steve bannon - proposed chief white house strategist

It's time for this blog to start looking at the appointments that trump has made to run the upcoming administration.  I'll start with steve bannon, the former head of Breitbart News.  When he took over, after the founder's death, he shifted the paper further to the right.  he is a murky individual, who is not easily pigeon holed.  his mind set can be surmised by the people that support him, people who have worked with him and his own quotes from various sources.

Ben Shapiro, a former employee at Breitbart as an Editor at Large, and who now hosts a conservative radio talk show, is quoted as saying "Bannon is a sinister character.  He is a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies,” Shapiro wrote. “He will attempt to ruin anyone who impedes his unending ambition, and he will use anyone bigger than he is – for example, [d]onald [t]rump – to get where he wants to go.”

Another former colleague of bannon's, Julia Jones, recounted a conversation she once had with him to reporter Scott Shane.  The following is an excerpt from that article:

Ms. Jones, the film colleague, said that in their years working together, [m]r. [b]annon occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners.
“I said, ‘That would exclude a lot of African-Americans,’” Ms. Jones recalled. “he said, ‘Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.’ I said, ‘But what about Wendy?’” referring to [m]r. [b]annon’s executive assistant. “he said, ‘She’s different. She’s family.’”

My take on this last entry is, sounds like a nazi to me!  Speaking of nazis (great segue), david duke, former head of the kkk, strongly supports bannon.  In an interview with CNN, duke said:

“You have an individual, [m]r. [b]annon, who’s basically creating the ideological aspects of where we’re going. And ideology ultimately is the most important aspect of any government.”

At an alt-right conference in Washington, D.C. richard spencer, a neo nazi, was reported by the New York Times as having:

"railed against Jews and, with a smile, quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the “children of the sun,” a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of [p]resident-elect [d]onald [j]. [t]rump, were “awakening to their own identity.” "

spencer praises trump's choice of bannon as a "wonderful thing." . It's a mutual admiration club; bannon descibes spencer as the alt-rights leading "intellectual".

Now to bannon's mind set as described by his own language. In The Atlantic he told a gathering of conservatives in Washington in 2013:

“I think anger is a good thing. This country is in a crisis. And if you’re fighting to save this country, if you’re fighting to take this country back, it’s not going to be sunshine and patriots. It’s going to be people who want to fight.”

I would note that in reference to this quote, bannon is correct in a sense.  The United States is being fundamentally changed by these people.  We, the decent people of this country, no matter what our religious or political stripes, need to use whatever emotion we can access to motivate us to oppose this administration and fight the people who will be running it.  If anger is one of those emotions, use it, peacefully and constructively.

The next quote is really revealing.  he was quoted as saying by a writer for The Daily Beast, when he had a conversation w/bannon at a party in 2014 (to which bannon later said he did not recall the conversation):

“I’m a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

Lastly, this guy feeds on hate.  In my opinion, hate is an emotion that is part of the human condition and therefore needs to be recognized by each person in themselves, but way to extreme to be acted on.  Also, there are many blades of grass in our country and I refuse to believe that the majority of people in our country would subscribe to the following. bannon wrote about Republican leaders in a 2014 email exchange with a Breitbart News editor. The emails were obtained by The Daily Beast:

“Let the grassroots turn on the hate because that’s the ONLY thing that will make them do their duty."
This is the person that will have the ear of trump, along with neo-nazis and kkk members. And let's make one thing clear, very clear, the label 'white nationalist' is nothing more than a euphemism for white supremacists, nazis and kkk members!

This all reminds me of the poem written by Martin Niemöller, a prominent Protestant pastor who opposed the Nazi regime. He spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. 

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.