of either party who sees Trump as anything other than weak, ignorant, and dangerous. In addition, without exception, all see him as dishonest and corrupt — yet no one has chosen to speak truth to power. What a damning indictment of our leaders.
4. Congress aside, our institutions have proved remarkably resilient even while under sustained attack. The Department of Justice, the Pentagon, and the intelligence community have all proved stronger than Trump could have wished. Sane and experienced leaders such as Jim Mattis and H.R. McMaster continue to act as checks on the President, and so far have prevented us from going to war as the consequence of a tweet.
5. The work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller gains pace every day. Trump may actually believe that he’s done nothing wrong — for a man with such an elastic view of the law and truth, such a delusion is entirely possible. Mueller will bring indictments against a range of people and companies, for corruption, collusion, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. Some involved in the investigation believe that Mueller’s work will be enough to bring down the Trump and Kushner business empires, and are absolutely certain that prison is in the future of several Trump loyalists.
It seems certain that the Trump administration will become an unfortunate footnote in our history, but the impact will last far longer than the man himself. Trump provided the last great hope for the disenfranchised and disillusioned American middle class. That group has seen manufacturing jobs disappear and wages stagnate for the past 20 years, and themselves consigned to the ash heap of history. Like drowning men and women, they clung to Trump’s empty promises of a return to a halcyon past that is, in reality, lost forever.

They see betrayal after betrayal from the White House. Where are the coal jobs? Gone forever. The infrastructure plan? Nowhere to be seen. Destroyed hope is always followed by despair, then rage.
Amid all the chaos, the lies, and the tantrums, it’s hard to remember that America is bigger than Trump, and that we confront an uncertain and challenging future. It may well be that we will be at war with North Korea before long, or that we will be dragged into a war between China and India, and so will once again have reason to be distracted.
But distractions will not change the underlying reality, as we confront the next phase of the technology revolution. As Artificial Intelligence replaces tens of millions of jobs, it will place enormous and intolerable strains on every democracy and civil society across the globe. Ten years from now we will have 1,000 times the technology we have today, and every job will be under threat. At the same time, federal, state, and local governments, which for generations have legislated for the past, will be confronted by a future that accelerates ever faster toward us. All forms of government will be at risk of irrelevance, while education — a very conservative and slow-moving pillar of society — will struggle to keep pace with change. As a consequence of just those two pressures, democracy will need to be reimagined: In an AI-driven society, the current middle class and future generations of graduating students will have little or no value.
As all this unfolds, there is not a single person in the White House or Congress who offers a vision for the future. At the very least, I would hope for a voice that could rally economists, technologists, social scientists, the media, and politicians to help us prepare ourselves and our citizens for a future that is approaching at unimaginable speed. Instead, our apparent obsession with the trivia of the here and now is best exemplified by the idiot who is our President.
It has been an honor to serve you, and to do my best to shine a light into the darkness of the most dysfunctional and dishonest administration I have ever seen or heard about. I leave you as I met you — with a quote, this one from the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas:
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
No More Later . . .
