Bannon Loves Him Some Apocalypse

Rapture Edition

 

Some further chilling background on Bannon: he's fixated on Armageddon fantasies. I'm afraid he and the other rapture-ready "Christians" will be working to make their end-times dreams come true. 

I find it puzzling that those who profess so strongly to being PRO-LIFE are obsessively focused on death. In the article it describes Bannon's certainty that we are at "the fourth turning", with world-wide death and destruction inevitable. The most disturbing thing is he seems eager to get on with it, surfing that wave of blood into the blessed alt-right future.

Authoritarian or Fascist?

So let's get this straight - (Christian) churches get special tax breaks, but they can ignore inconvenient Federal regulations? Now Trump wants to "destroy" the Johnson Amendment which prevents tax-exempt non-profits from political activity. Free from legal obligations but able to spend tax-free dollars on politics. In effect, this is the absolute opposite of the cry of 1776; it is instead "representation without taxation".

So we have a Trifecta! It's like a series of equations:

Government subsidy (no tax) + no rules! + tax-free money for politics = State Religion.
 State Religion + Strong Leader + Corporate Money = Authoritarianism 
Authoritarianism + Virulent Racism + Attack Media = Chisto-Fascism 

So many sad bloody lessons  were learned  at great expense by our forebears. The endless wars of Europe, both ancient and modern, the African genocides, both ancient and modern,  so many wars through human history. 

Until the ferocious assault of combined corporate and social conservative Big Money plus right-wing media, the post-WW II era has been remarkably stable. The institutions Mr. T mocks and berates: NATO, European Union, the U.N., have helped create a long stretch of world peace.

Yes, there is military conflict pretty much world-wide but at a historically low-level. For an extreme comparison, think of Game of Thrones.  In that world, you were a very lucky man if you made it to 30 years old.  The modern American world is so much safer and padded there is no comparison. You are waaaaay more likely to die of a heart attack than a sword. In terms of risk, you are many times more likely to be killed by lightening than an immigrant terrorist.  

All these painfully constructed rules we have constructed to make this world as safe, just and accessible for the greatest number of people possible are now under systematic assault. Small-minded individuals with deadened souls want as much as they can grab, steal, cheat, borrow, loot and finagle  for their special little tribe of insiders and  to hell with everybody else. We've tried this system of social organization before - it's called Aristocracy.  Historically it has led to mass misery among the peasants who periodically  revolt and string the Dukes and Earls and Kings from the lamp posts. Recall also this was Mussolini's fate. 

It seldom ends well, unless a true democracy like Britain or Sweden retains a ceremonial King. Notable in these countries, the Monarch is obliged to respect and respond to the people.  The Orange Menace's ideas about Royalty, which he of course considers himself to be, are of a distinctly older version - Donald the I, Sun King, holding the power of life and death for each and every one in his tiny, soft hands.

Too Perfect for Words

 

From TPM:  Trump's Vote Fraud Guru is Registered in Three States

Shadow Government

 

This post from Josh Marshall's joint  is a shocking added twist to the co-opting of Congress. According to the report, the president's* administration worked with congressional staff on crafting the Immigration ban without telling their bosses, the members of Congress!

I can't even - the gob, she is smacked...Imagine you have an employee, someone who works under your direct control, takes care of your most sensitive issues, and this person also happens to work for someone else without your knowledge. You then have a potential for divided loyalties and conflicts of interest. If you found out could you ever trust that person again? It would be like cheating in a marriage - often the damage cannot be fully repaired.

That is what Mr. T has done to these Congresspersons - destroyed the trust and confidence in their office staff. The capper to all this is that the staffers were required to sign the famous Trump non-disclosure agreement. This is like pouring acid in the gears of congress. Per my earlier post on the slow-motion coup seemingly in progress, this further undermines the Congressional branch of government. 

I tell you, you can't take your eyes off these people for a second!

Slow-Motion Coup d'Etat

 

This  post from Yonatan Zunger echos my impressions of the last week or so. He asks if the events of the last few weeks are a "trial balloon for a coup". I would argue that they are not a trial balloon, they are the real thing. 

This is not your typical Banana Republic coup - instead of a few strong men, we have a diverse collection of power centers. Instead of one quick attack, taking control of our system requires the submission or replacement of many people. What is frightening is that large groups are already co-opted. The recumbent Republican party has been a total enabler of this - as long as they get tax cuts for rich people, they don't care much about a bunch of peons. The institutional Democratic party is back on its heels and is lagging behind its supporters in many cases. So much for congress.

The Executive branch take-over is, of course, well underway. The few sparks of resistance - renegade tweeters at the Interior Department, the Acting Attorney-General who will not support the unconstitutional Immigration ban - are rapidly being identified and liquidated. The head of DNI and the Joint Chief of Staff have been removed from the Principals committee of the National Security Council, replaced by Trump's Rasputin, Steven Bannon. 

In fact it appears that Bannon is now effectively our un-elected president. From Foreign Policy:

"Even before he was given a formal seat on the National Security Council’s “principals committee” this weekend by President Donald Trump, Bannon was calling the shots and doing so with little to no input from the National Security Council staff, according to an intelligence official who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution.

“He is running a cabal, almost like a shadow NSC,” the official said. He described a work environment where there is little appetite for dissenting opinions, shockingly no paper trail of what’s being discussed and agreed upon at meetings, and no guidance or encouragement so far from above about how the National Security Council staff should be organized.

The intelligence official, who said he was willing to give the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt when it took office, is now deeply troubled by how things are being run.

“They ran all of these executive orders outside of the normal construct,” he said, referring to last week’s flurry of draft executive orders on everything from immigration to the return of CIA “black sites.”

Bannon has set up a shadow government and is cutting out everyone except the most trusted inner circle, at the same time he is circumventing the normal review and documentation of the decision process:

""If those papers are now being generated by political staff, she added, it corrupts the whole process.
It could also contribute to Bannon’s centralization of power.

“He who has the pen has the authority to shape outcomes,” the intelligence official said.

Now Bannon’s role in the shadows is being formalized thanks to an executive order signed Saturday by Trump that formally gives Bannon a seat on the National Security Council’s principals committee. The same executive order removed from that group the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of national intelligence, and the secretary of energy."
 So much for the Executive.

Three Federal District Courts issued stays against the Immigration action this weekend and it appears that DHS is ignoring some or all of the court's orders. Further, the Dear Leader is scheduled to release his Supreme Court pick tomorrow night (is anyone giving odds that it will be anything other than a straight, white, conservative christian man?). The Democrats may have some success filibustering any nominee, but what if another slot opens up? I pray-to-god knock-on-wood hope I am totally wrong on this, but part of me wonders if Bannon is even now planning the assassination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It would totally fit with his hate-fueled drive for power. So much for the Courts?

We have to stay on top of these developments and fight like our lives depend on it, because they very well may - at least life anything like the America we have known. Congratulations to all who have marched, protested, got activated, called their representatives and senators, discussed this with friends and acquaintances. These are all excellent beginnings but are just that - beginnings. This will be a long struggle, friends, and we need the love and support of each other to sustain us. Never forget - we are the true heirs of America and there are more of us than of them - the future will be ours!

The Impeachment Clock is Ticking

                                             Protesters at SeaTac Airport


We will not stand for this - or, rather we WILL stand for this - protesting in our thousands! A nation of immigrants that turns its back on the most desperate and vulnerable immigrants has lost its soul. We will not allow that to happen because if we do, we are lost. We are better than this. 2018 is not far off - let's make sure the R's reap the whirlwind at the next election.

The great David Bowie put it well....

A Critical Dilemma

Are Democrats wasting time trying to understand the Trump voter?

We are hearing a lot these days about the need for the Democratic party to reach out to the disaffected white working class voters, listen to them and understand why the voted as they did. This implies that if we know what's eating them we can craft a message that will show them the D's are the ones actually on their side and ride this to victory in 2018. Is this a waste of time? 

To spoil my own punch line, no, I don't think the understanding part is wasted, as this understanding is needed to help craft a response based on the political landscape as it is. We need a rational clear-eyed view of where we are if there is any chance of building a bridge to where we want to be.

The effort that may, indeed, be wasted is the belief that these renegade voters can be convinced in any way that they have been sold a complete hill of magic beans. This post on Alternet from  blogger Forsetti's Justice does an excellent job of laying out the hermetically closed universe of the fundamentalist mind. 

A rigid system of knowledge based on belief acts as a filter to any information that doesn't fit the approved template or is not from one of the "approved" authorities. When Preacher Rick Joyner says Jesus's Apostles "were all Donald Trump", his flock believes that even when multiple news sources report on his frauds, infidelities and crude language. That must all be wrong - "Fake News", or just doesn't matter because they have been told he is one of the Anointed.

This kind of closed knowledge system, particularly susceptible to the "virus" of dangerous, irrational and unfounded beliefs, is the perfect breeding ground for unpersuadable, uncompromising converts who will never question what they are told. If Dear Leader says it is true, it is true, and if you try and tell me otherwise I will know YOU are not to be trusted!

So, friends, how do we respond to this? It is tempting to simply demonize these folks as ignorant morons, but heating up the war of words further won't help anything. There should be an effort to put out, loudly and strongly, the real, verifiable facts, to clearly express why core Liberal values and world views are fundamentally for the working man as opposed to the power of Big Money. 

The very word "Liberal" needs to be reclaimed and rehabilitated from the Right's propaganda campaign which has dragged the proud name of humanism and enlightened progress through the mud. As is so often the case with the reactionary Right, the ugly assertions against Liberalism that it wants to dominate, is corrupt and scheming to control the world is an almost perfect example of projection.

Let's say that all these steps are carried out, the case is made honestly and clearly, the Liberal idea refurbished - will it swing any Trump voters? Perhaps a few of the more open and aware ones, but I would not expect so in mass. But I think this is not the point, which is that we do these things because they are the right things to do, because only through honestly and clarity can we successfully deal with the world as it is. We do these things because it reflects the America we love, the child of the the 18th century enlightenment which has been a beacon to the world for so long: non-secular, rational, promising (if not always delivering) equality and justice for all.

I think if we follow the "true path" of our core beliefs, do not worry ourselves about converting those who will not be converted, but stick with plain truth and honesty we may have a chance to mobilize all those who agree with us but "don't do politics" or were discouraged or too cynical. I think this is becoming the real "silent majority" in the United States of the 21st century.

What do you think?

Update:

Joan Williams at the Harvard Business Review has some some additional insights. She suggests that voters may be swung by focusing on economic issues. Both D's and R's have become such creatures of Big Money that the white working class (WWC) feels abandoned by both. 

Mr. T promised to bring back jobs for HS graduates that can support a family (which he probably can't deliver) and won the election. Policies that actually help raise the living standard of the WWC will need to place a greater burden on the obscenely rich, but of course this administration is moving in the opposite direction.