Tag Archives: Steve Bannon

Down to them.

Trump’s health care repeal and replace failed this week and of course he blamed it on everyone but himself. Then he turned around and told the New York Times that his horrible attorney general’s decision to recuse himself was “unfair to the president”. Wednesday night, Rachel Maddow was pondering how what Sessions did might be termed “unfair”, apparently forgetting that our president has the mind and emotions of a five year old, so everything that doesn’t go entirely his way seems to him to be totally unfair. That’s why we’re spending millions of dollars on a commission to hunt down evidence of non-existent massive voter impersonation by immigrants – at least non-existent in the world we all inhabit, if not in Trump’s tiny mind. So we’re doing it because his loss of the popular vote was “so unfair”. (Next the Pentagon will be tasked with hunting down his dream goblins.)

Not our only problem.It’s not just pure childishness, of course. When Trump picked the racist Sessions (attracted to the Trump campaign by the racist Steve Bannon) as attorney general, he thought he was hiring a lawyer to represent his own personal interests. That reflects not only his narcissism but also his profound ignorance with respect to the role of the AG.

I can only wish that Trump voters would get some vague idea of the dimensions of presidency and of how powerful a country this is. More than most jobs, the presidency can’t just be done by anybody, even if anybody can be elected president. That office is at the head of a massive global imperial enterprise that makes Trump’s company look like a lemonade stand. It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re president, and those mistakes can have enormous and lasting consequences. But the president does not just act for him or herself – s/he has a responsibility to all of us in everything s/he does. This president doesn’t get that. When he talks to Putin for 3.5 hours without having someone to capture what is discussed, he is acting like the government is just some cheesy corporation he acquired somewhere.

As I’ve said many times before, Trump is not the only problem we have. He is, in fact, just a symptom of a far broader problem – that of a Republican party that has gone off the deep, right end. Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are in some ways more destructive than the dunce Trump, and far more cynical. Trump at least has the lame excuse of ignorance; congressional Republicans know what they want and who it hurts. They wrecked the economy the last time they held the presidency, openly obstructed even the flimsy, middle-of-the-road Obama agenda, stole a Supreme Court seat, and much more than that. If we’re to make any real progress in this country, we need to stop them as well.

Don’t be distracted. This mess is down to all of them. They all need to be held accountable at the ballot box.

luv u,

jp

Look away!

Break out your banjos; looks like we have a new A.G. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions will now oversee the Justice Department, which includes the FBI, U.S. Attorneys offices across the nation, and (gulp) the Civil Rights Division. (Now I know why the chorus of Dixie goes, “Look away! Look away!”) Dark times indeed, except that this is just part of the story, because we now have anti-public education zealot billionaire Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, former Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, former Breitbart editor and longtime white supremacist Steve Bannon as a permanent member of the National Security Council, retired general and current crackpot Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor …. shall I go on? This just in: elections have consequences.

Look away! Look away!Of course, the most problematic member of the administration is the man himself. Only 20 days into this regime and it feels like forever. In a way, it might as well be three years in. I keep hearing pundits, like sometime Trump adviser Joe Scarborough, saying that he needs to dial back the motor mouth a bit …. as if that is ever going to happen. Why the hell would he? It’s worked very well for him so far. Anyone who has ever worked for a small businessperson knows how that works. The man is going to impugn the judiciary when it goes against him and praise it when it decides in his favor, period. Separation of powers, constitutional laws and traditions – none of that means anything to him. He has dictatorial tendencies, and we have placed him into the most powerful office on the planet. Nice going, people.

Okay, before I descend into a Winnebago Man – like tirade, let me talk about what isn’t different about this administration. One thing is that they hide their bad military decisions behind the soldiers who are killed by those decisions. Previous administrations have done this more artfully, but no less cravenly. I’m referring specifically to the raid in Yemen, which has many troubling implications, but which by all accounts was a Rescue One-level disaster, resulting in the death of a Navy Seal, wounding of others, the destruction of an aircraft, and the killing of perhaps two dozen civilians, including children. Spokeswalrus (sorry, walruses!) Sean Spicer announced that to call this raid anything less than a success is to denigrate the sacrifice of the lost Navy Seal. This jiu jitsu move is well practiced – the deep implication is to deflect blame on the dead guy, while making it sound like you’re outraged that others aren’t properly honoring him. Effing disgusting.

So something old, something new. Either way, it’s going to be a long four years.

luv u,

jp

Swear in.

This past Christmas, my sister gave me the box set of John Lewis’s graphic memoir March, about his early days as an organizer, civil rights leader, and founder of SNCC. It’s a great story and pretty timely, as the principles of non-violent activism and resistance are likely to come in handy in the coming years. Of course, as you know, John Lewis has been in the news over the last few days, though not because of his books. He spoke ill of our president-electoral, as Sam Seder so accurately calls him, and that naturally brought a somewhat delayed social media response from Herr Mr. Hair, who drunk tweeted about John Lewis being all “talk, talk, talk,” and never getting anything accomplished.

Dressed for success.Lots of people have taken issue with this reaction, and more than 50 sitting congresspeople elected not to attend Trump’s inauguration as a protest. And this incident is being spun in the media as just another instance of the president-electoral not being able to let any critical comment pass, of being too thin-skinned or too sensitive. I have to say, though, that I think there’s more to this social media rant than just the T-bone’s usual expression of his hyper narcissism. This incident seriously smells of Bannon, which is to say that it’s a strategic tirade, aimed at a very specific audience.

Remember that Trump’s alt-right fans follow him on Twitter. They’re his attack dogs – when he Twitter bombs someone, they pile onto the carcass. Ripping on John Lewis is prime grade red meat for those fuckers, and what better time to pull it off than on Martin Luther King day? I took a look at David Duke’s Twitter feed and saw that he posted a photo of Congressman Lewis with the headline: “Another loud-mouth, do-nothing Democrat. No hero here – just another Racist; zero results for blacks his entire tenure in house!” That’s just a slight variation on Trump’s message, which Duke posted under the hashtag MAGA – “make America great again”.

As the Cheeto-headed freak takes control (the nuclear codes in his pocket), bear in mind that he is not just a thin-skinned loudmouth. He is part of the broader reactionary political machine that encompasses Congressional Republicans, conservative foundations, rogue billionaires, and sheet-wearing (as well as non-sheet wearing) Klansmen. The problem is bigger than just one man.

luv u,

jp

Best behavior.

By all accounts, what we’re seeing now is Trump being nice. If that’s the case, it’s going to be a very long four years. The last week has been very similar to the closing weeks of the campaign – very staid public appearances, not a tremendous amount of exposure to the press, but quite a lot of drunk tweeting. The somewhat restrained dressing down of VP-elect Mike Pence (who my wife and I keep calling Bike Pants) at the musical Hamilton drew a flurry of outrage from @RealDonaldTrump mostly centered on how “unfair” the cast members were being. This man is so fucking thin-skinned, it’s kind of terrifying. What the hell is he going to do when foreign leaders start trash-talking him?

He gets the last word?Let me see if I can guess: whatever his last advisor told him to do. Unfortunately, the two corner offices of the White House will be occupied by two of the most unstable people in his entourage – former Breitbart editor (and man who looks like he spent the last two months sleeping under a bridge) Steve Bannon, who helped buoy the now famous alt-right movement, and General Michael Flynn, who feigns a pretty good imitation of General Jack Ripper from Dr. Strangelove. This makes the Trump White House what may be described as an attractive nuisance, in a way. It seems likely that terror groups will be even more emboldened to mount a spectacular attack on the United States, since they know these people are far more likely than Obama to overreact. Violent overreaction is just what they want from us. Just ask them.

The other thing they want is a war between the United States and all Muslims. Here again, Flynn and Bannon will prove invaluable. Some of Flynn’s comments have placed Muslims of all stripes under suspicion, presenting them as something Americans should be afraid of – presumably, Americans who are not Muslims. This, coupled with the blood libel Trump engaged in during the campaign (namely the bogus story about thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the 9/11 attacks back in 2001), have driven xenophobic sentiment to the point where some mild discouragement from the president-elect feels like window-dressing. People who voted for Trump on the strength of his bigoted appeal will insist that he act to remove, say, Somalis from their whitebread towns. Again, this kind of stupidity I’m sure warms the cold hearts of ISIS.

One can only hope that Trump’s new advisor – Joe Scarborough – can talk him out of this … at least when Joe’s not pretending to be an independent-minded talk show host. (I almost wrote “journalist”, but then you would have just laughed at me.)

luv u,

jp