Please shut up, Mr. President, and read some books
Published 4 hours ago on September 2, 2019
By Michael Winship, Common Dreams
- Commentary
Amidst a roiling hurricane and another fusillade of Texas gunshots, like many, I was struck by a statement in the new memoir, Call Sign Chaos, written by former Trump Defense Secretary James Mattis with former Reagan Assistant Defense Secretary Bing West. Both men began their careers of public service as US Marines.
They write, “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”
Strong words. Mattis manages to avoid almost any mention by name of our you-know-who-in-chief but the implication is clear. The president is, to use the clinical term, a know-nothing dingdong with no sense of history or perspective because, among other reasons, he doesn’t read. I know, he’ll tell you he doesn’t have to because of his “very, very large brain.”
Believe me, he has to.
We know Mattis left the Trump cabinet last December out of frustration and anger, although he has been quiet, largely, about his reasons. But contrary to Trump’s self-evaluation, according to a recent piece by Jonah Goldberg in The Atlantic, “aides and friends say [Mattis] found the president to be of limited cognitive ability, and of generally dubious character.”
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/09/please-shut-up-mr-president-and-read-some-books/
= new reply since forum marked as read
