Charles P. Pierce: We Know How This Ends

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http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a52797/bannon-white-supremacy/

We Know How This Ends

The White House is once again tolerant of white supremacy.

Getty Bob Daemmrich
By Charles P. Pierce
Feb 2, 2017


WASHINGTON—There are some remarkable stories that have vanished for now in this city. One of the most prominent of these is that out-and-out white supremacy is operating at the very top levels of the executive branch of the government in a way that it hasn't since, I don't know, the Wilson administration. The Collected Works of Steve Bannon are bad enough. From USA Today:

"They are motivated. They're arrogant. They're on the march. And they think the Judeo-Christian West is on the retreat."

And, if Bannon isn't enough, there's this guy who looks at immigration as an invasion, an act of war. Which, of course, never has been a problem anywhere else in the world, ever. From New York:

"The ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle."

The whole campaign stank of this kind of thing, but there was a great scrambling during the campaign to minimize or to ignore it, or at least to minimize or ignore the possibility that it would continue to flourish within the administration. (This manifested itself more clearly in the stubborn refusal by many news organizations to recognize how vital this phenomenon was to the campaign's overall appeal.) This, it seems, was very premature. This development on Wednesday is downright unnerving. From Reuters:

The program, "Countering Violent Extremism," or CVE, would be changed to "Countering Islamic Extremism" or "Countering Radical Islamic Extremism," the sources said, and would no longer target groups such as white supremacists who have also carried out bombings and shootings in the United States. Such a change would reflect Trump's election campaign rhetoric and criticism of former President Barack Obama for being weak in the fight against Islamic State and for refusing to use the phrase "radical Islam" in describing it. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for attacks on civilians in several countries.

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There is no question that this old, rough beast has been unleashed in our politics again. The first steps in unlocking the cage happened years ago, when modern conservatism attached itself to the reanimated corpse of American apartheid and rode it to glory. Anyone who doesn't see the danger should pay a visit to Oklahoma City. That is what we can do to each other if our leaders are reckless, ambitious men who think what they say has no consequences.

In the museum near where the Murrah Building once stood, there is the handle of a jack that was in the back of the truck in which Timothy McVeigh placed his bomb. That jack handle was blown nearly a quarter of a mile and lodged in the wall of a law office. There is also a clear tube containing hundreds of watches, all stopped at 9:03. No political gain is worth that.