Elmore's America

To take a break from the political madness of our time, I was reading Maximum Bob, an old Elmore Leonard novel I found in a baby library not far from my home.

Classic Leonard. About a bunch of lowlife characters in Florida, where lowlife characters flourish, who're always scheming to connive their fellow man.

The title character is a particularly odious character–a corrupt judge who gets his nickname cause he enjoys throwing the book at lawbreakers even as he bends and breaks the laws he’s supposed to enforce.

Anyway, I was blissfully enjoying my read when I got to this exchange between two ne'er do wells as they drove along a highway near Palm Beach...

Dale: Right there’s where Donald Trump lives.

Elvin: Is that right? Who’s Donald Trump?

Damn, man--there's no escape, no matter how much I try. 

Dale is Elvin’s 20-something-year-old nephew who's about to go to prison for punching a cop.

Elvin just got out after serving ten years--which explains why he’s never heard of Trump.

The book came out in 1991.

As I read it, I realized the obvious. Trump’s been around forever! Doing damage to our psyches. He's in our brains.

Here’s the thing, Trump is as odiously deceitful as any character invented by Elmore Leonard.

Yet, he’s been elected president twice. Just goes to show you how much Americans love grifters and con men and bad men. 

There’s a particularly relevant observation made later in the book after a defendant, another miscreant, complains that Judge Maximum Bob has not been fair to him. Leonard writes… 

“They showed utter contempt for the law but expected the system to be fair, which to them meant lenient.”

Sums up Trump to a T. Always crying for fairness when he thinks he’s been wronged. And always doing wrong to others if he thinks it will help him get ahead.

So, actually, Maximum Bob was no break from reality. More like a reminder of what our country has become–a sleazy setting in a book by Elmore Leonard.