Dressed down to kill
Steve Bannon’s dismissal of not only all of the Americans who didn’t vote for Trump, but of the other two branches of government during his moment at CPAC was not only an extraordinary display of hubris but is transcendentally frightening. Sounding like someone sitting around in their pajamas shouting over the airwaves with his own radio show (which he’s done), Bannon bounces out statements like “deconstruction of the administrative state” and “a new political order” — which are already echoing globally to be sure. Hearing something like that on an AM (or whatever) station is one thing, but this person is working as the guiding light for the President. Bannon’s subtle intellectualism is very spellbinding and must blindly float over many people’s heads, but it certainly impresses and mesmerizes people like Trump, who obviously loves his nationalist views.
Bannon’s successful background is overwhelmingly impressive. His accomplishments include serving as a special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon, been an investment banker in the Mergers and Acquisitions Department at Goldman Sachs, a launcher of Bannon & Co which accepted a financial stake in five television shows including Seinfeld, and as a founding member of the board of Breitbart News. (wikipedia)
Bannon and the Breitbart organization were so marginalized in past years that they weren’t even invited to CPAC. So they held their own separate event called “The Uninvited.” He coined the term “the opposition party” to refer to the media, which is seated at the rear of the room for CPAC — Bannon obviously enjoys setting up a conflict between Trump and the media.
According to previous statements to Congressional members, Bannon not only believes in “extreme vetting” for Muslims immigrating to the U.S., but he thinks that there should be no vetting at all. He simply believes in an all-out permanent ban on them. He figures that the refugees are incapable of adapting to American life. Bannon sees Muslims as having no history or understanding of democracy. He has shown in some of his documentary films that he fears an Islamic takeover of the United States. He told Trump in a taped phone call that the U.S. is “more than an economy, we’re a civic society.”
While the majority of Republicans believe that immigration is needed for our economy and that their labor here is essential, Bannon ultimately thinks that only native-born U.S. citizens are needed in order to secure our American culture. In pursuit of his nationalist goals, Bannon believes that his cause must take on the “ruling political class” in this country. “If the elites are so good, how did we get in this jam?”
