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| oh if only i could be so lucky as to be the sagging facial skin-shaped gap that separates these two geriatric hunks as they embrace, as lovers, in a photoshop window that a graphics design artist skillfully used the black paint bucket tool on |
There was a time in my life where I was lost. People kept writing bullshit about Donald Trump, and it all sucked ass! Not even the mighty Donster himself could manage to muster up enough mastery over the English diction to craft me a tale to chronicle his exciting bid for the most powerful seat in American politics.
Basically, a lot of books about Trump's side of the 2016 election are knee-jerk 'who gives a shit, get a manuscript to the printers so we can make some damn money' money grabs that don't do much more than retread basic information describing to us how "Trump's election was kind of a fucking mess lmao". One of the worst offenders of this vile crime is, naturally, Fire and Fury, a book that I thought was so stinky and shitty that I had to complain about it on this very blog. I have to admit that going into Joshua Green's Devil's Bargain that I wasn't expecting much of a radically different experience.
I mean, for fuck's sake. The name of the book is "Devil's Bargain". It doesn't get anymore reactionary than that, now does it? What other titles did Joshua Green have saved in his back pocket? Was "Evil Damnation" already taken? What about "Satan in Politics"? Did "The Devil Rapes The White House And The American People And The Devil Is Steve Bannon And That Means Steve Bannon Is Raping Us Right Now And Trump Is Watching Him Do It And Maybe Trump Will Also Rape Us Later Too If He Feels Like It And The Devil Is Evil" not clear with the publisher because it wouldn't fit on the front of the book? That stinks.
I mean, I'll give the name "Fire and Fury" a lot of guff for being a shitty, knee-jerk thing to call your book, but at least even Fire and Fury had the common decency to not shoehorn literally Satan himself into it's title. So Devil's Bargain has a clickbait title so juicy it makes BuzzFeed articles horny, you get the picture. It may be dramatically titled, but once I actually started to read it, I discovered something rather amazing: it's actually a GOOD BOOK.
If Fire and Fury was written in the space of four weeks and was fueled by the twin powers of carefully re-writing Yahoo news articles into "original" chapters and author Micheal Wolff snorting cocaine off his laptop, Devil's Bargain is a fable that is- in contrast- both original and deeply researched. While it suffers from much insider information being mere hearsay, the same problem that was present in Fire and Fury, the issue is nowhere near as distracting on the part of Devil's Bargain both because it doesn't occur nearly as often and because un-cited hearsay doesn't make up most of the book's damning tell-alls.
Instead, the book is kind of a combo of a biography on Steve Bannon and then eventually a coverage of the 2016 election. Honestly, the biggest issue with the book's title is that it's vague and misleading. It should've been called something like "Steve Bannon: The man before and during 2016" or something a little, you know, accurate. But no, Joshua Green, by all means- make as many dumbass allusions to the anti-christ as you need. Wait, Joshua Green, is that why- on the cover- Trump and Bannon are dissolving into the black void; looks of somber reservedness upon their faces as they quietly accept their fate? Did they make a deal with the devil? Am I the devil? Is America the devil? God damn it Joshua Green you fucking shithead, now I'm overthinking your stupid title.
Anyways, the book is more than enough to quench a thirst for knowledge for anyone who doesn't know too much about Steve "Gumboi" Bannon. I, like most people, had rarely heard his name before the year 2015 and even then most people's awareness of the man doesn't extend much deeper than "that fat old guy who thinks internet memes are hilarious and got Trump elected". Some of what I learned about Bannon was actually shockingly hilarious. The guy has a downright ridiculous track record of bizarrely interconnecting career paths. Some of this I was somewhat aware of before reading the book, but a lot of it was news to me. The best part of the book is, hands down, the Bannon biographical parts. The book's second half, which covers the 2016 election in general and focuses less on the Bannon trivia, isn't bad or anything but it's not a whole lot that no one didn't know before. A lot of it is just kind of boring sub-facts, like what Bannon said in reaction to some minor event during the campaign.
I found that I was starting to get slightly bored as I neared the end of the book, but it never got to the point where I felt it was hard to read or even that I necessarily wanted to put the book down at all. In fact, I was a little surprised when I hit the last actual page, and was shocked to find that the final chunk of the book was some 40 pages dedicated to citing references. Fire and Fury couldn't even fill four god damn pages with citations.
All-in-all, it's an interesting book. It covers much of Bannon's life and his, frankly, insane career paths and yet manages to adequately show how a lot of that translated into his work as Trump's campaign manager. It actually released over half a year earlier than Fire and Fury, though got far less media coverage than Micheal Wolff's book. I guess it goes to show that a Donald Trump quote commands more attention than Lucifer the devil. Does that mean Donald Trump is more hardcore than Satan, or does it mean American consumers are stupid and easily baited? Does it mean both? Damn you, Joshua Green, now you've got me asking stupid questions. Thanks a lot, asshole. Why don't you quit pestering me and get back to writing your latest book you've entitled "Satan's Dick: Hillary Clinton and the Fifteen Foot Demon Penis We All Gotta Deepthroat"?
POINTLESS NUMERICAL SCORE:
7/10
Hey it's not that bad or whatever.
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