Trump, Bannon and the Coming Crisis

[Kinser79]

(03-10-2017, 05:11 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: Listen, I'll readily admit that Steve Bannon worries me far more than Trump does.  I prefer not to have any ideologue sitting at the right hand of the president.

Then you'll have to take umbridge at all presidents that have ever occupied the office of POTUS. I assure you that they have all had their Cheif Ideologe in their midst be they White House Staff, Kitchen Cabinet or Regular Cabinet.

Quote:  I admit, as well, some discomfort that Neil Howe lent his participation to Bannon's patently slanted documentary Generation Zero, to which I took issue--even umbrage--at a number of his suppositions.  (More on that later.)

Have you seen the film? I have and have no problem with Howe lending his participation. Of course I also don't think it is any of my business what Howe does provided he neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg--but I digress.

Quote:Okay, so Steve Bannon has made some speeches, and has read more than a few books.  I get the concern, and attention must be paid, I'll grant you that.  But the key question for me boils down to this:  Is there more than "six degrees of separation" between Bannon the provocateur and Bannon the president's chief political strategist?  Because if there is, maybe we need to dial down the volume just a bit.  (I have, though I remain watchful, to the extent that that's possible for an ordinary citizen.) 

I'm pretty sure that Bannon the ideologe/provocateur and Bannon the President's Chief Political Strategist are one and the same person. Both apparently spent time on the editorial board of Breitbart News. Which is apparently Odin's bugbear du jour.

Quote:How will we know if Steve Bannon--and by logical extension, Trump--is using any text as a "playbook" for domestic and foreign policy? Was Bannon's recent language about establishing a "new political order" lifted right out of The Fourth Turning?  Is that alone sufficient evidence on its face to accuse Bannon of orchestrating a self-fulfilling prophecy with Trump's tacit approval?  (Some us may recall that George H.W. Bush spoke of a "new world order," which some Americans immediately interpreted in strictly conspiratorial terms.)

I highly doubt that Bannon is using a text. I would argue that the new political order statement comes from the death of the old order--which is what happens every 4T. As for conspiracy theories, it isn't a conspiracy if everyone is in on it and it is being done in front of god and everybody.

Quote:Wouldn't it be glaringly obvious if our president was using any radical text--Mein Kampf, included--to hoodwink the American public, and bring about some dystopian vision?

I highly doubt that the President is using Mein Kampf if he is using any text at all. That particular book is a product of its place and time and is not really applicable to the US except in those places where Hitler stumbled upon universal truths. Universal truths he was neither the first to 'discover' nor will be the last to 'discover'.

 

Quote: Does totalitarianism come that easily to a mature democracy?  Or will it come creeping in on "little cat's feet" in a guise--and for a purpose--with which we are comfortably familiar?  Some astute observer speculated that if fascism ever comes to America, it will be a fascism created to fight another fascism (say, Islamofascism).  That I can buy, especially if our "fascism" is in response to a terrorist attack that makes 9-11 pale by comparison.  One pundit has even ventured so far as to say that we are one such attack away from the end of the "open society" as we know it.  Perish the thought.  That event might coincide with some kind of authoritarianism--benign or otherwise.

To date there has been no recorded example of Fascism taking hold of a mature democracy. Furthermore, it is unlikely to because fascism is an antiquated political ideology along with feudalism and communism. The material conditions for its existance simply are not present.

However, if we loosely interpret fascism to mean simply authoritarianism then yes it could slink in on little cat's feet. However it is unlikely to do so against so-called Islamofascism (which doesn't really exist outside of the Syrian Ba'ath Party) but rather will come from the left. As Winston Churchill observed in the future it would be the anti-fascists who would be the fascists.

Quote:It's not going to be so easy as suddenly slipping a "black hood" over our heads and carrying us off to...whatever.  There will be more to go by--something other than old speeches and a controversial reading list--to alert us that liberal democracy is about to meet its demise.

Teach, the problem is that liberal democracy isn't under assalt at all. If anything it is standing on the cusp of becoming more liberal (in the classical sense) and more democratic than ever before. If you stop, and listen to who is calling for more censorship, more safe spaces, this is problematic and that is problematic then you see it isn't the Right which is now populated almost solely by Civic Nationalists, Classical Liberals and Libertarians which is making this call.