What Steve Bannon Wants You to Read

[AngryAmish]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/steve-bannon-books-reading-list-214745

The first weeks of the Trump presidency have brought as much focus on the White House’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, as on the new president himself. But if Bannon has been the driving force behind the frenzy of activity in the White House, less attention has been paid to the network of political philosophers who have shaped his thinking and who now enjoy a direct line to the White House.

They are not mainstream thinkers, but their writings help to explain the commotion that has defined the Trump administration’s early days. They include a Lebanese-American author known for his theories about hard-to-predict events; an obscure Silicon Valley computer scientist whose online political tracts herald a “Dark Enlightenment”; and a former Wall Street executive who urged Donald Trump’s election in anonymous manifestos by likening the trajectory of the country to that of a hijacked airplane—and who now works for the National Security Council."

It is a long and a little bit scary.

[MyshkinCommaPrince]

1. More than a little bit!

Bannon isn't joking, when he voices admiration for Darth Vader and other villains. He's the kid who grew up wanting to be a super-villain.

I feel like stories like this one are turning me into my father. I have this impulse to shrug it off and tell myself, "Of course Politico would say that. Ha ha. They're Politico. It's their job." The implications of the ideas presented in the article are just too big and frightening. Which seems to be their point.

Around the time Shrubco was put in place, I worked for a company that hired a consulting firm to help them cut costs. Bush was elected, and whammo! This project was implemented. I saw an internal memo that people at my level weren't supposed to see (ostensibly weren't -- I half-suspect it was left where persons like me might see it, as some sort of test). The memo outlined the philosophy of the consulting firm and the project for which it was hired. Essentially, it argued that the tech-bubble boom had led to the hiring of inappropriate people, weak people, who needed to be purged from the organization. It would be a greater kindness to cut them out now, because otherwise they would advance in the organization and eventually have to be removed anyway. Such people should be pushed, subjected to unnecessarily harsh circumstances, until they broke and decided to leave on their own -- a short-term cruelty that was framed as an ultimate and greater kindness to the victims of the cruelty.

This project worked as intended. People were pushed, they broke, they quit. Eventually I was one of them. The next place I worked was doing the same thing. Now, it seems to be pretty ubiquitous. Cruelty is a "greater kindness", and "weak" people should be pushed out.

Now that philosophy is being implemented on a broad, cultural level, and not just here. Our country is doing it, and the movement promoting this is appearing all over the place. Eventually, there will be nowhere for the "weak" people to go. Apply this philosophy consistently and it becomes, "Weak people should just die." Where else can it lead? Because I can't see another endpoint.

I found myself thinking about all of this, as I read the article. The piece ends by noting that the ideologues covered in the article believe they are supporting the true spirit in which our nation was founded. Their ideas are a "return to our country's original ideals". I'm not sure what they think they mean by this. I think I understand their movement pretty well, up to that point, but here, I'm baffled. My best guess is that it's 'Cruelty is a "greater kindness", and "weak" people should be pushed out.'

So... scary, yeah.