I’ve been writing this blog for at least 10 years and nobody has invited me to help run the country. What do some bloggers have that I don’t, anyway?
Steve Bannon, for example. Here’s a blogger with outlandish ideas who may be the most powerful person in America today. And what has he done to achieve this status? He ran a web site.
And what a web site!
It gave America’s festering underbelly a political megaphone, promoting the doctrines of morally sick people – from xenophobes and nihilists to misogynists and white supremacists.
He gave them a slick label, the Alt Right. And he dressed up their putrid notions in pseudointellectual arguments.
Did this guy have a journalistic background? Nothing of the kind.
He is a Navy veteran, a former investment banker and the producer of right-wing propaganda movies. His “documentaries” glorified such “conservative icons” as Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman, while trashing the Clintons.
It seems that’s the formula for success in today’s blogosphere – glorify the right-wing crazies and trash the good guys.
That’s Bannon’s formula, anyway. And he managed to impress America’s new president.
Trump brought Bannon on board to salvage his floundering campaign, and when he won, he brought Bannon to the White House as his adviser and confidante.
They are strange bedfellows, Trump and Bannon. Trump is a rogue intent on making money through fair means or foul. Bannon is an ideologue who admires Lenin and advocates the destruction of existing societies to create one more to his liking.
To me, it’s like watching a scorpion and a tarantula trapped in a glass bottle. One – or both – will surely fail to survive.
Will Trump use Bannon’s vile base as long as he finds it helpful and then throw the bum out?
Or will Bannon succeed in destroying society – including Trump’s gilded empire?
On second thought, I wouldn’t want to be invited to help run this country at this time. Would you?
