The Fifth Risk (#1 Amazon Best Seller eBook-The Deep State Cries Out!)

WTF????....Herein lies the complete problem, a tidy summary all wrapped up in one asinine book. Thank you, Mr. Lewis.

I thought this was about Progressives who have no idea of how the government is supposed to work.

Instead, it is an anti-Trump book about how the Deep State is at risk because they disagree with President Trump's appointees, and hate Constitutional limitations on government.

yes.....SEIU and Fed Workers cry out.....Trump is putting the squeeze and they just don’t get it.

One review from the site:

Was reading The Fifth Risk in the tube. A well-dressed man got in, noticed the American flag Jenga on the cover and immediately exclaimed “The Fifth Risk, what do you think?” Before I had a chance to respond, he added in a polite American accent “I love the guy, I devour his books,” perhaps to allow me to temper my answer.
I’m a Michael Lewis fan. I’ve read enough of him to think I know him. So I wasn’t shy about my assessment.
“Tell you what,” I answered. “You know how half his books are about some quirky discovery and the people who made it and the other half are a bunch of articles he wrote before? Well, this is the second type. It’s three chapters, one each about a very important function of the government that is totally underappreciated by the public and about how Trump is about to gut it. “
“And yeah, I buy it,” I went on, “he’s right, but it lacks balance. So all these 177 dangerous nuclear waste sites that Trump will let fester, who built them? The government did! And how about our side’s enlightened approach? Fine, Trump wants to gut the USDA and did not bother to send anybody for the handover. But tell me what Obama was doing sending a 2008 Harvard graduate to effectively supervise its budget! Why does Michael Lewis not call out our side for fostering an army of Robert McNamaras? If you ask me, we’re no better than the other guys. Our meritocracy stuff, sending some Harvard kid in diapers into such a huge job is precisely the kind of sin we’re paying for.”
And then I went for the kill: “Our side treats government like training ground for the best and the brightest, theirs wants to gut it. We’ve lost the high moral ground as far as I’m concerned.”
I proceeded to lament that my favorite part of the book so far had been when on election day, with Pennsylvania called, el Sisi – the Egyptian dictator, one of “our SOBs,” who could be a perfect judge of how to get through to a man not much unlike him in mentality- got through to Trump by calling the switchboard of the Trump Tower, only for the President-elect to exclaim “I love the Bangles!”
“You know,” my new American friend smiled, “my Zen master would say he was doing his best when he said that.”
Quite!
I even had advice for the poor fellow, who was starting to regret asking me: “I finish books, so I’ll read the whole thing, but on balance skip this one!”
Turns out I was flat wrong.
This is a third type of Michael Lewis book. It’s a 219 page anecdote that leads to a single punchline.
And so it was that Michael Lewis knocked me out in three rounds.

I read one of Michael Lewis' books. The man is a far left ideologue.

From one of the reviews:

By drilling down into the day-to-day realities in a handful of little-recognized federal agencies, Lewis convincingly demonstrates how government protects us from some of "the most alarming risks facing humanity."

I think back to the recent shutdown where one of the complaints was that microbrewers would not be able to put out new varieties of beer because the government officials who had to approve new beer labels was out. Imagine the dangers of a world where brewers could ship bottles with unapproved labels. Maybe Stephen King could write a novel about such terror.

Review by David A Crandall

1.0 out of 5 starsDon’t buy this book without understanding it’s a Trump Hit Job!
March 8, 2019

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase”

Michael Lewis used to be my favorite author. I was in the habit of buying his books without even reading the descriptions because I like him so much, but I will never buy another one of his books. This is written with an agenda for disparaging the Trump administration without objectivity or balance. I’ve worked in the federal government through several administration changes and some are good and some are bad, but none are smooth.

Lewis is not a journalist, this is a Hollywood hit job looking to be another movie. The irrational hysteria, lack of objectivity and not understanding for what is important to most Americans is why Trump was elected.

The American government continues to function in large part as a make-work project for lackluster but well-connected college grads and drab middle-management bureaucrats who can’t find a foothold in the private sector. The only reason it continues its wasteful and ineffective existence is fear of the massive spike in unemployment should it be downsized to sane levels.

Here is the money quote at the Goodreads site:

"The election happened," remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. "And then there was radio silence." Across all departments, similar stories were playing out: Trump appointees were few and far between; those that did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace. Some even threw away the briefing books that had been prepared for them.

I would point out that Liz Serhwood-Randall was born and bred into the deep state. Here is from her bio at Wikipedia "She received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University, and a doctorate in international relations[16] from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College. She and her brother, Ben Sherwood, were the first sister and brother in the same family to win Rhodes Scholarships."

And by the way, this deep state blue blood was slated to be the next Secretary of Defense under Madame Hillary. Imagine her instead of Maddog. Whatever you might say about Maddog, he did know how the DoD worked and how it mostly didn't work - which it does very expensively with lots of inside the Beltway bloviating thanks to Bush and Cheney.

Among her accomplishments: "She has published widely on national security issues, mainly on U.S alliances and nuclear proliferation."

She was Deputy Secretary of Energy to Ernie Moniz, where she did nothing in a department that has three principal functions: 1. Build nuclear weapons for the DOD 2. Run large scientific research facilities, and 3. Do research on energy supply. The first is done expensively, poorly and mostly not at all. The second is not done too badly. The third is utterly irrelevant.

As Deputy Secretary of Energy this woman had no idea how to run anything or do anything except join the long list of world experts on nuclear non-proliferation (did you know that proliferation of nuclear weapons is a BAD THING?) Well let me break the news to you. It is. Really bad. And the worst offender in the world was the NORKs and you know what they did about the NORKs, well these experts did nothing. But would Trump take a turnover from them. NOOOOO!! What did he do. He ignorantly made blandishments and really loud threats sounding like horror of horrors he was disturbing the international accord by threatening to go to war. Hell the madman probably meant it, too.

So we all know where this madman who couldn't be bothered to find out what all the expert functionaries already knew. So where are we - well Kim has stopped testing and we have negotiations going on, though Turmp did not understand that he can't be taken seriously if he is accused by the deepstate of colluding with Russia.

Why would you want a turnover from these deep state functionaries. No smart person would.

I bought the book. It doesn't sound promising, but it might be instructive to find out where Lewis gets it all wrong. It probably starts with the presumption that these deepstaters who have never done a useful goddammmed thing in their lives actually have something useful to say on doing stomething.

I liver here in DC. They can't even change their own lightbulbs.