[2017] Steve Bannon’s War on the Press

Outrage is evidently what Bannon intended to produce. A former Goldman Sachs investment banker and Hollywood producer who remade himself as a leading figure in the alt-right, he enjoys playing the role of provocateur and bomb thrower. At a cocktail party in November, 2013, he described himself as “Leninist” to the writer and historian Ronald Radosh. In a piece at the Daily Beast, Radosh recalled that Bannon had said to him, “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.” (Bannon subsequently told Radosh that he didn’t recall the conversation.)

To a good Leninist, the very notion of an objective press is a liberal piety. Media outlets like the Times and the Washington Post are merely the ideological arm of highly educated urban cosmopolitans, liberals, and financiers—the “donor class,” Bannon calls them—who have benefitted from globalization and large-scale immigration. “I’m not a white nationalist,” Bannon told the _Hollywood Reporter’_s Michael Wolff shortly after the election. “I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist. The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia.”
— Read on www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/steve-bannons-war-on-the-press

Nation is at a Tipping Point

Re: Kathie Garcia’s Jan. 26 letter, “What will come of impeachment?”:

I found this letter to be thoughtful and critically important. America is poised on a knifepoint, and we will fall either to the side of reinforcing our most basic morals, values and traditions, or plunge into a new state, where the law of the jungle has replaced the rule of law. President Donald Trump’s one-time guru, Steve Bannon, espoused the intention to tear down government, and that sounded preposterous at the time. Not so preposterous now.

The questions posed by Kathie Garcia’s letter can be answered in this way: The future of America, the lives of our citizens and the morality of our society are in our hands. Our form of government demands that we take responsibility for those we elect to represent us. When they reflect our values and beliefs, we re-elect them. When they fail to do so, we must vote them out. Failure to do so, including failure to vote, means we surrender to special interests, political cults and corrupt influences.

We get to vote on the answers to Garcia’s questions. The fate of our nation tips with the results.

Stuart Wing, Moorpark

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