"I Alone Can Fix It": I Had to Read It. There Was More to Learn About Unusual Heroes.

I'll admit I hesitated. Reading about the disaster of the last year, I knew, wasn't going to be fun. But I figured I'd learn something, too.

I Alone Can Fix It is some top-shelf reporting from Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, who teamed up to also do A Very Stable Genius, about ex-'s presidency until the run-up to his first impeachment. They organize their information well; again, you're likely to say to yourself, Ohhhh, yeah: I remember that now, more than once.

You'll do it, too, with so much head-shaking that you might get a sore neck. The most informed among us, though, follow through the way Leonnig and Rucker did. They keep pursuing causes and results. I figured I had to as well.

I found out some interesting things, such as who the real patriots were in the middle of the imposed chaos that ex- specializes in:

• Mark Milley--the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He made a major gaffe at the outset, accompanying ex- to St. John's Church just outside of Lafayette Park during the demonstrations, but righted himself by admitting it (something ex- never does), and standing as a bulwark against ex-'s pipedream of imposing martial law over much of the nation to support his other pipedream--that the country will eventually knuckle under and support his bogus re-election (Ex- never says this, but you can see it on the horizon. He never tells anyone exactly what he has in mind; he waits until people have blundered themselves into position. Or, if they don't, he bullies them into compliance. That's his M.O.). He also told off Stephen Miller, ex-'s Rasputin to his Czar, more than once in ways you would have craved to have been in the room for. It was a delight to read about how Milley put that conniving little weasel in his place. More than anyone else, he made sure the ugly specter of fascism would not overwhelm our republic. We were on its very edge.
• Mark Esper--the Secretary of Defense, who also draws a clear red line when asked, kind of half-commanded, to bring out the troops to put down demonstrators in Washington, DC. Afterwards, if you recall, he made a public statement of reassurance, which subjects him to an f-word laden browbeating that very few could have endured--but he does, and walks away as a courageous defender of the Constitution.
• Ivanka Trump--Yeah, I know. Go figure. Attitudinally, across the board, she was considered just as heartless and cut-throat as her father. But behind the scenes, she also threw herself into trying to stop ex- from going overboard in his exhortations on January 6. She was there, but she said nothing at the rally. She knew it was wrong from the start.
• Chris Christie--Who sincerely tried to get ex- to give up the ghost and admit defeat. Clearly, the account of the phone call he had with ex- on November 7, 2020, was his alone, and probably done to give him a good look for the record, but it's obvious that some of the people who were closest to him really did try to get him to concede.
• Jared Kushner--Who seemed to be one of the more rational players in the entire sordid operation, partly because, in the very last few days of this awful administration, he was working in Israel for a Middle East deal with Qatar and got one.
• Pat Cipollone--The obnoxious defender of ex- at his first impeachment trial stayed on in the White House Counsel's office for the last two weeks, risking his reputation so that ex- couldn't become inclined to grant even more pardons than he did.

Besides those people who kept the small tugboat of rationality afloat in those last few days, this was, I thought, the most compelling resignation letter written by a former Cabinet member:

We should be highlighting and celebrating your Administration's many accomplishments on behalf of the American people. Instead, we are left to clean up the mess caused by violent protesters overrunning the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people's business. That behavior was unconscionable for our country. There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me....Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us. I believe we each have a moral obligation to exercise good judgement and model the behavior we hope they would emulate. They must know from us that America is greater than what transpired yesterday.

That letter was written by Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education. Few better refutations were written during that entire tension-filled period. Talk about undermining behavior--I had no time for the undermining she tried to do to our public school system. But even she had limits. Even she had a decent respect for the Constitution.

Those people, and a few others, constituted the thin line that separated our democracy from latent fascism, into which we would have slid quickly and horribly. You might have strong policy issues with them, but they deserve our thanks.

I doubt that nearly the same number of people who read Leonnig and Rucker's first book will be reading the second; there is an understandable inclination to walk away from the disgust and horror that ex- caused. But failure to remember is failure to follow up, and there is a clear chance that ex- will try again, what with state Republicans throughout the country doing their best to control the voting process. This nightmare can be repeated if we don't keep working to thwart it.

The book doesn't answer all questions, partly because some members of ex-'s administration would not allow their names to be used--which has to mean that there were some who were too scared to say anything at all. But the account rings solid and it is a superb job of reportage.

There are other tidbits that are remarkable. For instance:

• There is little doubt that ex- would have died of Covid-19 had he not gotten the absolute latest and even experimental treatment;
• There was more than one attorney who, obsessed with loyalty to ex-, urged him to remain on message with The Big Steal with minor examples from history that were largely irrelevant and legally inapplicable; and
• That in his more lucid moments, ex- understood that he had indeed lost and extraordinary efforts would be needed to get the public off that fact.

If nothing else, haul this considerable (over 500 pages) report from the bookstore shelves and read the last twenty pages, the Epilogue, consisting of the interview the authors managed to get with ex- two months after Joe Biden's inauguration. Ex- is as delusional as he can be, rambling and hyperbolizing anything and everything in order to convince the reporters that he still deserves to be president. And yes, he regretted not bringing in the military to stop the George Floyd protests. He also believed that the three Supreme Court justices he nominated owed him. The election "should have been reversed by the Supreme Court."

Read it and take it in. Then ask yourself: How much harder do we need to work to put this country back together? Where in the world do we begin?

But don't give up. This monster wants you to. He thinks we're weak. He must be shown, again, that we're not.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask indoors. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark