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Trump Adviser Steve Bannon is Leaving White House Post (nytimes.com)
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.
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."
The real question is, "Does he use Linux?"
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.
In a statement, Bannon said he wanted to spend more time with Anthony Saramucci's family.
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.
Give alternative facts instead.
He made a hard right out of the White House.
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.
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...
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
...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.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
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.
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.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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.
Oh yes, that reminds me, my fellow cucks and I need to get after him, our checks are late this month!
Ever since, I've been suspicious of Jesus and very careful around chlorine.
"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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