The Book I'm Reading: Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov

Yep, I finished Second Foundation last week (and the original Foundation Trilogy...and my 8th book in the whole series) and started right in on...

 I'm only on page 30 at the moment and haven't really sunk into the book yet, but I just read something which caught my eye. It goes like this:

"By the Galaxy, I wish the Mule had disrupted the Plan altogether--and forever. We would have survived him. He was one of a kind and very mortal. The Second Foundation seems to be immortal."

In fact, those four sentences didn't just catch my eye...they caught a piece of my brain and tug-of-warred it into Fear Territory.

It goes like this:

The Mule was a guy who disrupted the Second Foundation's (seemingly benevolent) plan for restoring the Galactic Empire.

There are several parallels between The Mule and Donald J. Trump. 

(1) Both disrupt the prevailing order and twist it to suit their own ends. 

(2) Both manipulate the emotions of their followers.

(3) Both demand and receive absolute loyalty.

(4) Both are orange. 

And (here's hoping) (5) Both were soundly defeated after achieving great victories which made them look unstoppable.

Now, putting Trump into The Mule role vis-a-vis the bit I quoted from Foundation's Edge, here's the Fear part: although it's easy to associate all of our present ills with Donald J. Trump, the truth is that he is a symptom, not the cause of the disease. In fact, if he didn't have a fair percentage of the population (40-ish %) and Fox News and the Republican controlled Senate and Bill Barr behind him, there's no way that he would have wreaked such havoc upon our nation. 

So even though it frightens me to allow this thought to walk across my consciousness, Asimov made me do it:

What if defeating Trump in the 2020 election is the easy part?

And even worse...what if defeating Trump does absolutely nothing to blunt the efforts of the people behind him?

That wouldn't be much of a victory, would it?

Shit, all I wanted to do was relax a little and read a science fiction novel. Thanks, Isaac Asimov.