Trump Adviser Steve Bannon is Leaving White House Post (nytimes.com) 420
President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon left his position on Friday (alternative source) as the newly minted chief of staff John Kelly sought to bring order to a White House riven by infighting and power struggles, more than a dozen news outlets report. Maggie Haberman, reporting for The New York Times: The president and senior White House officials were debating when and how to dismiss Mr. Bannon. The two administration officials cautioned that Mr. Trump is known to be averse to confrontation within his inner circle, and could decide to keep on Mr. Bannon for some time. As of Friday morning, the two men were still discussing Mr. Bannon's future, the officials said. A person close to Mr. Bannon insisted the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the president on Aug. 7, to be announced at the start of this week, but the move was delayed after the racial unrest in Charlottesville, Va.
Well, okay - but (Score:5, Insightful)
... as the newly minted chief of staff John Kelly sought to bring order to a White House riven by infighting and power struggles ...
As we saw on Tuesday - there's only so much discipline and order General Kelly can impose because the biggest problem in that regard is actually Trump being Trump.
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"I think we're all Bozos on this bus. And the President is driving us."
-- The Firesign Theatre
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Given Trump's successes thus far, can his behavior truly be said to be a problem? Mind you, I ask this question as a neutral party; I have an equally low opinion of all politicians and, in general, public leaders.
Hell, he wasn't even wrong in his comments about who was contributing to the violence. It was tone deaf, perhaps, but not wrong. He's not even wrong about the statues and their relationship to history. If anyone were to ask my opinion of his tactics, instead of calling his behavior crazy, I wou
Re:Well, okay - but (Score:5, Insightful)
Given Trump's successes thus far,
What successes are you referring to?
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What successes are you referring to?
Well, getting elected as President of the United States does come to mind.
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Yeah, well you can fool all the people some of the time....
Trump is an artful marketeer. He ranks right up there with P.T. Barnum for great hype.
As to actually making anything or providing any service ---not so much. Nada. Zilch. Nothing to see here.
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Trump is an artful marketeer. He ranks right up there with P.T. Barnum for great hype.
By all accounts, P.T. Barnum was a fantastic marketer. You have to admit some success, as here it is almost 200 years later and you know his name well enough to compare him to Trump.
The comparison to Trump is apt.
Re:Well, okay - but (Score:5, Funny)
What successes are you referring to?
Well, getting elected as President of the United States does come to mind.
If Trump has demonstrated anything, it's that any idiot can be elected President of the United States.
That deserves a qualifier (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, they were both running against the only person they could lose to.
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Seriously, they were both running against the only person they could lose to.
I found the whole situation quite depressing. 300 million Americans, and those two were somehow the best we could come up with?
We had plenty better (Score:3)
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http://cdn.historycommons.org/... [historycommons.org]
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Winning the primary, then Whitehouse against what would otherwise be called a "shoe in" candidate. The economy, kinda, but more concrete would be supreme court appointment and reduced immigration.
Mind you, I'm not saying these are good or bad, merely that they're accomplishments.
More fun has been his work against the media and in working towards replacing ACA. Sure, these are fuzzier accomplishments. You may even question if they count at all given he "failed" to overturn ACA. However, look at what was
Re:Well, okay - but (Score:5, Informative)
against what would otherwise be called a "shoe in" candidate.
Clinton was never a "shoo-in" candidate. That her campaign thought she was is irrelevant. She shares with Trump the honor of being among the least popular major party candidates in history.
The economy, kinda, but more concrete would be supreme court appointment and reduced immigration.
None of those are Trump victories.
The economy has simply continued the trend line that started well before Trump got in office.
The supreme court appointment was engineered by Congress and no matter who was President, they were going to make an appointment.
Immigration reduction was also a trend that started well before Trump got in office (although you could argue that he increased the rate of reduction).
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The supreme court appointment was engineered by Congress and no matter who was President, they were going to make an appointment
You're correct on the rest, and grasshoppa is nuts if he thinks that Trump's effort to take on ObamaCare has accomplished anything at all (the left was already talking about how to improve it), but on this one you're wrong. At least, you have to admit that Clinton would have nominated a very different kind of justice. It's remotely possible that the Senate could have refused to confirm, but very doubtful. They managed to hold off confirming Obama's nominee for 8 months, but there's no way they'd have left S
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At least, you have to admit that Clinton would have nominated a very different kind of justice.
Yes, of course. I think you missed my point: appointing the SC justice can't be considered a "victory" for Trump, because no matter who was President, they were going to appoint a justice. So it's not so much a "victory" as it is a "gift".
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At least, you have to admit that Clinton would have nominated a very different kind of justice.
Yes, of course. I think you missed my point: appointing the SC justice can't be considered a "victory" for Trump, because no matter who was President, they were going to appoint a justice. So it's not so much a "victory" as it is a "gift".
Okay, not a victory for Trump, but a victory for Trump's voters. I know lots of people who voted for Trump only because they wanted a conservative justice, and they got it. Actually, this issue is kind of an anti-victory for Trump, because if there hadn't been a seat or two on SCOTUS up for grabs, he'd have gotten fewer votes... and it wouldn't have taken that many fewer to have lost the election.
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And what was the "preferred" choice of the Republicans, we already had Bush Sr. and Jr., Bush middle?
Also, what were the Democrats thinking that we needed another Clinton? This country isn't a freakin' family run business anyway
Maybe we should be looking at it from another perspective. We put Trump in there to punish both Democrats and Republicans.
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Neil was all McConnell. As you said, he held off Obama's for 8 months AND killed the senate rule for 60 votes for a supreme. Just like the Dem's are paying for killing off other rules for 60 votes and are probably regretting it, you can bet the republicans are gong to be regretting this. Consider a supreme is a lifetime appointment. I believe compromise is essential to such an appointment. But then compromise is now completely foreign to the new world of bubble left/right.
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I really don't think he's intentionally manipulating the media. I think he's just wandering between topics saying crazy things and mostly getting away with it, like Mr Magoo, because everyone is so caught off guard.
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Obama did that twice, and with black skin.
The left talked about fixing Obamacare from the day it was passed.
That's what we need in a president: someone who can masterfully manipulate us. Good job.
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Now you routinely hear the left talking about how to fix it ( and as a small business owner, let me tell you; it absolutely needs to be fixed ).
The main reason the left routinely talk about that is because they only managed to get it passed in a broken state because the Republicans insisted on breaking it. That predates Trump and so has nothing to do with him.
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So basically nothing. Didn't get rid of Obamacare, the wall hasn't been started or funded, and he missed his own deadline to get a handle on Muslim's visiting the US.
He hasn't managed to come up with a replacement to Obamacare that his own party will accept, and they really, really hate Obamacare.
His trade councils failed and everyone quit. He failed to deal with ISIS in the timeframe he promised.
Remember that photo of his closest advisors and staff in the Oval Office, taken a few weeks after he came to pow
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I doubt there are many Republicans who feel good about what Trump is doing to the party.
Re:Well, okay - but (Score:4, Funny)
Say what now?
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Trump's successes
Say what now?
Kind of like the French Military Victories from a few years back...
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Re:Well, okay - but (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, "trolling the left" has certainly provoked a response. Not just from the left, either - from the business community, from the vast majority of Republican politicians, and from many of Trump's historically more loyal supporters. Apparently, making excuses for Nazis pisses off a lot of people. This week has cost Trump dearly in terms of poll numbers, business support, conservative media support, party support, and even forced his hand on firing Bannon.
I'd say the left doesn't really need to do "their side" any favors - Trump is doing more for them right now than they could ever do on their own.
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it seems he's specifically trolling the left to provoke a disproportionate response.
He's trolling the right and the left, and it's working. The [dis??]proportionate response will be impeachment, or in the best case, handcuffs.
Re:Well, okay - but (Score:5, Insightful)
Given Trump's successes thus far, can his behavior truly be said to be a problem?
I think you answer your own question right here:
I would suggest that it seems he's specifically trolling the left to provoke a disproportionate response.
There are a lot of responsibilities and expectations that people have for the office of President. Trolling Americans in order to provoke a disproportionate response is not one of them. That's a behavior problem. Maybe instead of trolling people he should be trying to set the actual tone of the debate and try to work at healing wounds instead of opening new ones. That's the kind of behavior we expect from a president, from any party. We expect the person to rise to the office, and instead Trump has dragged the office of President down to his level. So, yeah, his behavior can truly be said to be a problem.
but they aren't doing "their side" any favors by allowing him to further provoke them.
Here's more evidence that his behavior is a problem. You are suggesting that maybe it is counter-productive or beneath someone to respond to the President. The President Of The United States. That if the President addresses you, with the objective of provoking you, that you somehow need to be the bigger person and not respond. To the President Of The United States. The American people have never had a relationship like that with their president, at least not that I'm aware of. Several months ago when Trump was attacking the Morning Joe show, I think on ABC, with just all of these stupid personal insults, there was a quote by someone with a title that was something like "Senior VP of Communications" or something, and he pointed out that he never expected that it would be beneath him to respond to the POTUS. We are in new territory here, and it is largely because of Trump's behavior. So, yeah, it's a problem.
Re:Well, okay - but (Score:5, Insightful)
...it sounds like you're the type of person that can believe a rape victim was "asking for it."
That accused rapist had a permit for his gun. The so-called "victim" had no permit and only the flimsy excuse of being unarmed. Nobody wants to talk about it, but the accused had a full time job and paid taxes. If you ignore the occasional rape, he had some terrific qualities. He spends nearly all of his time not raping people. Fine people on both sides.
Which is it? (Score:5, Informative)
The CNBC article says both that Bannon resigned and that Trump fired him.
Re:Which is it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Which is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
The CNBC article says both that Bannon resigned and that Trump fired him.
Both, people at that level are very rarely fired, typically they are asked to submit a resignation. The idea is to preserve optics by making the departure seem as amicable as possible.
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Yes, but being asked to resign is actually being fired. The contradictory reporting seems to hint that this is what happened here, but it is genuinely possible that Bannon actually quit without being asked to.
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> The idea is to preserve optics
Can we fucking please stop using that.
Re:Which is it? (Score:5, Funny)
I can see that: "You can't resign, you work for me. You're fired."
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"The CNBC article says both that Bannon resigned and that Trump fired him." I can see that: "You can't resign, you work for me. You're fired."
Or "Please have your resignation on my desk this afternoon". That's the way these things are typically done, so that technically the individual resigned, even though they were actually fired.
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The CNBC article says both that Bannon resigned and that Trump fired him.
Makes sense to me. Hung, drawn and quartered was the in thing in days of yore.
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Above a certain pay grade nobody ever gets fired, they just resign. The question is; did they jump or were they pushed?
Trump's base (Score:5, Interesting)
Looks like Time's puppet master attack worked.
Bannon represented Trump's base far better than any other person in his inner circle. Without Bannon Trump will have a far harder time keeping in sync with the people responsible for putting him in office. It wasn't the globalists like McMaster that got him elected, it was people like Bannon who helped him connect with people from the lay person to the disenfranchised (both Dem and Rep).
Disenfranchised (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump is just a symptom and so are all these protests - for whatever reason. People are looking for the one reason for their declining standard of living, healthcare costs going out of control, food prices increasing, housing costs, and just finding it harder to live better than their parents (the American dream) - let alone as well as them.
People are pissed but unfortunately, they are blaming the wrong people.
My meds are artificially high priced. Can I go and get them from another country? Nope - it's illegal. Why? For my own safety - because I may get counterfeit drugs from a foreign pharmacy. Amazing, I don't see many deaths from counterfeit drugs in Canada.
But why are our prices so high here in the USA? Because they can, that's why. And I know who is to blame and they are ALL members of the Republican party. Free markets my ass!
And when someone is making over $15 and hour - 40 hours a week - and STILL can't afford a place to live in some southeast sub-urban town, there is something really fucked up. We're not talking about the SF Bay area - but nowhere.
The wealth and income disparity is what is causing all this and it is because the system is rigged against us peons.
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One of Breitbart's most senior editor just tweeted #WAR [twitter.com], suggesting the publication isn't happy about Bannon's firing, and there's rather a lot of speculation on Twitter that it's about to do a 180 and oppose Trump.
Rats/ship?
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Re:Trump's base (Score:4, Insightful)
What is Pro-America?
America and its values are always changing. An agrarian society to an industrial one to a global power. When we change over our values need to adjust for the new culture.
As being a global power we are a major influence in the world, but we also get influenced from other cultures back. This isn't a bad thing, or anti-American, it is actually quite American for the modern America.
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I've always found this puzzling - the concept of anti-american values. As a Canadian, I find it hard to imagine telling anyone who is not waving a Nazi flag around that they have anti-Canadian values. Frankly anything I'd classify that as are anti-Human values too.
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I wish I could enjoy watching the dawning realisation that everything that comes out of the man's mouth is horse shit, but I can't.
Sure you can. [popkey.co].
Just a reminder (Score:2, Insightful)
That is, he may have fired a snake but he did it on account of one of the snake's few redeeming qualities.
By the end of his term it will be clear that Trump is the biggest mistake America has ever made.
Re:Just a reminder (Score:5, Insightful)
By the end of his term it will be clear that Trump is the biggest mistake America has ever made.
Bigger than allowing slavery? Bigger than Vietnam? Bigger than leaded gasoline?
I think it is already clear that Trump is the worst President in my lifetime, and probably the worst President we've ever had. But I'm not convinced he is the worst mistake for the US has ever made. Of course, there is still time, so you may turn out to be right. I sincerely hope not.
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Slavery was vile, but it was politically impossible to get rid of it in the late 1700's, so yes, bugger, but bigger than allowing slavery. (But the federal government should have been allowed to tax slaveholders for their slaves.)
Bigger than Vietnam? Sorry, but Vietnam isn't even up as one of the major mistakes made by the government. It merely looks that way because many here lived through that time.
Bigger than leaded gasoline? Well, *MAYBE* not. That was a huge mistake, and no question about it. We
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...Trump is the biggest mistake America has ever made.
Bigger than allowing slavery? Bigger than Vietnam? Bigger than leaded gasoline?
Bigger than Mcdonalds? No, but getting there.
Re:Just a reminder (Score:4, Funny)
He was fired because Trump's conflict-avoiding personality has lead to a psychotic monomania by which he fires anyone with whom he has conflict rather than simply shrinking back into passive-aggressive disquiet.
Trump's... conflict-avoiding... personality... Were you by any chance in a coma during his campaign leading up to his presidency?
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Perhaps "conflict-intolerant" would be a better way of putting it.
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It's just like "lactose intolerant", but with Twitter.
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Yup. From TFS:
The two administration officials cautioned that Mr. Trump is known to be averse to confrontation within his inner circle
LAWL
Re:Just a reminder (Score:5, Insightful)
Supposedly Trump actually doesn't deal well with confrontation or conflict. That's not to say that he never gets into conflict, but that he can't effectively deal with conflict.
If you think about it that way, it fits with his public persona. Trump seems to put everyone into one of two classes:
(1) People that he likes and who like everything about him
(2) People who he hates and who hate everything about him.
There doesn't seem to be anything in between. As long as everything is good and you're praising him, he'll like you and praise you. If he doesn't like something you're doing or you criticize anything he has done, then you're his enemy. It's a bit paradoxical, but labelling someone as an enemy can be a way of avoiding conflict. You don't need to sort the conflict out or come to a resolution. Their opinions and views no longer hold weight. If they don't approve of you, that's not a bad thing because they're "bad people" anyway.
It's a totally different thing to actually deal with conflict. If you have a conflict with someone that you don't want to be your enemy (or you can't afford to have them be your enemy), then you actually have to deal with the conflict. You have to confront and resolve the issue somehow.
Apparently, that is the thing that Trump isn't really able to do. If he has some sort of disagreement with someone who he can't afford to berate on Twitter, he just goes silent and stops dealing with them. If they try to confront him, he begs off. He doesn't have to courage to admit that he's wrong or speak truth to power. If he likes you, he'll tell you want you want to hear, and if he doesn't like you, he insults you, but those are the only two types of interactions he can handle.
Hey! Why'd you say that about me?! (Score:2)
oblig. Python quote (Score:3)
And there was much rejoicing.
Cost/Benefit analysis, politics-style (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been very lucky boss-wise, and only worked for one manager/group of managers in my career that bothered me enough to quit. However, I have many co-workers who have "escaped" from toxic environments run by terrible bosses. Some weren't exactly low-paying jobs either -- think investment banks, elite law firms, and consulting companies. Almost every one has told me that leaving and taking a pay cut was better than dreading going to work every day and dealing with their bosses screaming at them, throwing them to the wolves, or just being a total jerk. Say what you will about Bannon, but I think he's just making a rational decision and answering questions like "Can I control this guy? Is he hurting my long term aspirations? Is the access and influence I have and future untold billions I will have because of it balanced with the probability of everything going sideways?" The problem is always cost/benefit - I know some people who've worked in investment banking as devs or very high-end IT pros, and they say the bonuses are massive and salaries are great, but you have to deal with a company that's basically 100% bro-culture assholes every day in exchange for it.
My dislike of the current administration mostly stems from its apparently inability to control its emotions. I think Trump is not used to being questioned on _anything_ and people in his inner circle have given him a pass on his behavior forever because they want to keep getting paid. I obviously don't know what he's thinking, but I think he feels that international conflicts and political compromise is just like strong-arming some union boss on one of his construction sites or bribing some city official to get one of his properties expedited through the system.
One of my favorite political cartoons of late (sorry about the ) came out when Trump started signing his first executive orders and shows him sitting on Bannon's lap saying, "I'm a big boy!" I think that it's pretty obvious that no one can control him at this point, so we'll see what happens. [kym-cdn.com]
I wonder if Trump will resign (Score:2, Insightful)
In many ways Trump is in a toxic environment. It's got to suck for him. I don't like the guy at all but sometimes I feel sorry for him. He's in way over his head, he not getting the adulation that he craves, and he clearly was having a lot more fun when he was outside government grandstanding, lobbing grenades, chasing women, nettling Obama, etc. I don't think Trump thought he'd be elected: it was just a game to win. All he needs is an excuse like "my family needs me" or a health problem to bail out and
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The health excuse wouldn't work since he already had his doctor declare him to be the healthiest person ever elected President.
The truly interesting bit to me is this part (Score:4, Interesting)
A person close to Mr. Bannon insisted the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the president on Aug. 7, to be announced at the start of this week, but the move was delayed after the racial unrest in Charlottesville, Va.
Now, why would that matter?
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Because the White House didn't want to make it seem like Bannon resigned or got pushed out as a result of what happened there. Correlation = Causation in the minds of 99% of people.
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the move was delayed after the racial unrest in Charlottesville, Va.
Now, why would that matter?
Because it would weaken Trump's KKK/Nazi endorsement.
More time with his family (Score:5, Funny)
The imploding speed of this administration... (Score:4, Funny)
...is staggering. So much winning.
Amazing dysfunction and turnover (Score:5, Informative)
This was part of the plan all along (Score:3)
This is entirely consistent with Trump running first his campaign, then the White House, as a reality TV show, a business he understands well.
He started off, when he had so many Republican rivals, playing the Bad Boy That Everybody Loves To Hate, which was an excellent choice, because it is dramatically necessary to have the Bad Boy That Everybody Loves To Hate around for the finals so that the winner can finally defeat them. This guaranteed him the nomination.
But once he had the nomination sewed up, he had to switch characters, because the Bad Boy That Everybody Loves To Hate cannot win (ratings, you know). So he switched to The Lone Wolf Who Is Right When Everybody Else Is Wrong, which is certainly a character that can win - Americans love underdogs. But his real genius, at that point, was to force Hillary Clinton to become the Bad Boy That Everybody Loves To Hate. In other words, he painted his opponent as the character that simply cannot ever win. That won him the election.
Once he was in the White House, he was in a job he didn't know much about, so he went with what he knows. He continued to play The Lone Wolf Who Is Right When Everybody Else Is Wrong. But in order to be The Lone Wolf Who Is Right When Everybody Else Is Wrong, you have to surround yourself with people who are wrong all the time. So any job that was advisory, and very publicly visible, was filled with someone chosen specifically to be wrong, so that Trump could be right when they were wrong. Bannon was "chief stategist," which is an advisory position, and Bannon himself was so controversial that he couldn't possibly avoid the public's eye if he tried (and he never tried). But we got Mad Dog Mattis as Defense Secretary, a job that is not purely advisory, and has considerable authority in its own right. It's not a 100% correlation, but it's pretty consistent. Those who advise are idiots, chosen to be wrong and thus ignored. Those who do things are not.
And now that Trump is settling into the job of President, he's slowly working away from being The Lone Wolf Who Is Right When Everybody Else Is Wrong, and getting rid of the advisory positions that were filled with people chosen to be wrong all the time. He's learned what areas he really needs advisors in, and is replacing them with people who can tell him what he wants to hear.
He may well be Satan incarnate, hell bent on the destruction of humanity, but he's increasingly competent at what he's doing, and what he's doing is, for the most part, what he promised to do during the campaign.
Re:This was part of the plan all along (Score:4, Insightful)
>He may well be Satan incarnate, hell bent on the destruction of humanity, but he's increasingly competent at what he's doing, and what he's doing is, for the most part, what he promised to do during the campaign.
That's a lovely narrative you've built there, but it's entirely inconsistent with Trump's every tweet and recorded appearance ever.
He's a nightmare child who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has bullied his way through life. It got him to the presidency because things were in a state where his particular message sold really well, not because he was a genius tactician, or even remotely qualified to do the job.
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> as you wonder why he won reelection in 2020
There's no need to wonder.
In the unlikely event he lasts that long, AND wins re-election (which is possible, after all, his winning the party nomination and then the presidency were both so unlikely as to be laughable and they happened...), it will be due to his radial base of the ignorant and dispossessed and the remainder of the Republican party too greedy for power and too cowardly to accept the cost of standing up to Trump and his core supporters.
And it'll
Double-Edged Sword (Score:2)
Another campaign promise fulfilled! (Score:2)
Bannon, Spicer, Preibus, Flynn, Scaramucci...Trump wasn't kidding when he said he was going to "drain the swamp".
Wants to spend more time with his family (Score:3)
Now Bannon can go back to cooking meth in his bathtub (not making that up).
https://www.deathandtaxesmag.c... [deathandtaxesmag.com]
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
One Nazi gone, one to go.
With the term 'Nazi' being thrown around so casually these days I can only think of Inigo Montoya saying "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Re:Hurray! (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case it's true, Bannon isn't a literal Nazi. He shares some of their philosophy and views, but Nazism is just a subset of the alt-right, which Bannon is one of the most important players in.
He's an awful human being, a racist and a bigot, but not an actual Nazi. Just a friend to Nazis, an admirer of them.
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He's an awful human being, a racist and a bigot, but not an actual Nazi. Just a friend to Nazis, an admirer of them.
The term I use is "Nazi sympathizer". It can certainly be applied to Bannon and, based on recent comments, could arguably be applied to DJT.
Re:Hurray! (Score:4, Insightful)
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=trump+ren... [lmgtfy.com]
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=frank+tru... [lmgtfy.com]
His dad's association with the KKK does not seem to be a solid fact (unless I missed something).
Their company discriminating against black people is well documented, complete with an extensive court case.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case it's true, Bannon isn't a literal Nazi. He shares some of their philosophy and views, but Nazism is just a subset of the alt-right, which Bannon is one of the most important players in.
He's an awful human being, a racist and a bigot, but not an actual Nazi. Just a friend to Nazis, an admirer of them.
Strangely enough, the major difference between a Nazi and a regular, garden variety, classical (Italian) fascist is that the Nazi ideology has a serious racist bend to it.
Both a Nazi and Fascist believe in nationalism, enforced ideologies, control over media, totalitarianism, but a Fascist stops short of thinking, "well that black fellow, he must be subhuman and we white men are the superior race". Sure some fascists are racist by accident, but Nazism has racism baked into its very foundations.
This is why white supremacists are often (and correctly) labelled as Nazis. There are enough similarities between the two ideologies and if the jackboot fits...
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly I am not so sure about Bannon being a bigot. Trump, however, eliminated any room for doubt on that issue in his most infamous press conference on Tuesday.
Here is what I am certain about regarding Bannon: Bannon is straight out of the oldest school of political manipulators which has ever existed, the sophists. Plato founded his academy in Athens in reaction to and in opposition to the rampant sophistry, which was destroying Athenian Democracy. The sophists were the then current intellectual hired-guns of Athenian politicians. These hired-guns mastered the rhetorical art of equivocation, showing, in part at least, the originary fundamental relationship between Democracy and Demagoguery. Athenian politicians hired these men to craft their speeches, speeches designed to inflame the passions of their supporters, for short term political gain, regardless of whatever consequences followed, which ultimately led to the downfall of Democracy in Athens. Philosophy, from it's inception in the academy, correctly understood, sought to discredit sophistry in general and equivocation in particular. Remember that, for close to 2,000 years, rhetoric was held to be the highest form of intellectual art, and one wasn't considered to be educated if one wasn't trained in the rhetorical Arts.
Why do I doubt whether Bannon himself is a racist or biggot, given his work in unleashing Breitbart on the world? Simple really. Bannon never concerned himself with who his fellow travellers were. He simply designed and delivered the rhetorical argumentation which Trump, and many others, used to whip their followers into a frenzy. If modern Americans had even the remotest clue as to the origin and history of the art of rhetorics there would be no need to argue with people about "slippery-slopes", because the "slippery-slope" argument in every single on of it's incarnations is nothing other than plain-ole equivocation, sophistry for those with a somewhat larger vocabulary. So who was speaking when Trump spoke about "many, many sides" or "what's next after the statues of Robert E. Lee, are you gonna take down the statues of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, they were both slave owners....", or the "fine people" amongst the torch bearing, swastika waiving, sieg-heiling brown shirts marching through Chralottesville who had exactly one and only one objective planned with their march- to terrorize the good people of Charlottesville and Americans in general of every color and persuasion?.
Most of 20th century American politics, and that which still dominates us today, would have been completely impossible had the majority of our citizens been trained to recognized and see through simple rhethoric, and how easily we are manipulated by those who have mastered these arts. How many people had to die in east/southeast asia by virtue of one of the, literally, oldest tricks in the book, 'slippery-slope' rhetoric? Lather, rinse, repeat, Iraq, Libya, Syria, TEH Terruhrism. Even the expression 'Alt-right' is straight up sophism, except that the semantic confusion spread by it has rendered even those who consider themselves to be Alt-Right unable to distinguish themselves from their fellow travellers the fuckin NeoNazis and the KKK. Wake up folks we are being played, and Bannon was damned good at what he did. Fuckin snake.
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I found it very telling that Bannon revealed that he wanted everyone to be embroiled in these race issues and talking about them in order to keep them misdirected from administration plans with regards to economic issues.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
You can be alt-right, but not a Nazi?
Yep. The alt-right is a diverse bunch - there are white supremacists who believe in ethnic superiority of anglo heritage, there are nationalists who believe in economic isolationism and are opposed to immigrants, there are religious authoritarians who want the government in our bedrooms, there are antisocial conspiracy theorists who are trying to hide out from government mind rays, and there are desperate suckers whose lives aren't going very well who will naively cling to any ideology, no matter how evil, that promises easy fixes. None of those things, on its own, makes you a Nazi. That said, if you are holding a swastika, or making excuses for someone that does, what should we conclude about you?
Re:Hurray! (Score:4, Informative)
The nazis in Germany were an extreme rightist group. The neo nazis of today in America and Europe are an extremist right group. The rally they were invited to and shared common ideology with was called "Unite the Right". There is nothing socialist about it. You either are using fake news or revisisionist history sites to get your false information from, or else you're actively engaging in spreading these lies.
I can understand the logic though. Nazis are evil, liberals are evil, you are good, your friends on the extreme right are good, therefore Nazis must be liberals. It's a comfortable view to take if you are leaning towards extreme right positions. But it's still incorrect.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Informative)
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Also the word nazi us just used to mean exteme conrrol and or view points. Such as soup nazi, grammar nazi, and feminazi. Not to different from fascist.
So the word in and of itself has been aceptale use to mean something other than hate vs jews/blacks for 20+ years.
Don't for get the violence (Score:3)
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I don't think they misunderstand the word. I think they believe that he's a fascist and a white nationalist who is allied with Neo-Nazis, the KKK, and other white supremacy groups.
You can argue that they're incorrect. For example, Bannon just gave an interview where he insulted various white supremacy groups. I think it's hard to deny, however, that he at least courted the favor of white nationalists as a political strategy. In any case, I don't think people are confused about the term.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, no. If you want to see what Nazi currently means, check the clips of the Charlottesville march with people chanting "Blood and Soil" and waving, you know, fucking Nazi flags.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
Motherfucker, we had people goose-stepping through Charlottesville, waving Nazi flags, wearing swastika armbands, chanting "Heil Hitler, Heil Trump", beating people with billy clubs and listening to a speech about how we need to kill all the Jews, Muslims, Blacks and Communists. There is no better word to describe them than "Nazis".
And they counted Bannon as a thought leader - someone who would make sure Trump followed through on what they perceived as promises.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Interesting)
"Nazi" may be an abbreviation for "National Socialism", but as for what it means... well, remember it was the Nazis themselves who made that term up. You shouldn't take anything they said about themselves at face value because they were history's greatest bullshitters.
Naziism isn't really an ideology -- not like socialism, communism, or capitalism for that matter. It is too profoundly anti-intellectual to be one. Not that this prevented from intellectuals from joining. Goebbels was both an intelligent and educated man; he was in charge of manufacturing bullshit for the masses, but like an addict/drug cooker he was a user of his own junk.
Insofar as Nazis embrace ideology, it is never to the exclusion of any contradictory ideas. If caught in an inconsistency, a Communist will elaborate, a Nazi will simply ignore. That's why Communism as an ideology is so rococo. Nazi ideology is a slovenly, slapdash thing, constructed for the moment and then freely ignored once used.
They were obsessed with joy. And here at least they were honest, because joy differs from ordinary happiness in that it involves letting go of the past and future, of your very self. And that's what they offered their followers: torchlit rallies in which you could lose yourself and in which what happened yesterday and what was going to happen tomorrow might as well not exist -- not coincidentally an extremely useful attitude for a ruthless politician to encourage in his followers.
Naziism promises immediate gratification, regardless of obligations (except to the leader) or consequences (which were entrusted to the leader). Nazis are obsessed with virility and vitality, but what they really mean is the momentary freedom weakness of character can grant.
Now Bannon's followers fit the mold, but as for Bannon himself... well he actually sees himself more in Lenin's mold, he's said so himself. So he fancies himself as an intellectual, and sees the rabble as useful idiots -- a term Lenin actually coined. But Nazi leaders often saw their followers the same way. The question is whether he's a user as well as a dealer.
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Re:That can't be true! (Score:5, Funny)
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Poor blender.
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Is there anybody who doesn't use Linux?
Re:That can't be true! (Score:5, Funny)
Give alternative facts instead.
He made a hard right out of the White House.
Re:That can't be true! (Score:5, Funny)
Right, because if there's one thing that defines a secretary of state's job, it's micromanaging security.
She rightfully took responsibility for the decisions made for people who worked for her regarding security for the compound. The buck always stops with the boss. But the scale of the witch hunt embarked on over that incident was just ridiculous.
Snopes [snopes.com].
Oh yes, that reminds me, my fellow cucks and I need to get after him, our checks are late this month!