This transcript from a talk Bannon Skyped into the Vatican in 2014 is perhaps the most fleshed-out (no pun intended, given the accompanying pictures) articulation of his world view. It's a dark one, full of resentment, rage, and fear. And it now guides the policies of our government, or at least the executive branch.
Bannon, like the neocons before him, probably is a bright guy. He can weave thoughts into themes more articulately than his boss. He has a vivid imagination and can thread a single variable through different historical periods, using it as an explanation of everything.
But his elaborate worldview is long on theory and short on empirical facts. But like the neocons, he believes that he can theorize his way to a better world once other people fight all the nasty little wars that his theory says must be fought. What he lacks in actual data, he makes up for in self-confidence, which in his case verges on the grandiose.
He isn't an academic theorist. In fact, he has no advanced academic credentials beyond a 1976 bachelor's degree in urban planning from Virginia Tech and a master's degree in national security studies from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and his Harvard MBA.
No one would listen to Bannon or care what he thought if he wasn't rich. But he didn't get rich like George Soros by putting his money where his mouth was, making large bets that paid off because of his geopolitical wizardry. He didn't get rich like Bill Gates by creating a new product that transformed the world.
No, Bannon made a mint by his stake in a television sitcom called Seinfeld. You might have heard of it. It's been famously described as a show about nothing and that is part of its genius.
So now a man who made his money from a show about nothing (which he did nothing to create but simply got shares as part of another deal his company was privy to) feels he has much to tell us.
He plowed some of his loot into Breitbart, a far right media outlet that hawks theories considered too outrageous even for Fox, running headlines such as the following:
"BILL KRISTOL: REPUBLICAN SPOILER, RENEGADE JEW"
"WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION REPORT: TRANNIES 49 X HIGHER HIV RATE"
"SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVILS: THE PLOT AGAINST ROGER AILES - AND AMERICA"
"THERE'S NO HIRING BIAS AGAINST WOMEN IN TECH, THEY JUST SUCK AT INTERVIEWS"
"GABBY GIFFORDS: THE GUN CONTROL MOVEMENT'S HUMAN SHIELD"
"PLANNED PARENTHOOD'S BODY COUNT UNDER CECILE RICHARDS IS UP TO HALF A HOLOCAUST"
"BIRTH CONTROL MAKES WOMEN UNATTRACTIVE AND CRAZY"
"THE SOLUTION TO ONLINE 'HARASSMENT' IS SIMPLE: WOMEN SHOULD LOG OFF"
"HILLARY CLINTON'S MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD PROBLEM"
TRUMP 100% VINDICATED: CBS REPORTS 'SWARM' ON ROOFTOPS CELEBRATING 9/11"
"WOULD YOU RATHER YOUR CHILD HAD FEMINISM OR CANCER?"
"POLITICAL CORRECTNESS PROTECTS MUSLIM RAPE CULTURE"
"Deep and loving regard for women and our femininity is a purely Anglo-Saxon concept"
"THE VETTING - EXCLUSIVE - OBAMA's LITERARY AGENT IN 1991 BOOKLET: 'BORN IN KENYA AND RAISED IN INDONESIA AND HAWAII'"
"#BLACKLIVESMATTER STOKES GLOBAL CHAOS"
"HOIST IT HIGH And PROUD: THE CONFEDERATE FLAG PROCLAIMS A GLORIOUS HERITAGE"
Bannon's Apocalyptic Worldview
"I believe the world, and particularly the Judeo-Christian West, is in a crisis."
This crisis is because capitalism has lost "the underpinnings of the Judeo-Christian West in our beliefs."
As a result, our time "will be looked at almost as a new Dark Age."
He sweeps through the bloody 20th century, somehow twisting World War II in a struggle between "Judeo-Christian West versus atheists," a stunning charge, since the Third Reich, with which the Vatican he was addressing had made a Concordat, seeing Hitler as a bulwark against atheistic communism, was in fact defeated by that atheistic Soviet system with which we allied ourselves. The Holocaust, the Christian attempt to cleanse Europe of non-Christian elements, namely Jews, was - in Bannon's mind - reworked as an expression of atheism. Which is stunning since Hitler, unlike Stalin, wasn't an atheist and relied heavily on the support of German Christians which he largely got. "Let us thank God, the Almighty," proclaimed Hitler. "That he has blessed our generation and us and granted us to be a part of this time and this hour." He had Gott Mit Uns (God With Us) on his soldiers' uniforms. One can call National Socialism many things, but atheist isn't one of them.
So after presenting this "Judeo-Christian" Goodies versus atheistic Baddies struggle, Bannon goes on to divide capitalism into Good Capitalism ("an enlightened form of capitalism" based on Judeo-Christian principles) and Bad Capitalism (the sort of soulless capitalism he saw in which workers are viewed as commodities).
He believes strongly that the "21st century, … I believe, strongly, is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of capitalism."
Never mind that plenty of the most successful AND charitable capitalists today are atheists, including Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates, and George Soros, or that Andrew Carnegie, one of the greatest capitalist philanthropists of last century, was also atheist.
As an atheist, Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook and gave massively to charities. He claimed recently that he is rediscovering the importance of some religion (he is Jewish by upbringing), but his company's most phenomenal growth occurred when he was not religious, disproving the thesis that religion is required.
Not that it proves anything, but Bernie Madoff, an Orthodox Jew, and Jordan Belfort, the so-called "Wolf of Wall Street" was also Jewish, seeming to disprove the idea that "Judeo-Christian capitalism" is immune from harming people or always "enlightened." The Vatican itself that Bannon was addressing in 2014 was embroiled in a massive international banking scandal. And Christian scandals are too numerous to list. Some highlights:
Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker's Praise the Lord ($158 million stolen, leading to a 45-year prison sentence), Jimmy Swaggart, and Ted Haggard.
Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker's Praise the Lord ($158 million stolen, leading to a 45-year prison sentence), Jimmy Swaggart, and Ted Haggard.
And if Christian affiliation of corporate CEOs is supposed to make them more moral, less greedy, and less likely to view their employees as commodities, it's hard to make that case with CEOs averaging 300 times the average worker's earnings and 770 times minimum wage earners. Nor did Christian affiliation prevent scandal, as was the case with Enron's CEO Kenneth Lay.
And if only Jews and Christians need apply in Bannon's mind, he must explain why Coca-Cola is doing so well despite being headed by Muhtar Kent, a Muslim.
Why was the first country that recognized the United States as a country Morocco, a predominantly Muslim nation?
If the premise of an argument is wrong (that capitalism must be associated with Judeo-Christianity to be good), then the conclusion (that secularism or - even worse - a lurch toward Islam will be the death knell for Western civilization) could only be true by accident.
But let's ignore Bannon's sloppy, one-variable explanation of the past and see what he has to say about the future. It's pretty grim.
"We’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict," he insists. This conflict will require "people in the church" (meaning Christians) to "bind together" and form a "church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs, but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity" (by which he means Islam). If not, then Muslims will "completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years."
This is a very curious statement since Christian hadn’t yet been invented 2,000 years ago and countless empires have come and gone since then. The Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its only legal religion state religion then collapsed shortly thereafter, badly undercutting his thesis that what the world needs now (and always) is more Christianity.
This is a very curious statement since Christian hadn’t yet been invented 2,000 years ago and countless empires have come and gone since then. The Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its only legal religion state religion then collapsed shortly thereafter, badly undercutting his thesis that what the world needs now (and always) is more Christianity.
In fact, the Roman Empire collapsed and Europe plunged into the Dark Ages without any help from Evil Islam, which wasn't to be invented until 610, two centuries after Rome's collapse (variously dated as anywhere from 410 to 476).
Bannon argues that capitalism is a force for good that has contributed greatly to Western Civilization which I tend to agree with. The synchronous rise of the limited liability common stock company, markets to trade those shares, and the explosion of wealth in the West cannot be merely coincidental. Stocks, like the development of paper money and modern banking, made it possible to spread risks and rewards over a much larger group of people, all of whom benefited over time from the industry and risk-taking of a few.
Bannon argues that capitalism is a force for good that has contributed greatly to Western Civilization which I tend to agree with. The synchronous rise of the limited liability common stock company, markets to trade those shares, and the explosion of wealth in the West cannot be merely coincidental. Stocks, like the development of paper money and modern banking, made it possible to spread risks and rewards over a much larger group of people, all of whom benefited over time from the industry and risk-taking of a few.
But Bannon is on thinner ice when he argues that capitalism "taken away from the underlying spiritual and moral foundations of Christianity and, really, Judeo-Christian belief" is inherently bad, both for the reasons cited above (non-Christian, non-Jewish businesses both thrive and do great good) and also for the sleight of hand all Christian propagandists use, namely conflating morality and goodness with religious affiliation, implying that Christianity has a monopoly on morality. A business leader who follows the teachings of Christ literally would liquidate his business and distribute his wealth to the needy, but that's hardly an intelligent way to run a business or a society (and Jesus was many things, but an economist wasn't one of them - the field really wouldn't be developed as such until the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in 1776).
He argues against "state-sponsored capitalism" such as what "you see in China and Russia", conflating it radically different systems with "crony capitalism."
Let's get one thing straight: there is no such thing as pure capitalism, that is, the unsupported, unregulated free hand of commerce matching buyer and seller, customer and vendor. From the first stock exchange in Amsterdam to the largest ones in London and New York today, the state has heavily been involved not only in regulating how stocks are listed and traded, but in backing up the profitability of the private companies traded with the public navies and armies of the states in which they are headquartered.
So all capitalism is at some level "state-sponsored"; the question is simply one of degree (and perhaps competence and transparency). There is nothing inherently wrong with a government subsidizing soybean farmers or sugar companies, even sending in the marines from time to time to make sure that a revolutionary government doesn't nationalize valuable assets that would interrupt an American fruit company's profitability, let's say. The real issue is how transparent and accountable such actions are and whether all stakeholders, including those living under brutal dictatorships multinational corporations want to prop up, have a voice in deciding these things.
Bannon is correct when he condemns the "brutal form of capitalism that is really about creating wealth and creating value for a very small subset of people," that "doesn’t spread the tremendous value creation throughout broader distribution patterns."
And I have to admit I was glad to see that he condemns just as strongly the soulless "Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism", a favorite of the current Speaker of the House, by the way.
Capitalism, to work well and humanely, must have constraints. Yes, these can come from a shared ethical system by its participants, but how well has that really worked out? What is absolutely needed is strict regulation that penalizes cheating and exploitation and gives massive rewards, such as preferential tax treatment, to companies that share their wealth created with their workers as well as they do with their top corporate officers and shareholders.
Bannon's criticism of capitalism that "really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people, and to use them almost" isn't unique to crony or libertarian capitalism and if Judeo-Christian affiliation were an effective antidote, I haven't been impressed in with any empirical evidence of this (and Bannon, like most sweeping theorists, doesn't feel compelled to provide any).
Bannon unfairly lumps Marx in with the more soulless capitalists. I don't think that Marx viewed workers as commodities; much of his theory was formed in revulsion to the appalling working conditions of human beings corporations of his time viewed as commodities. Marx's antidote - the abolition of private property and class through an inevitable evolutionary process (later distorted into a revolutionary process by Lenin) - was as unworkable and ultimately brutal as the worst forms of capitalism Bannon condemns, but both Bannon and Marx are trying - however imperfectly - to solve the same problem.
Bannon bemoans the "immense secularization of the West" without ever providing data or exploring why the greatest gains in poverty reduction, universal healthcare, and the rise of the middle class all occurred in a Europe that had become decidedly more secular. Put another way, centuries of domination of Europe by the Christian church had produced nothing except absolute monarchs and wretchedly poor peasants. There is an INVERSE relationship between Christian affiliation and the exploitation of workers as commodities. It may be true, true, and unrelated (perhaps the rise of the printing press led to a more educated public that was able both to improve its own economic circumstances and reject the more absurd claims of parochial religion simultaneously) but for Bannon's argument that returning to a more religious society would be a good thing must first explain why this time it would be different.
Bannon laments that the "overwhelming drive of popular culture" is to "absolutely secularize" young people, especially millennials. This is unfortunate since "we are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism. And this war is, I think, metastasizing far quicker than governments can handle it… That war is expanding and it’s metastasizing to sub-Saharan Africa."
Bannon here confuses a competition of ideas - how should one organize one's society? - with an actual war. What's fascinating here is that those who clearly find something appealing about ISIS and fundamentalism in general are far more in agreement with Bannon than with me. I cheer secularization and the move away from the superstitions and cruelties inherent in Mediterranean Monotheism. Bannon and ISIS supporters lament them. I believe not only that state-mandated religion as an organizing principle (theocracy) is not necessary to having a moral and just society but often makes such a society far less likely.
Bannon here confuses a competition of ideas - how should one organize one's society? - with an actual war. What's fascinating here is that those who clearly find something appealing about ISIS and fundamentalism in general are far more in agreement with Bannon than with me. I cheer secularization and the move away from the superstitions and cruelties inherent in Mediterranean Monotheism. Bannon and ISIS supporters lament them. I believe not only that state-mandated religion as an organizing principle (theocracy) is not necessary to having a moral and just society but often makes such a society far less likely.
Why You Can't Win An Idea of Ideas With High Explosives
The reason it's critical to distinguish between a shooting war and a war of ideas is that a military solution can resolve the former but is impotent against the latter. Indeed, if all it took to defeat Islamic fundamentalism needed was a show of strength, a few invasions and occupations, thousands of air and drone strikes, and the killing of a few hundred thousand people, then Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and Yemen should be among the most peaceful and secular places on Earth.
Bannon's error is the same ones that neocons made, namely that we are facing a cartoon-like, monolithic enemy that doesn't represent want hundreds of millions of people want, but is some sort of universally recognized, illegitimate evil that can be toppled with a barrage of smart bombs, cruise missiles, and drone strikes. The neocons made this assumption about Saddam Hussein, a brutal secular leader whose brutality against Islamic fundamentalism is perhaps understandable - there was no al Qaeda or ISIS when he was in charge - whose toppling they were convinced would lead to an outbreak of Jeffersonian democracy. Instead, it led to civil war in Iraq then in neighboring Syria, sectarian division, death squads, and an influx of a more brutal form of transnational fundamentalism to fill the void left by the collapse of a secular Arab nationalist.
Bannon, I think, is asking the wrong question. Instead of assuming that 2 of the 3 Mediterranean Monotheistic faiths (Christianity and Judaism) are Goodies and the other (Islam) not only all Baddies but illegitimate, not even a "real" religion (something Bannon feels he can measure), perhaps we should ask ourselves why young men and not a few women find something so compelling about Islamic fundamentalism that they prefer it to more moderate forms of Islam or to Western imports such as secularism (which Bannon also condemns, illustrating the universality of the impulse in times of crisis to seek comfort by immersing yourself deeper into your culture's religion, even accepting some brutality if that is the price for maintaining order or exploitation by foreigners).
My sense is that Islamic fundamentalism will mellow out only when people like Bannon shut up and stop giving it credibility. Troops from predominantly Christian countries and one predominantly Jewish country occupy or patrol the airs and seas of dozens of predominantly Muslim countries. Troops of no predominantly Arab country returns the favor. The idea that a region so torn apart by invasions and occupations from non-Muslim forces poses an existentialist threat to the "Judeo-Christian" West as Bannon calls it, ethnically cleansing in his mind the 2% of Americans and 10% of French who are Muslim, is patently absurd.
Islamic fundamentalism, like any fundamentalism (like Bannon's blended economic-religious fundamentalism), is born in an environment of fear and crisis. Address the fear and the fundamentalism will mellow.
But let's be clear: it isn't our job to determine what religion, if any, a country or region chooses to adopt. The relatively modern, secular, republican state is a novel Western invention that might not be exportable to the rest of the world. Bannon himself illustrates several dangers of this secular model.
If we backed off, got out of the game of determining what sort of government a country should have, let countries make their own history (while working hard through international organizations Bannon hates like the United Nations to give parties to conflicts a forum to settle their issues and stop the bloodshed), my bet is that ISIS would be either marginalized or transformed, , à la Hezbollah, the PLO, or the IRA, into a political organization. Until and unless people are confident that they can achieve their ends through a fair and transparent political process that takes their concerns seriously, they will turn to violence, especially terrorism that is always and everywhere a tactic of the weak and marginalized.
Bannon Has No Understanding of Islam
Bannon engages in the crudest stereotypes of Islam- the religion that oversaw the development of our numbering system, the number zero, decimals, algebra, mapmaking, the compass, and that passed on to the West Chinese inventions such as gunpowder and paper - when he expresses astonishment that ISIS has "a Twitter account up today" in which it announces its intention to turn "the United States into a 'river of blood' if it comes in and tries to defend the city of Baghdad." If Bannon doesn't understand that poetic hyperbole is part of contemporary boasting and imagery in that part of the world - think of the "mother of all battles" Saddam Hussein promised - then he really hasn't been paying attention. A weak organization vying for power with many others will no doubt project its desire to unleash a "river of blood" but how has that been working out for them so far? 4 hours of gun carnage in the United States kills as many Americans in a typical year as are killed by ISIS.
And check out the critical qualification: if we "defend the city of Baghdad." In other words, if we continue to be belligerents in the bloody sorting-out process that followed our brilliant idea to remove Saddam Hussein from power without any idea who should follow him, then ISIS will fight back, and not just on the battlefield. Why would this be surprising?
Bannon raises his hysteria a notch, promising that ISIS violence "is going to come to Europe. That is going to come to Central Europe, it’s going to come to Western Europe, it’s going to come to the United Kingdom." At the time, there had been some attacks on French police, synagogues, and a particularly brutal shooting at a French Jewish school, but these were linked to French military operations in Africa, not the Middle East. Europeans didn't need to be lectured to by an American about terrorism or the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, in other words.
And the question isn't whether Europe would suffer some deaths and disruption from terrorist attacks, perhaps a few spectacular in their audacity and cruelty, but whether Europe should fundamentally change the character of their society, its openness and commitment as a sanctuary for those fleeing war and terror, in order to try - probably unsuccessfully - to stamp out all politically inspired violence on the Continent.
Bannon raises his hysteria a notch, promising that ISIS violence "is going to come to Europe. That is going to come to Central Europe, it’s going to come to Western Europe, it’s going to come to the United Kingdom." At the time, there had been some attacks on French police, synagogues, and a particularly brutal shooting at a French Jewish school, but these were linked to French military operations in Africa, not the Middle East. Europeans didn't need to be lectured to by an American about terrorism or the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, in other words.
And the question isn't whether Europe would suffer some deaths and disruption from terrorist attacks, perhaps a few spectacular in their audacity and cruelty, but whether Europe should fundamentally change the character of their society, its openness and commitment as a sanctuary for those fleeing war and terror, in order to try - probably unsuccessfully - to stamp out all politically inspired violence on the Continent.
Also, why is Bannon only concerned about terrorism in the West? As a Catholic lecturing other Catholics who at their best insist that every life is sacred, Bannon seems to be implying something uglier, that some lives don't matter quite as much. Since the vast, vast majority of victims of Islamic-inspired terrorism are Muslims killed in the countries from which Bannon now doesn't want them to escape, why is he silent on these deaths? Why is it OK for hundreds of thousands to die in the Middle East and North Africa if that is the price to avoid a few dozen deaths in Israel, Western Europe, and the United States? In what "Judeo-Christian" ethical system is this right or just?
"And so I think we are in a crisis of the underpinnings of capitalism, and on top of that we’re now, I believe, at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism." Bannon clearly doesn't understand the prosperity and trade in the Ottoman Empire when Christian Europe was still bogged down in its feudalistic feces, doesn't understand the critical role that the importation of the Hindu-Arabic numbering system from the Arab world in the 1200s played in the rise of modern banking and capitalism. He continues to talk about capitalism as though it were a uniquely Western development (and an unalloyed good), a "highest flower … spreading its benefits to most of mankind."
"And so I think we are in a crisis of the underpinnings of capitalism, and on top of that we’re now, I believe, at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism." Bannon clearly doesn't understand the prosperity and trade in the Ottoman Empire when Christian Europe was still bogged down in its feudalistic feces, doesn't understand the critical role that the importation of the Hindu-Arabic numbering system from the Arab world in the 1200s played in the rise of modern banking and capitalism. He continues to talk about capitalism as though it were a uniquely Western development (and an unalloyed good), a "highest flower … spreading its benefits to most of mankind."
Our Founders Were Not Active Christians
Bannon states, with no evidence to back it up, that those who spread these benefits "were active participants in the Christians’ faith, and they took their beliefs, and the underpinnings of their beliefs was manifested in the work they did." Then how on earth can he explain the economic success of the United States, founded by Deists and atheists who were highly suspicious of Christianity and friendly toward Islam?
John Adams, for example, described "the Christian religion" as "the most bloody religion that ever existed."
Why did Benjamin Franklin argue that lighthouses are more useful than churches, that the religious knave is the worst knave of all, and that "too much of it [religion] is worse than none at all"?
Bannon then peppers his strange stew of half-baked historical inaccuracies and half-truths with something that really doesn't blend well at all: populism.
Bannon comes from a blue collar background and like many bright people propelled from a working class union home into the upper echelons of elite capitalism such as Harvard Business School and Goldman Sachs, he no doubt harbored simmering resentments that reflected the extraordinary gulf separating his father's world and the self-styled Masters of the Universe with whom he worked.
Bannon comes from a blue collar background and like many bright people propelled from a working class union home into the upper echelons of elite capitalism such as Harvard Business School and Goldman Sachs, he no doubt harbored simmering resentments that reflected the extraordinary gulf separating his father's world and the self-styled Masters of the Universe with whom he worked.
He speaks with reverence of the "middle class, the working men and women in the world who are just tired of being dictated to by what we call the party of Davos."
We? How is it that men such as Bannon and Trump get away with claiming membership among the unwashed masses, the poorly-educated whites who might as well live in a different country from them, their lifestyles and access to opportunity and privilege are so dramatically different.
We? How is it that men such as Bannon and Trump get away with claiming membership among the unwashed masses, the poorly-educated whites who might as well live in a different country from them, their lifestyles and access to opportunity and privilege are so dramatically different.
And how does a man who headed Breitbart, an extreme rightwing publication whose stock in trade is conspiracy theories disproven by real news outlets with actual journalistic standards, get away with claiming not to be among "conspiracy-theory guys."
He bemoans the fact that "there are people in New York that feel closer to people in London and in Berlin than they do to people in Kansas and in Colorado," but why is this either surprising or a bad thing? If you're a finances guy, you're going to have contacts in major financial cities, and it just so happens there aren't that many in Kansas or Colorado. He walks to the brink of an old anti-Semitic slur here (Jewish financiers were often accused of being international in their outlook (and therefore of questionable patriotism)). He adds to this ugly stereotype by accusing them of having "this elite mentality that they’re going to dictate to everybody how the world’s going to be run."
So let me see if I have this straight: a man who made a fortune by being among those elites when the pieces of the pie were being handed out, a man who was enriched not through his labor but through the success of a silly television show, is lecturing the rest of us about how we should be more "Judeo-Christian" and less elitist?
He admits with a shrug and a misleading past tense that right-wing parties "have had some aspects that may be anti-Semitic or racial" but claims that "over time it all gets kind of washed out."
He admits with a shrug and a misleading past tense that right-wing parties "have had some aspects that may be anti-Semitic or racial" but claims that "over time it all gets kind of washed out."
He levels the charges against Wall Street insiders both causing the 2008 crisis then benefiting from the bailout, something many of us can agree on, but why on Earth would he and Trump be undoing the Dodd-Franks legislation that would make a repeat of that economic meltdown less likely? Why wouldn't he be advocating for more financial regulation and transparency, as well as accountability for those who engage in malfeasance, instead of less?
He claimed that the United States had never recovered from the crisis, was seeing "2.9% negative growth" and was in "very, very tough shape," the sort of alarmist language his boss was to use on the campaign trail 2 years later, when it was very clear that that negative growth was aberrant and that the economy continued to expand through the present (February 2017). In fact, the unemployment rate would fall by another third to a nadir of 4.6% from where it was when Bannon predicted economic gloom and doom in 2014 (when it stood at 6.6%).
At this point, Bannon dives off the board into that weird mix of cruelty and economic idiocy that passes for tough love Christianity in Trump country. After telling us that capitalism without the ethical underpinnings of Christianity would lead to people getting screwed, he then tells us that people screwed by capitalists should never have been helped to avoid bankruptcy and financial collapse. "For Christians, and particularly for those who believe in the underpinnings of the Judeo-Christian West, I don’t believe that we should have a bailout. I think the bailouts in 2008 were wrong."
I can understand opposing the exact form the bailout took, but the idea that economy should be denied a critical lifeline when it was at risk of facing a Depression Era catastrophe seems both cruel and thoroughly un-Christian. Jesus commanded his followers to essentially engage in a lifetime of bailouts of men, women, and children less fortunate than yourself. He said nothing against providing critical liquidity or short-term deficit-spending to avoid a recession or depression.
I can understand opposing the exact form the bailout took, but the idea that economy should be denied a critical lifeline when it was at risk of facing a Depression Era catastrophe seems both cruel and thoroughly un-Christian. Jesus commanded his followers to essentially engage in a lifetime of bailouts of men, women, and children less fortunate than yourself. He said nothing against providing critical liquidity or short-term deficit-spending to avoid a recession or depression.
"I certainly think secularism has sapped the strength of the Judeo-Christian West to defend its ideals, right?"
No, wrong.
No, wrong.
Bannon, borrowing a style of argument from Gore's Inconvenient Truth, claims that "we have to face a very unpleasant fact … that there is a major war brewing, a war that’s already global. It’s going global in scale, and today’s technology, today’s media, today’s access to weapons of mass destruction, it’s going to lead to a global conflict that I believe has to be confronted today. Every day that we refuse to look at this as what it is, and the scale of it, and really the viciousness of it, will be a day where you will rue that we didn’t act."
Got it. You think we are at war. Is this news to anyone who has been involved in the fight against Islamic terrorism? Really? Here's a hint that it's not: a president once called this the Global War on Terrorism. That president wasn't George W. Bush, by the way, but Clinton.
Now here is why obsessing over one particular threat can get you in trouble. Bannon, using language that is eerily similar to that of Trump, whose campaign he managed while high level contacts were clearly established with Russia, says that Putin, although brutal, might be a useful ally in what Bannon is convinced is the existentialist, End Times, apocalyptic show down with ISIS. Using the same moral relativism that allowed us to side with and support brutal dictators during the Cold War just as long as they helped us fight the greater evil of Soviet Communism, Bannon says that even a thug and murderer like Putin might be a useful ally. Putin, Bannon says, is "an interesting character" and also "very, very, very intelligent."
Got it. You think we are at war. Is this news to anyone who has been involved in the fight against Islamic terrorism? Really? Here's a hint that it's not: a president once called this the Global War on Terrorism. That president wasn't George W. Bush, by the way, but Clinton.
Now here is why obsessing over one particular threat can get you in trouble. Bannon, using language that is eerily similar to that of Trump, whose campaign he managed while high level contacts were clearly established with Russia, says that Putin, although brutal, might be a useful ally in what Bannon is convinced is the existentialist, End Times, apocalyptic show down with ISIS. Using the same moral relativism that allowed us to side with and support brutal dictators during the Cold War just as long as they helped us fight the greater evil of Soviet Communism, Bannon says that even a thug and murderer like Putin might be a useful ally. Putin, Bannon says, is "an interesting character" and also "very, very, very intelligent."
He admitted that "Putin and his cronies are really a kleptocracy, that are really an imperialist power that want to expand" but there is no time for morality or even logical consistency (forget what I just said about the evils of crony capitalism) because the ISIS is so scary. "I really believe that in this current environment, where you’re facing a potential new caliphate that is very aggressive … we have to deal with first things first."
So the United States doesn't have the resources or time to fight ISIS and continue sanctions against an expansionist Russia.
So the United States doesn't have the resources or time to fight ISIS and continue sanctions against an expansionist Russia.
Perhaps he thought he wasn't dire enough or clear enough, so Bannon repeated it again: "Because it is a crisis, and it’s not going away. You don’t have to take my word for it. All you have to do is read the news every day, see what’s coming up, see what they’re putting on Twitter, what they’re putting on Facebook, see what’s on CNN, what’s on BBC."
And if you can't believe what's on Twitter or Facebook, what can you believe, no what I mean? And how is it that CNN and the BBC can be used to support an argument by a man who would later condemn these organizations as "fake news"?
And if you can't believe what's on Twitter or Facebook, what can you believe, no what I mean? And how is it that CNN and the BBC can be used to support an argument by a man who would later condemn these organizations as "fake news"?
"See what’s happening, and you will see we’re in a war of immense proportions."
This impressionistic, vague argument ("bad things are happening and are reported in the news and people say things on social media, so we must be involved in a Clash of Civilizations") should be booed out of existence.
I'm not sure exactly what Bannon is advocating - a Fortress Europa-Americana that pulls up the drawbridge on men, women, and children fleeing the violence he says he deplores? Escalating military action against ISIS? - but the burden of proof is on him to show where in the past building walls ever helped a country or civilization. General George S. Patton, who knew a hell of a lot more about geography, history, and military strategy than Bannon does, scoffed at defensive fortifications as monuments to stupidity. What Bannon is advocating is a strategy that has never worked in the past, another Maginot Line that is sure to prevent an invasion (how did that work out?). When the Roman Empire got to the point where it had to build wall, such as Hadrian's in England, it was the beginning of the end. Sections of the wall remain, but the Roman Empire collapsed shortly after it was built.
As for military action against an ideology, how do you do that exactly? How does a 500 pound bomb dropped on a shelter in Aleppo prevent an American from buying an automatic weapon and plenty of ammo, then walking into a night club in Orlando, Florida?
Bannon is actually asking us to take his word for it and frankly, his word is worth less than his boss's. Not because he's lying - although he has a long history of this through his publication - but because he is wrong. Serious, impassioned, well-intentioned men make mistakes all the time. They get tripped up over an assumption or overlook a variable that conflicts with their sweeping thesis. They fall in love with their own ideas. They drink their own Kool-Aid and become so confident that they are willing to risk the lives of millions to see what happens.
I'm not sure exactly what Bannon is advocating - a Fortress Europa-Americana that pulls up the drawbridge on men, women, and children fleeing the violence he says he deplores? Escalating military action against ISIS? - but the burden of proof is on him to show where in the past building walls ever helped a country or civilization. General George S. Patton, who knew a hell of a lot more about geography, history, and military strategy than Bannon does, scoffed at defensive fortifications as monuments to stupidity. What Bannon is advocating is a strategy that has never worked in the past, another Maginot Line that is sure to prevent an invasion (how did that work out?). When the Roman Empire got to the point where it had to build wall, such as Hadrian's in England, it was the beginning of the end. Sections of the wall remain, but the Roman Empire collapsed shortly after it was built.
As for military action against an ideology, how do you do that exactly? How does a 500 pound bomb dropped on a shelter in Aleppo prevent an American from buying an automatic weapon and plenty of ammo, then walking into a night club in Orlando, Florida?
Bannon is actually asking us to take his word for it and frankly, his word is worth less than his boss's. Not because he's lying - although he has a long history of this through his publication - but because he is wrong. Serious, impassioned, well-intentioned men make mistakes all the time. They get tripped up over an assumption or overlook a variable that conflicts with their sweeping thesis. They fall in love with their own ideas. They drink their own Kool-Aid and become so confident that they are willing to risk the lives of millions to see what happens.
The neocons did this in Iraq in 2003.
The anticommunist crusaders did this in Vietnam in 1965.
Hitler and Napoleon both did this in Russia (in 1942 and 1812, respectively).
The British, Russians, and Americans all did it in Afghanistan (none learning from each other's experiences, each convinced that This Time Is Different).
The British, Russians, and Americans all did it in Afghanistan (none learning from each other's experiences, each convinced that This Time Is Different).
I just don't trust people with their Grand Explanations of Everything. Life and history are messy and multivariate. People like Bannon who got filthy rich in one area want us to think that the ability to choose a winning sit-com predicts the ability to settle a thousand-year-old pissing contest between different Abrahamic faiths.
Good luck with that.
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