John L Tripp

If I Told the Truth John L Tripp

WITH DONALD TRUMP, IT HAPPENED GRADUALLY. He consolidated power over a period of years, attacking and defying one institution after another. He defied the bounds of civility and human decency, silencing his critics or bullying them into supporting him. For some, it was a dream come true; for others, a daily nightmare. But because it all happened gradually, we grew numb to it and accepted it. Like it or not, it became our new normal. But what if it happened all at once? What if we could digest it all in a single sitting, rather than spread out over several years? The biography of John L. Tripp allows us to do just that. It reflects the actions taken by Trump, or any would-be autocrat, in stark and satiric terms, in the memoir of a fictional character from an alternate universe that mirrors our own. It shows how people in this universe came to accept the absurd and to think the unthinkable. And because it happened gradually, they never knew what hit them. But maybe we can know, if we see it all at once.