(Part III of III)
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you
commit atrocities.” – Voltaire
“Who controls
the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” –
George Orwell
We begin Part III
with the end of Part II...
One thing is becoming clearer and clearer, it does not
matter if you were on the left or leaning to the right – this past election we all lost. In the first part of this series we admitted
that we have a problem and we discussed the concept that freedom of speech must
apply to everyone. In Part II, we
discussed how we arrived here, at this moment, in history and where we are at
present. Now that we have come to Part
III, we are going to look at who holds the power in the White House and what
the future may hold.
With all due respect, there is something not entirely right with our
President. You may be a fan but hear me
out on this. His actions appear to be unhinged. He has consistently shown
that he is more concerned with crowd size at inaugurations and Arnold
Schwarzenegger than he is with the daily running of the United States of
America. The appointments that he has
made to his cabinet and who have, thus far, been greenlit by the GOP in
Congress, are counter-intuitive to the jobs that they should be doing. This is a consistency and not the
exception. It is as if he is actively
trying to implode each section of these branches of government. The EPA, education, department of urban
development, the cuts to PBS & the National Endowment for the Arts, the new
head of the FCC, and, to reiterate, all of the appointments Trump has made to
his cabinet where he has intentionally chosen people who have no business being
where they are. People who will, if left
to their own devices, destroy all the toys in the toy box that they have been
given. The thing is, this was not a mistake. This was done on purpose and it will continue
to be that way.
“Why?”
Because of Steve Bannon.
Steve Bannon wants to deconstruct our government and he wants to do so
to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity.
No, really. In the Washington
Post article, “Where Did Steve Bannon get his World View? From my Book” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/where-did-steve-bannon-get-his-worldview-from-my-book/2017/02/24/16937f38-f84a-11e6-9845-576c69081518_story.html?utm_term=.1378093c3da2),
by Neil Howe, Howe explains the influence the book that he co-wrote with
William Strauss, “The Fourth Turning” has had on figures from the left and the right
and, primarily in this article, Steve Bannon. The article is a very interesting read. In “The Fourth Turning”, Howe & Strauss argue that history repeats
itself, that deconstruction must happen for new construction to begin, and that
this process occurs to usher in the new and to dismantle the old. Howe states, “We live in an increasingly
volatile and primal era, in which history is speeding up and liberal democracy
is weakening. As Vladimir Lenin wrote, “In some decades, nothing happens; in
some weeks, decades happen.” Get ready for the creative destruction of public
institutions, something every society periodically requires to clear out what
is obsolete, ossified and dysfunctional — and to tilt the playing field of
wealth and power away from the old and back to the young. Forests need periodic
fires; rivers need periodic floods. Societies, too. That’s the price we must
pay for a new golden age.”
“The Great Manipulator” – TIME Magazine, February 2, 2017
To Bannon, Trump is a catalyst to usher in the next
golden age. He can use Trump to usher in
whatever happens next, social collapse or World War III – either way, the
Fourth Turning comes. What we have or
have had here in the United States is subject to deconstruction – all to make
things better by first making them much, much worse. This is scary for a variety of reasons. Trump’s campaign slogan was, “Make America
Great Again”. I have always been of the school
of thought that America is great but what can we do to make it better. The powers that be are in the process of intentionally
failing us ...to make us better. I’ll be
the first to say that we have problems but I will also say that we can, as a
people, make a difference. The great
problem that I see is that we may be too late.
We are proudly marching backwards at an alarming rate. The damage may already have been done.
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind
blows.” – Bob Dylan
There has been some saber rattling concerning Bannon’s position
within Whitehouse as Trump’s closest advisor.
The Wall Street Journal in an article titled, “Donald Trump Considers
Major Shake-up of Senior White House Team” by Carol E. Lee,
Peter Nicholas, and Michael C. Bender (https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-considering-major-shakeup-of-senior-white-house-team-1491588185?tesla=y&mod=e2tw),
discusses some of the rumors concerning how Trump is disappointed with how the
healthcare vote went and how Steve isn’t playing well with his son-in-law. This alleged infighting is, as one ‘official’
puts it, “The crisis this week in Syria has sharpened Mr. Trump’s desire to cut
some of the drama out of his West Wing, and he is expected to make decisions
soon. The continued infighting has “a very short life cycle...” Again, this is rumor but if any of this
proves true, expect Steve Bannon to remain not too far from the President’s
ear.
“The crisis this week in Syria?”
In the last three days Trump did a sudden and complete 180
concerning President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian civil war after chemical
weapons were used on civilians and 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched at
the Shayrat Airfield, the airfield from whence the chemical weapons were
launched. Good, bad, or other, this is
that first direct action from the United States during the Syrian civil war.
Are we closer to that Fourth Turning yet?
Now, here is the part that truly frightens me. What if Bannon is right? We, as a species, do not learn. We repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of our
past by having history endlessly repeat itself?
I don’t know. I do, however, know
that history repeats itself all the time.
We are heard animals. We do what
we are told and we do so HAPPILY. We
hear, “Oh, look what the liberal media is telling you now!” We drink the Kool-Aid, we don’t think, and we
miss the fact that we have just been USED by the same people in power that fed
us the line. If you haven’t already
please find a copy of Orwell’s, “1984”.
Some of the parallels are chilling.
“What can we do?”
Our best. That’s
all any of us can do in good times or bad. Our best means
that we have to participate, we have to think, and, dare I say, base our
actions on rational decisions. We must
seek wisdom and we must discern rhetoric from the truth. To avoid manipulation, we must examine
everything. Question. Despite what we have been told – the truth
should still mean something. This is a
fact and facts should mean something too.
We need to be good to each other because things are going to get
worse. We need to be thankful for what
we have because the line between ‘have’ and ‘had’ is a very thin. We need to support each other – build each
other up because, even now, we are still a beacon of hope to the world and we
need each other now more than ever. Gandhi said, "Be the change that you want to see in the world," well, here's our chance. Be the light. Here’s
to better times.
Better times, indeed.
UPDATE.
Bannon is Out. August, 18th 2017, John Kelly, the
current White House Chief of Staff, the man whose job it is to steer the
President of the United States through the storms of sailing the ship of state,
removed Bannon from the White House. I
hope that it’s not too late, that the damage has not gone too far. My guess is that Kelly is trying to distance
the current executive branch from its “Alt-Right” roots. Good luck with that, Sir. The fact of the matter is that, if this is
the goal, he’s got a lot of work to do it he wants to drain the swamp. It has grown far too dark and murky since the
last time we’ve spoken about the state of things. In the time that when I first wrote this blog
and now (this update is from early September 2017), our commander and chief has
brought us closer to nuclear war with North Korea and has legitimized the Nazi
party & KKK in the United States of America. Mr. Trump basically said, after a Nazi rally
in South Carolina where a Nazi ran his car into a crowd of protesters, killing
one and injuring dozens more, “Hey, not all Nazis are bad”.
Please, let that sink
in.
The President of the
United States of America has elevated and legitimized the Nazi party and the
KKK right here, in the United States of America. Bannon helped establish this Alt-Right
presidency and now he’s gone. I have
said it before in this three-part series but it bears repeating, I don’t care
what side of the isle you find yourself – we ALL lost when Trump was
elected. Unstable leadership legitimizes
instability.
Be good to each other,
fellow Citizens & Gentle Readers, alike.
We are all we’ve got.
