American Right
-
Whither Bannonism?
The Trump budget is an even more devastating assault on Bannon-style populism. It eliminates or cuts organizations like the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative that are important to people from Tennessee and West Virginia up through Ohio and Michigan. It cuts job-training and road-building programs. It does almost nothing to help
-
Who Emerges from the Chaos?
The great fear among Trump-fearers is that he will deal with this elite opposition by effectively crushing it — purging the deep state, taming the media, remaking the judiciary as his pawn, and routing or co-opting the Democrats. This is the scenario where a surging populism, its progress balked through normal channels, turns authoritarian and
-
Steve Bannon Watch
Last week I wrote a piece entitled "Steve Bannon, Minister of Propaganda not Policy" in which I observed that he had been mostly invisible until Trump gave his inaugural speech, which clearly had Bannon's fingerprints all over it. But the bigger point I was trying to make was that if we take seriously the old political adage
-
Steve Bannon: Minister of Propaganda, not Policy (Updated)
In a post last November I wrote a piece entitled "What Kind of America Does Steve Bannon Want?" I wrote about how his view of America seems to be very much at odds with the view held by the Republican establishment, i.e., the world dominated by the Koch Brothers, American Heritage, their creatures in the
-
Thoughts on Inauguration Day
So it's done. The clown prince sits in his throne and delusion now reigns supreme. But this is not an aberration; it's a dark apotheosis, the culmination of trends in America that go back to WWII and then accelerated after Nixon. It's a culmination in the sense that it brings to its absurd telos the delusional logic of the
-
Hannah Arendt on Why Political Lying Works
A mixture of gullibility and cynicism had been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality before it became an everyday phenomenon of masses. In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, that everything was possible and that nothing was true. The mixture in itself
-
Destruction of Norms = Destruction of Normal Politics
Trump's election has confirmed my worst fears that too many Americans are either ignorant of or contemptuous of what is required for a Democracy to work in a complex, pluralistic society. But the destruction of norms in our political sphere didn't just start with Trump, and that's why he should not be looked at as an aberration. He is
-
Artists, Saints, Prophets, and Philosophers
This election of Donald Trump was driven by irrational factors, and overt racism is too simplistic a way to characterize them. The problem is broader in that it embraces fundamental issues of identity and acculturation in Red and Blue America. So it's important to understand what's going on rather than moralistically to dismiss his election as driven mainly
-
What Kind of America Does Steve Bannon Want?
I cannot take Trump seriously as someone who will take governing seriously. He will see the presidency as his own reality show, and will care mainly about his ratings. So one has to wonder which faction among his advisors he will see as more likely to deliver the higher ratings–the Priebus/GOP establishment faction or the Bannon/Alt-Right faction. It's
-
Draining the Swamp
For those who were naive enough to take Trump at his word, this piece by Jane Mayer should disabuse them of their wishful thinking: During the Presidential primaries, Donald Trump mocked his Republican rivals as “puppets” for flocking to a secretive fund-raising session sponsored by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire co-owners of the energy conglomerate