‘The Great Manipulator’

Dear Editor,

I had heard Steve Bannon’s name bounced around numerous times during the Presidential campaign. Most of what I heard was pretty derogatory, but now that he has an influential position in the Trump administration I felt compelled to learn more about this man. The Feb. 13 issue of Time magazine has done just that. Along with referring to him as “the great manipulator” his portrait on the cover has to rank as one of the most unflattering of any I have ever seen. I have to check and see how his cover ranks with those of Saddam Hussein.

He described himself a few years back as coming from a “blue-collar, Irish-Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats.” So what happened? The big change came in 2008 with the financial crisis. Bannon’s father had carved out a comfortable existence with a workingman’s salary for his family of five children. At age 95 and now a widow, his finances took a huge hit while Steve Bannon’s former colleagues on Wall Street “emerged virtually unscathed and scot-free”. For Bannon this must have been the equivalent to Sir William Wallace having his wife murdered by an English officer. How Bannon plans to curtail the influence of the “banksters and Wall Street elite” who now populate the cabinet remains to be seen.

Riding back on the Washington Metro from the Women’s March, I struck up a conversation with a former philosophy professor. He was a dead ringer for that “retired academician” look. He had read much about the ancient Greeks and although they were strong believers in democracy, they were also well aware of the “demagogue” who could exploit the fears and prejudices of the masses. (An Internet search on this word brings up Trump’s name early on).

I have also been viewing the Presidential campaign and election as a parallel with a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. Many of the tragedies weren’t supposed to happen. We watch various actors make minor miscalculations, misinterpret the devious plans of enemies or presumed allies, or make some rash decision based on false information. In the end evil has triumphed with the villain taking the spoils or simply a stage filled with dead bodies and broken desires from both sides.

I look at the ascendancy of Trump and his election as a five horsemen apocalypse of different forces that resulted in a Republican victory, although that victory may be a Pyrrhic one. The Republicans developed a strategy in 2008 of blocking or hampering nearly everything Obama proposed. Once they gained control of the house in 2010 this strategy became even more effective. The Republicans now control 33 state legislatures and with this control have engaged in intense gerrymandering to intensify their advantage along with a variety of voter suppression efforts that usually decrease the Democratic vote.

Secondly the Republicans have kept the flames burning of racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, terrorism and other fear-mongering traits that Trump and his acolytes were able to capitalize to distinct advantage. The campaign worked on those swing states that were vulnerable, and even with a huge loss in the popular vote the Electoral College is where our election counts. He had a very effective slogan, the mantra: “Make America Great Again!” It has this reassuring, mesmerizing, hypnotic quality to it. The Clinton camp went through 84 possibilities before deciding on “Stronger Together”. Duh! And for those Americans who invest the same amount of time deciding on a President as they do a bag of potato chips, the slogan was all they needed.

The third rail in this toxic brew of forces was the corporate Democratic machine of Bill and Hillary Clinton and Obama. Bill Clinton brought us NAFTA, misguided welfare reform, misguided crime reform and a repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. In spite of the many good things that Obama did, his administration did more of the same. The 2008 bailout was done on the financial backs of the U.S. citizen. When HSBC was guilty of laundering money for both terrorists and drug lords, the administration’s response was that “they were too big to jail”. When Wells Fargo was found guilty of creating a couple million phony bank accounts – who took the hit? There were 5,300 bank employees dismissed for “bad behavior” while many Well Fargo executives got golden parachutes. I’m sure that many of those bank employees harbored the type of feelings towards the White House that Madonna expressed at the Women’s March.

Obama promoted the TPP. Lets give Trump credit for stopping that. On the issue of fracking, Hillary sided with the fossil fuel industry in spite of the unequivocal opposition to fracking from the Sanders camp. And the “undue influence of the military-industrial complex” that began after World War II has continued its cancerous growth with a Pentagon whose books are so disorganized that an audit would be a Gordian knot of unimaginable proportions.

Fourthly, was a Democratic primary rigged in Hillary’s favor? The Sanders camp complained early on debate schedules that were questionable, railroading in the Nevada caucus, missing voters in Brooklyn, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz was finally dropped after embarrassing emails surfaced but the damage that was done. Donna Brazile feeds debate material to Hillary but suffers no consequences. Did Tom Perez, one of the candidates for DNC chair, tell the truth about the primary being “rigged” even though he backtracked on those comments within 24 hours?

Lastly, was a Democratic corporate campaign strategy that poorly run and elitist? Because of fears that the Sanders supporters would revolt or stay on the sidelines, the platform for the Democrats was exceptionally progressive, but you wouldn’t know that based on Hillary’s rallies and publicity. Hillary was still hedging her bets with the Wall Street elite. When she referred to many Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables”, she was expressing one of her true feelings. Her entire comment was less harsh but the damage was done. It gained her no votes and only hardened the resolve of the “Trump tribe”. I heard this assessment of part of the Democratic strategy: for every blue-collar worker we lose we will gain with women in the suburbs. It didn’t work. Michael Moore’s people were warning her about Michigan; they were ignored.

The Trump presidency is just a depressing, discouraging time for America and many in the rest of the world also “feel our pain”. It did not seem to matter what he did on the campaign trail – whether it was insulting veterans, insulting women, disparaging special needs people, blasting other Republicans, insulting voters, etc. He was the Teflon candidate; nothing seemed to damage his poll numbers. I understand the voting a bit better now than I did during the campaign. This justification for supporting Trump came from a blue-collar worker who said, “I’m going to lose my job regardless of who wins. Which candidate has the best chance to shake up Washington?” No argument on that one.

The morning after Trump gained the Oval Office I had a wild range of emotions: disbelief, depression, rage, uncertainty and a numbness that still lurks in my psyche. I harbored some hope as a few others did that candidate Trump would somehow start acting more presidential, that the bombast, hyperbole, exaggerations and circus antics would somehow start to wane. There were a few moments that garnered some hope but the transition and the first few weeks of his Presidency have put the United States and the rest of the world on a roller coaster ride of uncertainty, aggravation, incompetency and chaos. Instead of a loose cannon on the deck of the ship, we have about half a dozen.

All of us, Trump supporters, Trump detractors, the media and those millions of Americans who look at a polling booth with about the same enthusiasm as looking at a port-a-john, are scrambling to understand this “new order”. “Fake news” and “alternative facts” have now become standard features for trying to explain how Trump views the world and where he wants to take us. As much as I like George Orwell, is it really a positive development that 1984 has jumped into the bestseller list again?

On the night of the election when it became certain that Trump would win, a former office holder said that the person who is probably most concerned about a Trump presidency is Trump himself. I think that this has demonstrated itself in spades in the weeks since the election. He doesn’t really know what he is doing; he is in over his head. And is he really that good a business man when looking at his various failures, bankruptcies and the way he has often treated both clients and contractors? There is much that is just speculation without seeing his taxes.

In many ways, I now feel sorry for the man. He needs counseling; he is delusional; he has trouble separating fact from fiction. He doesn’t believe he is lying when he says that thousands of Muslims cheered when the World Trade Center burned or that three million illegal voters pushed Hillary’s numbers over his or that it stopped raining when he gave his inaugural address or that Mexico is going to pay for an enhanced border wall, etc. etc. etc. In the meantime we have entered through the gates of this Wizard of Oz, Orwellian dystopian movie set which is equal parts Duck Soup, Bulworth, Dr. Strangelove, Idiocracy, Bananas and The Manchurian Candidate.

Sincerely,

Ed Nizalowski

Newark Valley, N.Y.