Why Bannon is so dangerous

Well, I saw a headline today that Bannon believes in the Apocalypse. You know, Armageddon between East and West.

Didn’t read the article. Don’t care. He is off-the-charts dangerous no matter what.

Snopes may not be able to verify (since there is only one witness – the guy who wrote the story), but all the cabinet appointments fit that.

I mean…all the talk about DeVos was disheartening to me. The opposition focused on her lack of “qualifications.” To me qualifications are only important if the person applying for the job wants to do well at it, and it seems the opposition missed the obvious fact that she wants to destroy public education. That is a far greater concern than whether she is qualified or not, and should have been the grounds for fighting against her. What the hell are they thinking? Make it about her intentions. Frankly, the fact that she has no experience is an asset to us right now because she will face a learning curve on trying to damage the department of education. You know, right now, the appointment of Carson is the least offensive because – although he has no qualifications – he isn’t a complete enemy of the interests he has been appointed to oversee. All the other appointments are “burn the house down” people.

So regardless of whether that quote about Bannon can be verified…look at the appointments. That is compelling evidence in itself that the guy is striving to destroy the government.

wv wrote:

Zooey wrote:

That is compelling evidence in itself that the guy is striving to destroy the government…

———
…continuing that sentence……in order to help Corporations.

I mean who else is going to benefit?

w
v

Well, I think some people – libertarians – think that in destroying the government, they are creating individual freedom. They don’t think it through to its natural conclusion.

Bannon, I think, believes that in destroying the government, he is shirking off the “White Man’s Burden.” He thinks that white men shouldn’t have to carry the darkies who just are naturally dependent on the superior race for everything. I don’t think he is pro-corporation per se. He is pro white christian. And krazee people like that don’t think things through to their natural conclusions. In any event, corporations are run by white men, so that all seems natural anyway.

And, yes, it’s pro-corporate even if he doesn’t think of it that way.

I read some of the apocalypse article on him and all the corporatist stuff aside(he surely is that too)he’s a bit of a nut. He believes there is a cycle for these world wars and seems to think we’re due. He was predicting war with China a while ago and seems to want to make it happen now. And yes–he’s pretty happy about all of that because of the reasons Zooey mentioned.

These guys running things are not mentally stable.

That should terrify everyone.

wv wrote:

Well i am not convinced he believes any of that white-supremacy or christian stuff. He might, i dunno. But mainly i think he knows how to USE that stuff to build a political-base.

w
v

You say he might not believe that stuff – he’s just saying it to build a political base. But if he doesn’t believe in that stuff, what’s the point of building a political base that believes in that stuff? I mean, he’s trying to create a world where that stuff is the norm, right? Why would he want that if he didn’t believe in it?

If you were trying to build a national leftist political base, what things would you say that you don’t actually believe in order to build that leftist base?

nittany ram wrote:

wv wrote:

Well i am not convinced he believes any of that white-supremacy or christian stuff. He might, i dunno. But mainly i think he knows how to USE that stuff to build a political-base.

w
v

You say he might not believe that stuff – he’s just saying it to build a political base. But if he doesn’t believe in that stuff, what’s the point of building a political base that believes in that stuff? I mean, he’s trying to create a world where that stuff is the norm, right? Why would he want that if he didn’t believe in it?

If you were trying to build a national leftist political base, what things would you say that you don’t actually believe in order to build that leftist base?

I mentioned this in the thread I started about George Lakoff. I think one thing right-wingers understand oh so well is that “fear of the Other” gets people to vote for “strict Father.” It’s working all over Europe and it worked here in our last election. They chose the Daddy Party over the Mommy party, with the latter being led, for the first time, by an actual mom. In times of great stress and fear of “outlanders,” people seek Daddy, not Mommy.

A huge generalization, I know, but I think it fits to general mass psychology of the moment.

So if a person can convey “toughness” and “aggression” against the Other, people can look past a ton of things that otherwise might sink that candidate. Body language, the repetition of strict father rhetoric — this works.

It just doesn’t matter if the facts say we shouldn’t be afraid of our shadows now. Who knows or cares that the actual numbers of Americans killed by terrorists is so small? From 2001 to 2013 (including 9/11) the total, when we include Americans killed overseas as well, is roughly 3300. Total killed by guns here, with no “terrorist” factor? Roughly 407,000.

There were over 400,000 more gun homicides during that time frame than “terrorist” attacks, but both parties have managed to make “terrorism” issue Number One in the minds of millions.

Trump just took this to a whole new level of lies and hysteria, and has all but immunized himself to factual rebuttals.

It’s time for the left to fight back by completely rejecting all right-wing frames, tossing its language, and mobilizing based on the best possible vision of the future, while ignoring right-wing concerns entirely.

American elections are all about base turnouts now. Revv up the base, via sticking to principles and aggressively promoting that vision, and “the left” can win.

nittany ram wrote:

zn wrote:

Well see also, it’s pretty much enough that he doesn’t condemn it.

Well, you support what you don’t condemn. By allowing the white supremacists to feel empowered by his rhetoric he is supporting their cause whether that was his original intention or not. (It was). Whether he believes everything the white supremacists believe may be open to debate, but they share a common goal. They have the same vision regarding what this country should look like.

The movie “Conspiracy” was an excellent film that was based on a transcript of a meeting that German officials had to discuss how to implement Hitler’s “Final Solution”. The attendees’ copies of the transcripts were supposed to be destroyed but the Allies found one after Germany fell.

The belief that ‘the Jew’ was inferior was held by most of the attendees but not all. However, they all shared the conviction that ‘the Jew’ had to be eliminated, whatever the means. That is what mattered.

An important article on Hitler’s rise and how this relates to Trump’s. From a Hitler scholar. It’s worth reading the whole thing:

Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post” — By Ron Rosenbaum

Excerpt:

Until the morning after the election I had declined them. While Trump’s crusade had at times been malign, as had his vociferous supporters, he and they did not seem bent on genocide. He did not seem bent on anything but hideous, hurtful simplemindedness — a childishly vindictive buffoon trailing racist followers whose existence he had mainstreamed. When I say followers I’m thinking about the perpetrators of violence against women outlined by New York Magazine who punched women in the face and shouted racist slurs at them. Those supporters. These are the people Trump has dragged into the mainstream, and as my friend Michael Hirschorn pointed out, their hatefulness will no longer find the Obama Justice Department standing in their way.

Bad enough, but genocide is almost by definition beyond comparison with “normal” politics and everyday thuggish behavior, and to compare Trump’s feckless racism and compulsive lying was inevitably to trivialize Hitler’s crime and the victims of genocide.

¤

But after the election, things changed. Now Trump and his minions are in the driver’s seat, attempting to pose as respectable participants in American politics, when their views come out of a playbook written in German. Now is the time for a much closer inspection of the tactics and strategy that brought off this spectacular distortion of American values.

What I want to suggest is an actual comparison with Hitler that deserves thought. It’s what you might call the secret technique, a kind of rhetorical control that both Hitler and Trump used on their opponents, especially the media. And they’re not joking. If you’d received the threatening words and pictures I did during the campaign (one Tweet simply read “I gas Jews”), as did so many Jewish reporters and people of color, the sick bloodthirsty lust to terrify is unmistakably sincere. The playbook is Mein Kampf.

Ron Rosenbaum is the author of The Shakespeare Wars, among other books. LARB published the afterword to his new edition of Explaining Hitler last year.

See also:

Hitler, Continued: Afterword from the Updated Edition of “Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil” — By Ron Rosenbaum

To me, it doesn’t really matter if Bannon, Flynn, Trump, Miller and company actually believe their own rhetoric. All that matters is they’re using it to inflame white supremacists and hate in general in America, and this can only lead to terrible things.

It might even be the case that it’s worse if they don’t believe what they’re saying, cuz that makes them psychopaths. “True believers” tend to honestly believe that the acceptance of their views is critical for the survival of the land. People who exploit true believers, OTOH, don’t care, one way or another, about anything but the accumulation of more and more wealth and power for themselves.