The four headlines above summarize the program that Steve Bannon – then Trump’s Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor – announced at CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) a month after Trump’s inauguration. They were the featured illustration in my March 8th 2017 Gerry Meandering blog The Most Important News of our Time. I was reminded of this when I read Mapping Corruption: The Interactive Exhibit, (from The American Prospect),which documents the degree to which every government department has been “deconstructed” and corrupted under the Trump administration.
I urge you to read both these items because they show how much was known from the start about the agenda of the Trump presidency (which many people thought was scaremongering when I wrote it) – and to realize how much of it has actually happened – particularly since Bannon has been out of the picture for a long time – and is now under indictment for embezzlement.
Let’s look at a summary of the way these programs were described by Bannon and reported contemporaneously by the New York Times, as well as the current status of each of them.
Deconstruction of the Administrative State is a program to impair the effectiveness of all government agencies in order to reduce Federal Government regulation of all kinds. It is achieved primarily by putting people in charge of each agency who are hostile to its fundamental purposes and by leaving unfilled many of the open slots left by the highly qualified people who depart as a result of this policy.
This deconstruction program has been implemented to one degree or another in virtually every government department.
Sovereignty is defined as the symbolic core of each nation. America’s core is defined as being White and Christian – and is seen as being under threat by cosmopolitanism and globalism.
The first dramatic public instance of this program came to light in August 2017, when Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” after American Nazis marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us”. It has since been evident many times, such as when Trump has made statements favoring right wing protesters over Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
Chillingly, and most recently ,Trump has stated that he actually ordered the action that led US Marshalls to “get” Michael Forest Reinoehl – who was suspected of shooting a member of a far-right group during a protest in Portland Oregon –which led to his Sept 3rd killing. Here is how it was reported in today’s(9/16) New York Times: “Now we sent in the U.S. marshals for the killer, the man that killed the young man in the street. Two and a half days went by, and I put out ‘when are you going to go get him.’ And the U.S. marshals went in to get him.” He added: “This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. marshals killed him. And I’ll tell you something — that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution”..
Globalist Corporatist Media sees the independent media as the opposition party and the enemy of the American people, which embraces immigration and serves business and deserves neither trust nor transparency.
Trump constantly refers to anything in the press that is negative about him as “Fake News”. He is at war with CNN. At his rallies he encourages his supporters to boo and threaten the people in the press box and refers to them as bad people, Meanwhile he fosters Fox and the Sinclair stations virtually as state news agencies..
Economic Nationalism is counter to the long-held bipartisan consensus that favors international trade and immigration. It postulates that American interests are at odds with those of the rest of the world, that countries are in a natural state of permanent competition and that immigration threatens America’s culture and reason for being
Trump’s imposition of tariffs, his trade wars and his hostility to China (such as recently forcing the sale of Tik-Tok to Oracle), plus his obsessive war on immigration and immigrants, are all evidence of the implementation of this policy
Clearly all of this has not happened by accident So how has it happened under a president widely considered to be mentally unstable with no capacity for long-term planning?
Perhaps we should look at the beneficiaries of these policies. There seem to be at least three of them. Vladimir Putin is intent on sowing discord among the NATO nations, in order to strengthen Russia’s standing in the world. Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr and the right wing Republican elected officials are using the Trump presidency to implement their anti-democratic programs – and to stay in power. The Koch-affiliated multi-billionaires and their corporations hate government regulation and use the extra wealth they generate to get even wealthier and exercise even more control over government policies that favor them.
While Trump’s election victory was probably a surprise to all of these entities (perhaps not to Putin), they must have soon come to see that perhaps they could use his presidency to achieve their goals. How? By “Letting Trump be Trump” – using his ability to dominate the airwaves with one sensation after another as a constant distraction while they steadily implemented their policies under the radar. This is just a theory, but it certainly goes a long way to explaining why McConnell and Barr have tied themselves to Trump and why both Putin and all the Republicans are trying so hard to distort the results of the upcoming elections
Michael Cohen says that Trump will do anything to win. The polls show he is going to lose if there is a fair election. So the really important question is not how did this happen? It is what can be done to overcome what Trump plus all these entities are doing to try to make sure that a fair election doesn’t happen?.
The Biden team seems to be doing everything they can to counter the threats (and Mike Bloomberg dedicating a hundred million dollars to secure a Biden win in the key state of Florida should help), but the only thing all of us can do is vote, make sureour votes are counted and get everyone we know – and even, if possible, people we don’t know, to do the same.
Cross-posted here from my Gerry Meandering WordPress bllog: gerrylewisblog.wordpress.com/...