Book Of the Year:

''The Gilded Rage''
 by Alexander Zaitchik

(Foreword by David Talbot)

[A Wild Ride Through Donald Trump's America]

I looked at the title, read the foreword and said to myself, ''another Trump xenophobe, but let me read it just to confirm my misgivings, then dismiss it.''

A sobering and absorbing book which took me back to my childhood and to individuals I knew and grew up with in, what was then, a small town.

Unlike mainstream media, 'The Gilded Rage' allows ordinary folk, brothers and sisters, to express themselves, their hurt, their anger, their dashed hopes, their broken dreams and their aspirations for themselves and their families and their communities in their own words.

A 'must read' for any Democratic politician ever thinking of attempting to re-capture the 'hearts and minds' of ordinary folk in the Rust belt, the Mid-West and the South.

From that individual who could at least be guaranteed a decent job (and would, no doubt, have someone ''look out for him'') 'because Mom knew the manager' to the Remax Realty landlord, to the union and non-union coal mines where you might temporarily earn more with the latter, but the former gave you a security once worth it's weight in gold, to the Serb Hall audience exasperated by Palin's focus on issues a world removed from their local priorities, the book takes the reader on a journey to re-discover why Washington's political elite is so out-of-touch and lost in it's own world of Mammon - and the outsourcing of the very souls of rural America to generate higher profits for the major shareholders of global corporations and offshore-tax-registered brands.

Yes all the racism and stereotyping is also there : – the thirteen-kid Mexican Mum 'who can't keep her legs closed' and is totally reliant on benefits – while (White folk) have to just 'get by' with next to nothing.

The anger is there: at jobs shifting from the Rust Belt and the South to Mexico, to Brazil, all to increase profit for the elites with not a care in the world for ordinary folk nor their impoverished communities.

'Why is Obama soft on Islam?', a misconception hammered home by local media sites, the Alternative Right ('Alt Right')

and conspiracy theorists.

The anguish at a health care system existing only for the elite:

(I paraphrase) ''John McCain uses the Mayo Clinic. If he had to use the VA one he would reform the system immediately.'')

The 'border wall' promise looms large – and for very good reasons if you see your wages being undercut by cheap foreign labor. (I could retort from one hundred and fifty years ago that the Irish immigrants fleeing impoverishment caused by a an iniquitous Mercantilist trading system, the Jews fleeing Pogroms in Russia,the Ukraine and Germany,the impoverished  Poles, the Italians newly-arrived from Sicily or the 'poor South', of freed Black Americans or those escaping slavery from the South, who would likewise work for any amount just to stay alive – but this cuts no ice with Trump voters who can only relate to their own personal grievances and sufferings and fume with anger when they see 'foreigners' of a different skin color (or illegals) doing jobs they should, by right of birth and by legal status, be entitled to have.)

The anger at speaking with Mohammed ''who talks like he has marbles in his mouth'' is reminiscent of the racism experienced by first generation immigrants who are often desperately attempting to come to terms with many frightening and confusing aspects of their new homeland (which is why, because of such bigotry and racism in many countries, they feel safest living in 'Ghettoes' – communities exclusively of their own indigenous group) whilst seeking to provide for themselves and their family.

Even Bernie Sanders does not escape the criticism.

Personally I had hoped that Bernie would win the nomination.

I am convinced that, unlike the doubters in this book who dismissed Sanders' call for universal free health care by saying 'someone has to pay for it' (so he, Sanders, must therefore be, yet again, another 'lying politician') that it was more a question of 'the establishment' being terrified of Sanders winning the nomination and the Presidency – with his single-minded determination at implementing a universal health care system – against the universal 'will' of vested (''pork barrel'') interests – which sealed his fate in the Presidential nomination race against Clinton.

A totally absorbing book and, as I earlier say, a sobering read for any politician genuinely interested in why (leaving aside any Russian influence) Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 Presidential Election.

Neither is it a 'heavy read' – you can skim the Chapter about either West Virginia, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Arizona, California or Pennsylvania, put the book down and either re-read in detail or continue to the next State at any time.

©Patrick Emek, November 2017

''The Gilded Rage''
 by Alexander Zaitchik

(Foreword by David Talbot)

[A Wild Ride Through Donald Trump's America]

website:  www.skyhorsepublishing.com

or info@skyhorsepublishing.com

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-5107-1428-1

eBook ISBN:978-1-5107-1430-4