It’s time we sat down and came to genuine grips with exactly what the rise of fired former WH Chief Strategist Steve Bannon really means within the American body politic. He said a lot of fairly outlandish things in his 60 Minutes interview, so many that it’s actually rather difficult to address all of it. CNN had to break it down into bullet points and lists.
His comments opposing the firing of James Comey as the “greatest mistake in modern political history” has gotten the most response and been directed at least twice toward WH Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders with predictably slanderous results.
But if we’re going to fully understand and effectively counteract the continuing pseudo-populist surge that continues to support Trump, we need to take a second and listen to what is a fairly frank and direct explanation of it from the man who was for a time, “Trump’s Brain.”
And to me the most telling thing he said was this:
Trump triggers Liberals and makes them irrational.
I found this important because it explains that hippy punching is the point of Trumpism and the alt-Right agenda. They quite deliberately go way out of their way to get an over-the-top reaction from the Left from their own statements and actions which are intended specifically to bait and trigger them. He’s out to say outrageous things because his prime constituency isn’t the racists per se, it’s all the other white people who only don’t think of themselves as racist, who will deny their racism to the highest hills and are sick to death of being — in their opinion wrongfully — repeatedly accused of racism.
They’re just plain sick of that. They look at Trump and they think he talks plain, he says what they would say, and they don't recognize any of it as racist what so ever. Not even a little bit.
You have to understand that being “shocking” is part of the plan. That’s why Milo was able to gain such a platform on Breitbart. He's a TROLL. A Shock Agent. He gets off on getting people to tell him to “fuck off” as he did on Real Time with both Malcolm Nance and Larry Wilmore.
These guys just laugh that stuff off. Getting you hopping mad about their statements and behavior is their only goal, then they just claim you’re an “irrational hater” as Mike Huckabee recently said after getting pummeled on The View for he and his daughters endless excuses for Trump.
This is why when the Access Hollywood tape was released Bannon responded to it not with a typical politician contriteness, but instead said that at that point Trump’s chances of winning were then 100%.
33. "Reince started off and Reince said, 'You have -- you have two choices. You either drop out right now, or you lose by the biggest landslide in American political history.'"
34. "Christie, because of -- Billy Bush -- weekend -- and -- was -- was -- not looked at for a cabinet position."
Technically Preibus was right because Trump did lose by 3 Million votes.
But Bannon stuck with it and saw all those who recommend Trump expect to loose as being “squishy” and insufficiently loyal. Trump had admitted to, confessed and bragged about committing sexual assault on video — and Bannon saw it as a “Litmus Test” for the sufficient fortitude of his staff.
This just plays into the “talks like us”, “thinks like us” meme. He’s a guys’ guy, a man’s man. So what if he gets saucy when he’s behind the scenes. It’s not like he actually did all the thing’s he talked about or that even NBC’s Katy Tur just revealed in her new book about covering the Trump campaign that he actually did it to her too.
Tur was backstage when the then Republican presidential nominee arrived at the set and, ignoring her personal “desire to avoid any interaction,” walked towards her.
Tur wrote in her book that Trump came “barreling” towards her and “suddenly he is so close I can smell what he had for breakfast. And then, before I know what’s happening, his hands are on my shoulders and his lips are on my cheek.”
“My eyes widen. My body freezes. My heart stops.”
“Trump lets go and saunters right onto the 'Morning Joe' set, seemingly very proud of himself,” she continued, according to People magazine.
“I’m mortified. F--k. I hope the cameras didn’t see that,” Tur wrote. “My bosses are never going to take me seriously. I didn’t have time to duck!”
But Trumpers never took that creepy behavior seriously and Bannon was quite correct that they wouldn’t. They live in a big bubble of outrage fatigue coated with a thick patina of denial and delusion.
Just look here as Bannon goes on a rant both decrying the KKK and neo-Nazis and then attacking “Limousine Liberals” for associating him and Trump with them.
23. "David Duke -- the President has condemned David Duke and what David Duke stands for."
24. "I don't need to be lectured -- by a bunch of -- by a bunch of limousine liberals, OK from the Upper East Side of New York and from the Hamptons, OK, about any of this.
He gets really energized about being accused of racism. It really gets his goat. He claims they are only a “small” group who are getting a “Free Ride” from Trump, which wouldn’t happen if he didn’t constantly invite them on board with his anti-immigrant rhetoric and who happen to have generated twice as many terrorist incidents in America over the past decade as Islamic Terrorism.
There are a lot of people, particularly white people, who are really really sick of being accused of Racism when they honestly don't see any relationship between themselves and David Duke or Richard Spencer, except of course completely agreeing on closing the boarder and magically deporting 12 Million people somehow. They don't see this link even after Bannon directly supervised Milo promoting and pushing the ideas of Spencer in the pages of Breitbart.com for literally years. They see, somewhere, some magically line of separation between themselves and the Alt-Right or neo-Nazis, even when the policies they espouse are exactly the same policies supported by Duke and Spencer. particularly on Immigration and on anti-Terrorism.
So Bannon denies he’s a racist, he denies that racism is a major element of the supporters of Trump, he denies that this is a driving force behind his efforts — but again, he is more than willing to push racial buttons if only to get a rise and triggered response from Liberals which continues to confirm their predetermine view that it is the “The Left” that is obsessed with race, not him or them.
Are you seeing how this scam works?
Of course going around calling someone a “Limousine Liberal” is in fact a bigoted prejudicial statement itself. It’s a way of diminishing a person, and more importantly diminishing the legitimacy and substance of what they have to say. It’s a slur, just like how Republicans general shorten calling Democratic Senators and Congressmen to just “Democrat Politicians.” It’s like calling someone a “KIke”, or a “Spic”, or for someone Irish like Bannon — a “Mick.”
We all get what that really is right? A dog whistle through a megaphone.
He denies bigotry while using bigoted terms and then when you listen to explain what he thinks is the core of Trumpism, the idea of “Economic Nationalist” you have to recognize that most of what he says is completely A-Historic, and also nothing but more blatant bigotry.
15. "You couldn't be more dead wrong. America was built on her citizens."
This response from Bannon comes in response to Rose pointing out that the US was conceived as a melting pot. Bannon, um, disagrees. Vehemently.
16. "Economic nationalism is what this country was built on. The American system."
Bannon's argument -- which he goes into slightly more detail on with Rose -- is that the US has to look out for itself and its manufacturing sector, first, second and last. And that people who aren't citizens aren't part of that equation.
As the Daily Show has pointed out this magical historical time that Bannon looks back on so fondly is the 19th Century which was also a time where there were NO IMMIGRATION LAWS. His own great grandfather was able to walk onto American soil without a passport, or a visa. He was essentially — a Dreamer.
This is the exact same argument, by the way, that Richard “Hail Trump” Spencer of the Alt-Right made to W. Kamau Bell claimng that “America is not a nation of immigrants.” Anyone who can say that with a straight face has got problems with facts and reality that a Percocet and some Lithium probably won't fix.
The only difference is that Spencer said it was a “White” nation and Bannon said it’s a “Citizens” nation — which up until fairly recently, like 1964, “Citizens” really meant just White People. Bannon is playing with words, he’s trying to exert that since he’s making a distinction based on citizenship — as if Trump didn’t spend 6 years claiming Barack Obama wasn’t a natural born citizen — that rather than being directly focused on race, people just can’t say that he’s “Racist.” And if they do, then they’re the “Racists.”
Perhaps instead we should say his policies are “Racism Adjacent” to Spencer’s Alt-Rightism, or that he and Trump’s statements are “Racism Enabling” and “Racism Emboldening” to David Duke and Chris “Crybaby” Cantwell of “Unite the Right” or maybe we should say they are the smirking trollish wink wink “Neo-Racists” of the “New Racism-Lite” movement as exemplified by Milo who “don’t really mean” any of fucked up racist shit they say until they get banned for life from Twitter. The Trump Administration is a “Glµten Free Racism LLC” with all the bile and dung of regular Xenophobic, Bigoted, Anti-Semetic and Islamaphobic polices as Ye Olde Racism Classictm but only half the personal animus, carbs, calories and accountability.
This is the game they play. Implementing and supporting blatantly bigoted policies, while denying that that your lying eyes are seeing the bigotry before you. It’s a distinction with no real discernible difference in implementation. We need to be smarter than simply crying “Racism” when this happens because that exactly what this scam is designed to do, which is further drive a wedge between “Limousine Liberals” and the “Forgotten Man” who feels false blamed for something he personally didn’t do, but does support other people doing.
Bannon says “Citizens” built this nation, but it seems to be that it was Chinese immigrants who literally built the trans-continental railroad that allowed for the industrial kingpins of the Steele industry to rise only to be rewarded when that job was done by the Chinese Exclusion Act, a blatantly racist measure — and our first significant immigration law — that specifically intended to block their continued entry and even remaining in America even after they had done so much to support the economic growth of the nation. Their reward was this.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. Those on the West Coast were especially prone to attribute declining wages and economic ills on the despised Chinese workers. Although the Chinese composed only .002 percent of the nation’s population, Congress passed the exclusion act to placate worker demands and assuage prevalent concerns about maintaining white “racial purity.”
The statute of 1882 suspended Chinese immigration for ten years and declared the Chinese as ineligible for naturalization. Chinese workers already in the country challenged the constitutionality of the discriminatory acts, but their efforts failed.
The act was renewed in 1892 for another ten years, and in 1902 Chinese immigration was made permanently illegal. The legislation proved very effective, and the Chinese population in the United States sharply declined.
This is what the concrete result of Bannon’s efforts are intended to re-generate. The Muslim Ban is was the first trial run of this type of policy followed by the new changes to green cards intended to bring more “productive” workers only and save poor dumb uneducated unskilled Americans from any meaningful competition in the job market which might required they UP. THEIR. GAME. some. Bannon playing off fear, he’s playing off xenophobia which is exactly what America did in 1882.
America’s immigration policies for the next 60 years after the CEA remained even more aggressively bigoted blocking access for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and other fleeing famine all for the supposed goal of protecting U.S. jobs, but really it was about something else completely different.
He ignores all contributions to the nation and it’s economy by immigrants. He’s discount the settlers who benefited from the Homestead Act in 1852, the 49ers whom came rushing to the West Coast for the Gold Rush, the industrial booms of the 1920’s which were fed largely by immigrant labor and later the 50’s which built on the growth of Unions and the GI Bill for U.S. soldiers returning from WWII. He discounts the fact that the last time a Republican President had a balance budget when in 1956 during the Eisenhower Administration while the top marginal tax rate was 90%.
No, to him American was only built by “Citizens” ignoring the contribution of African Slaves who tilled the land, feed and clothed the nation with Cotton and other crops. Slaves who weren’t considered citizens, and weren’t protected by the Law under the original formation of the Constitution as was declared by the Dred Scott decision until the 14th Amendment was passed. And that Amendment stated something else that Bannon and his singular focus on “citizens” ignores.
Amendment XIV
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
All persons — not just citizens, but Persons — within the jurisdiction of U.S. law will be granted DUE PROCESS and the EQUAL PROTECTION of those laws.
For all his “Don’t call me Racist” outrage — Bannon, and frankly many of those he rally behind his anti-immigrant bluster under the lame anti-factual excuse of “economic populism” — don’t understand the importance of this fundamental protection for Human and Civil Rights that is embedded in the 14th, and intended to prevent our slowly slouching back into economic segregation.
Or worse yet, they know it’s there, but they just don’t care and choose to ignore it anyway.
When you ignore this, when you start splitting people up into citizens and non-citizens, while pretending that only citizens have “rights” and the protection of the laws you fundamentally FAIL to pass the basic test presented by the original declaration of Independence which called for “Liberty and Justice for ALL”… not just Citizens, ALL.
Bannon fails this, spectacularly. Jason Miller fails this. Jeff Sessions fails this. Trump fails this.
And sadly many of his continued supporters dramatically fail it as well, just as we previously failed it with the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Japanese Interment Camps, the Tuskegee Experiment, Jim Crow, Racial Red-Lining, Predatory Lending and current Voter Suppression Laws.
But don't call them “Racist” or you might get them mad, and they’ll vote for somebody who's an even bigger outer asshole than they are on the inside.
And hence, we have Trump humping the White House, a man whose basically destined to either fail spectacularly over and over again or barely limp through just about anything he’s about to attempt including trying revitalize the rustbelt with cast-off ex-chinese manual labor and factory jobs. If he’s lucky were gonna be needing those FoxConn suicide nets transplanted to Wisconsin soon, and I really don’t think the “forgotten man” is going to appreciate it all that much when all is said and done.
Thanks Steve, now we know the plan.