New Orleans The devil has now taken over the details for the Trump campaign. It’s official now with his announcement this week that Stephen Bannon, the head the Breitbart News abomination of websites, clickbait, and hate speech, will now be running his entire campaign operation. Bannon has never managed a campaign at any level, but he’s qualified on two counts in Trump world. He’s worked his own “art of the deal” on Wall Street for years and of course he is a committed media provocateur. We can’t say he’s Trump’s evil twin, because he’s more like Trump’s real twin, if any of us can imagine such a thing. What a horror!
What does this signal? Well, it would seem that we are at the end of the road for any more of this “acting Presidential” posing from Trump. As he’s been warning, he wants to be himself again. This is going to be more of the “dancing with who brought me here,” and “doing it my way” shtick that he displayed so endearingly to his red-meat, mouth-breathing base during the Republican primaries.
But, wait a minute, I like red-meat, as much as the next person, and breathe out of my mouth whenever I need too as well, so let me be clear, deriding the Trump antics as “populist,” is elitist and offensive. These pundits, commentators, politicos, and others need to call the Trump stuff what it really is rather than trying to slander it as populist. They may not like Trump, but that doesn’t mean they like any of the rest of us any better!
A populist is someone, especially if it’s a politician, who wants to represent “ordinary” people, if there is such a thing, and the “common” people, who are very uncommon. That’s not Trump. Demagogue, yes! Rabble-rouser. Hate-speaker. Oh, yeah. Racist? Seems so. But, populist, no way! Look at his tax plan, which would be little more than another rich giveaway for proof positive.
Now with the Breitbart folks in charge, it’s likely that we haven’t seen anything yet. Roger Ailes, the recently canned impresario who built the even larger rightwing echo chamber at Fox News, is also reportedly advising the Trump effort now. These are peas in a pod. It could be that we won’t see anything worse than we have to date, but this is simply a refreshing bit of transparency for the Trump campaign. These guys have been on the sidelines and behind the curtain, and now they’re front-and-center.
Judging from the way Breitbart has now admitted paying for the video-scam attacks on ACORN though, this new legitimacy of sorts on the national scene is frightening, because if anything, win, lose or draw, it now appears that Trump and his foul-mouthed and minded friends are going to be bootstrapping their way from this campaign into more of the same after the election is over. Trump seems to be preparing himself to lose, but he’s building a future which will be built on the same hate and fear that Breitbart and his other cronies believe is what spurs their kind of action. They may be deciding that they are content with their 40% and want to lock it down even harder as a place and base for their future.
Heaven help all of us and the country where we live, but be clear, it’s not about the people, it’s only about them.