According to an article by Philip Rucker published earlier this week in the The Washington Post, Stephen Bannon, chief strategist for our Liar in Chief, was brutally blunt in his first public speaking appearance since the inauguration.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, Bannon admitted that the “deconstruction of the administrative state” was at the core of the agenda being pursued by the current occupants of the highest office in our country.
He also confirmed what a lot of concerned citizens have already been forced to conclude for themselves: “If you look at these Cabinet nominees, they were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction,”
So, we now have a head of state who was NOT elected by a majority of voters, whose legitimacy is increasingly suspect due to still unanswered allegations of Russian interference in our election (which appears increasingly likely to have been aided and abetted by Trumps staffers and business associates), and whose administration has as its stated goal nothing less than the “Deconstruction” of the civil institutions and stable democratic system of government that has taken this great Nation more than 200 YEARS to build.
Just so we’re all real clear here, Deconstruction in this sense means the complete and utter destruction of something just slowly and gradually enough so that those who will be most effected by its loss do not rise up and fight against the destroyers.
As someone who has traditionally held a Conservative / Libertarian political philosophy I fully ascribe to the notions of minimum government and maximum personal Freedom. One of the core tenets of that philosophy, though, is one’s own RESPONSIBILITY for the results of his or her actions.
Over the years I have personally observed how the abdication of responsibility by those who enjoy the benefits of that freedom cause grave and oftentimes irreparable harm to innocent co-inhabitants of the planet.
Here’s how those concepts play out under the bleak world order which is the stated goal of the bloated bigot Bannon and his flaming trumpet of a mouthpiece:
Their cadre of cronies are FREE to loot and pillage the public coffers for their own personal enrichment while the rest of us bear the RESPONSIBILITY for putting up with vastly reduced transparency, efficiency, and accountability from our elected representatives.
To see how that works out in practice, take a look at Russia, Brazil, South Africa, or any one of the several tin horn dictatorships throughout the third world which loudly proclaim themselves to be Democratically Elected.
Corporate contributors to the regime have the FREEDOM to trash the environment and set our environmental safeguards back 50 years in pursuit of ever-higher profits while the rest of us (along with our children and grandchildren) bear the RESPONSIBILITY for learning how to breathe toxic air and drink polluted water.
For the clearest example of this facet of Bannon’s vision for us, you need look no further than China where, despite a seemingly successful business model an environmental nightmare complete with unbreathable air, undrinkable water and poisonous food is being lived by its citizens every day.
“Insiders” and those holding the reins of power are FREE to flout the laws of the country as they see fit while normal, law abiding citizens are held to increasingly stringent standards of RESPONSIBILITY and accountability for increasingly minor or perceived infractions.
It breaks my heart to say it, but the country I love is now the prime example of this particularly pernicious form of structural rot:
Witness trump’s continued and blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, his complete disregard for our hard-won ethics regulations, and his utter contempt for well-established laws against conflicts of interest versus his increasingly authoritarian and vicious attacks on hard-working, law abiding immigrants and their children as well as his ruthless attempts to discredit and suppress any civil servant who dares to oppose his nihilistic policies.
Right Wing anarchists and lovers of conspiracy theories are FREE to trash the hard-won alliances that have kept the developed World relatively peaceful since 1945 in favor of outmoded concepts of National Supremacy that have repeatedly been dis-proven and relegated to the ash-heap of History.
The entirely foreseeable result of this lethal fantasy is that it leaves the defenders of our democratic ideals with the RESPONSIBILITY and vastly increased likelihood of fighting and dying to save and restore the stability based on shared values for which preceding generations have already paid dearly in blood spilled and lives lost.
Don’t think it can happen here? Neither did the citizens of Eastern Ukraine.
Given the stark moral choices outlined above, another of Bannon’s remarks at the CPAC event may prove to be even more prophetic:
“If you think they’re going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken. Every day is going to be a fight.”
As I mentioned above, by nature I am neither a Democrat nor a Liberal. In the face of such a mortal threat to the ideals and even the continued existence of our Nation as a force for good in the World, though, I cannot acquiesce to the torrent of hate filled lies and bigotry spewing forth daily from this illegitimate usurper of power.
Pretender to power trump may have succeeded in winning the election (or, when the smoke clears, it may turn out that his BFF Putin was the REAL winner). No matter how loudly or frequently he proclaims otherwise, though, his victory was by no means a landslide and even less of a sweeping mandate to fundamentally alter the nature and character of our Democracy.
In light of these circumstances I see only one viable option for those of us who accept personal RESPONSIBILITY for the continued well-being and success of our Nation:
It is imperative that we put aside our short term political differences NOW and exercise all of the Constitutionally guaranteed FREEDOMS at our disposal to fight the existential threat to our country represented by the self-deceiving traitors who are bent on the “deconstruction” of the America we love.
Bannon and his ilk are expecting a fight. Let’s not disappoint them.
Bridges-Not-Walls 