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comment by johnnyFive
johnnyFive  ·  2413 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Trump Tells Aides He Has Decided to Remove Stephen Bannon

I wonder about that, though. Couldn't that just be Bannon now trying to save face? Notice that it was "a person close to Mr. Bannon" who said that the latter had quit. This doesn't really jive with the interview he gave on Wednesday, where he talked about future foreign policy plans and the people (by name) in various government agencies that he was planning on removing.

Maybe that was bluster, but it seems more likely to me that it was honest, and that he's now trying to pull the "you can't break up with me if I break up with you first" card.





blackbootz  ·  2413 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm not familiar with this interview, and your point is reasonable. I do want to be wary of confirmation bias, but this just seems like another thread in the pattern of Trump acting like he "wanted this all along" like some 12 year old.

kleinbl00  ·  2413 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Bannon benefits from being contentious, laying out his intent and then being seen as being removed for expressing the ideals of the alt-right. Now he gets to come out on a war footing and slay the dragon that he rode in on but ceased to be effective in starting his fourth turning race war.

He basically dared them to fire him. If he'd decided he couldn't work within the White House any longer, the more forcefully he leaves the stronger he gets to be. It'll be interesting to see if he's as good at unmaking the Trump White House as he was at making it.

am_Unition  ·  2413 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I've seen you talk about the Strauss-Lowe framework elsewhere recently. I dunno if I would take an absolutist stance on it one way or another, but I have independently concluded that there is something very powerful about "living" knowledge. I definitely agree that as the vets pass away, a society is more likely to get back on the war path. 'bout that time, now.

I don't expect a full-out race war, though. Surely, the split in the U.S. is nowhere near 50/50 pro/anti white supremacy.

kleinbl00  ·  2413 days ago  ·  link  ·  

How you feel about it doesn't matter. How I feel about it doesn't matter. Fact of the matter is, Bannon is so into it he made a goddamn movie about it.

http://time.com/4575780/stephen-bannon-fourth-turning/

    A second, more alarming, interaction did not show up in the film. Bannon had clearly thought a long time both about the domestic potential and the foreign policy implications of Strauss and Howe. More than once during our interview, he pointed out that each of the three preceding crises had involved a great war, and those conflicts had increased in scope from the American Revolution through the Civil War to the Second World War. He expected a new and even bigger war as part of the current crisis, and he did not seem at all fazed by the prospect.
user-inactivated  ·  2413 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Fact of the matter is, Bannon is so into it he made a goddamn movie about it.

to be fair...

kleinbl00  ·  2413 days ago  ·  link  ·  

...about great men fucked over by the masses, herein played by black people.

user-inactivated  ·  2413 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Well, yeah. I submit that Steve Bannon is more interested in selling racism than the form it has to take for people to buy it.

kleinbl00  ·  2413 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hmmmm - there's the real discussion. What interests Steve Bannon?

Hitler was a racist (duh). By that, I mean he actively wanted the Aryan race to wipe everyone else out for the good of the only people he considered human. If the Jews survived and prevailed, good on 'em because it proved that they were the superior bloodline and There Can Be Only One.

Bannon is a racist but I think if good old White Anglo Saxon Protestants were dominant and ascendant he wouldn't give two shits about the brown people. He's a racist in that the off-whites are interfering with his exceptionalism.

For Hitler, the racism was the thing. Solve ethnic competition and you solve everything else. For Bannon, so long as Whitey ends up on top where he belongs darkies can dark anywhere they wanna dark. I actually think Bannon is more concerned with the form racism takes than the actual racism but it's not like we're drinkin' buddies. I just know a couple documentaries' worth.