Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave and close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

If you didn’t recognize it, that’s a famous poem by Dylan Thomas and you might have heard it in one of my favorite movies: “Interstellar”. That poem is what I always thought of when the word “Rage” came up, at least ever since I first watched Interstellar. But I think that’s going to change now that I’m reading Bob Woodward’s new book. I’m learning a lot of things about Donald Trump and his administration that are pretty disturbing, especially when Trump gets angry. I’ve never heard anything like what’s in this book, especially from someone who is the leader of our country. I’ve always respected the President, whether he was a Democrat or a Republican. Some would do some random odd thing occasionally, it would make the news and possibly get them in trouble, but then things returned to their normal state. But not with Trump. It’s just a constant, never-ending “what will he say next” bizarre, unpredictable and goofy state that we will probably/hopefully never experience again in the history of our country.

You’ve probably already seen the stream-of-consciousness tweeting rants he can go off on, with absolutely no filter. This alone drives several members of his staff to lose a lot of sleep and spring into action instantly, at all hours of the day or night, depending on the time of the tweets, trying to determine how best to handle the press and everyone else they are bombarded with every time it happens. I’m only about two hours into the book though, there is much more ahead.

Bob Woodward goes into great detail about our country’s Defense Secretary Mattis, who was working for Trump when Trump was trying to negotiate with North Korea and Kim Jong-Un regarding their nuclear missile program. Mattis had tons of staff, electronic equipment and devices installed in his home and everywhere he went just so that he would be notified within a few seconds any time a missile was launched from North Korea. Even in the shower – he could even been instantly alerted when he was in the shower, and within seconds he’d be deep within the updates and connected to the “conference” that would instantly begin each time this happened. Then, starting almost instantly, he would be constantly updated on trajectory, location, and possible impact areas near or in the US or on its coasts as it progressed, and our own military would be at the ready to fire our own missiles in an instant if necessary. He worried a great deal about being in charge of possibly killing millions of people if he had to launch missiles. All this is explained in great detail and was completely top secret. I’m enjoying it so far.