![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraI found this interview with Steve Bannon quite fascinating.
Really, he doesn't sound all that different from Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren except that he inserts the phrase "Judeo-Christian" into every other sentence. (Possibly because he's speaking at the Vatican?) He almost sounds like a Marxist when he talks about how the Tea Party was a reaction to crony capitalism. He neatly channels that systemic distrust of the media and political systems that’s been around for at least a decade and that Liberals had relegated to a sidebar: Oh, look! Pew sez only 19% of Americans trust the federal government!
In view of Bannon’s emergence as the alt.right White Nationalist Poster Boy, these words are the most interesting: There’s always elements who turn up at these things, whether it’s militia guys or whatever. Some that are fringe organizations. My point is that over time it all gets kind of washed out, right? People understand what pulls them together, and the people on the margins I think get marginalized more and more.
I can’t tell whether Bannon actually believes this, or if this is an apple he wants you to bob for. So that that when you put your head underwater, you drown.
This is one of the reasons why I could never be a politician.
I’m not pragmatic enough to accept all types of support.
###
I did decide I could not possibly accept Carol Day’s Thanksgiving invitation. I like Carol, and if she’s far more self-involved than most people, I’m inclined to cut her slack. Because she’s very generous. Because she has an autistic, severely retarded son whom she keeps at home, and because I cannot imagine dealing with a situation like that myself.
But she voted for Trump.
And right now, I just can’t be around people who voted for Trump.
I don’t particularly approve of this reaction in myself. I’m Libertarian enough to think that people get to believe what they want to believe without checking in with me first.
But I don’t trust myself to keep my mouth closed at the dinner table should the talk turn to politics.
I’d make a scene.
“Come up here!” Ben said.
So, I will.
###
In graduate school, I had a pal named April. Single mother. Plucky. Smart. Pragmatic. She’d discovered house-flipping. One of her X-boyfriends, a sleazeball lawyer named Sheldon, was responsible for helping her find distressed properties. Now, some 35 years after the fact, I suspect he may also have loaned her the initial down payment.
Sheldon always had a string of hot young girlfriends. He was one of those nervous, skinny guys with a braying laugh and oily skin. You just knew Sheldon had been a loser in high school and that he was never gonna get over it. But now, he had money!
Anyway, April had a dinner party. Invited me. Invited Sheldon. Invited some other folk.
Sheldon turned up with his latest girlfriend in tow – an extremely striking young African American undergraduate.
Sheldon was one of those people who liked to insert sexual innuendoes into every other sentence, and during the course of the evening, as he grew drunker and drunker, the sex talk grew louder and louder.
“You would not believe what this one here can do with her tongue!” he announced, grabbing his date and inserting his tongue in her ear. “Mick Jagger is right! Brown sugar is the sweetest.”
The poor girl looked as though she wanted the ground to open and swallow her up.
“Stop it, Sheldon!” I said. “Just stop it. Right now. Cease and desist.”
Sheldon did the wide-eyed innocence pose. “Stop it? Why?”
“Because you’re embarrassing me, and you’re embarrassing your friend.”
“Embarrassing you? Well, who the fuck are you? You don’t get to tell me what to do. And as to embarrassing this little piece of prime black ass –“
“That’s it,” I said. I rose from the table and headed for the bedroom to retrieve my coat.
April followed me.
“Patrizia!” she entreated. “Don’t do this. Sheldon’s an ass, but he’s harmless –“
“No, April," I said. "That’s where you’re wrong. Sheldon is not harmless.”
April looked as though she wanted to cry.
So, I patted her tepidly on the shoulder – could not bring myself to hug her – and walked out the door.
In the days that followed, I was led to understand that I had embarrassed April horribly, had ruined her dinner party.
I can live with that, I thought.
But April and I remained pals. “Pals” in my lexicon is code for people with whom you interact on an amicable and regular basis but with whom you exchange no real intimacies. Pals are a necessary survival tool. Cogs in what I suppose marketers call “networking.”
Generally speaking, I only make dramatic gestures and cut off people to whom I’m bound by ties of love or blood. Possibly because I have higher expectations of them, and when they disappoint me, it’s a very big deal.
Most people, though, I see as more-or-less interchangeable personas who are currently occupying a particular slot in my brain. They’re not that important. What they do is not that important. And if I cut them off, then I’m gonna have to go to all that trouble to recruit somebody new for that slot in my brain.
Really, he doesn't sound all that different from Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren except that he inserts the phrase "Judeo-Christian" into every other sentence. (Possibly because he's speaking at the Vatican?) He almost sounds like a Marxist when he talks about how the Tea Party was a reaction to crony capitalism. He neatly channels that systemic distrust of the media and political systems that’s been around for at least a decade and that Liberals had relegated to a sidebar: Oh, look! Pew sez only 19% of Americans trust the federal government!
In view of Bannon’s emergence as the alt.right White Nationalist Poster Boy, these words are the most interesting: There’s always elements who turn up at these things, whether it’s militia guys or whatever. Some that are fringe organizations. My point is that over time it all gets kind of washed out, right? People understand what pulls them together, and the people on the margins I think get marginalized more and more.
I can’t tell whether Bannon actually believes this, or if this is an apple he wants you to bob for. So that that when you put your head underwater, you drown.
This is one of the reasons why I could never be a politician.
I’m not pragmatic enough to accept all types of support.
###
I did decide I could not possibly accept Carol Day’s Thanksgiving invitation. I like Carol, and if she’s far more self-involved than most people, I’m inclined to cut her slack. Because she’s very generous. Because she has an autistic, severely retarded son whom she keeps at home, and because I cannot imagine dealing with a situation like that myself.
But she voted for Trump.
And right now, I just can’t be around people who voted for Trump.
I don’t particularly approve of this reaction in myself. I’m Libertarian enough to think that people get to believe what they want to believe without checking in with me first.
But I don’t trust myself to keep my mouth closed at the dinner table should the talk turn to politics.
I’d make a scene.
“Come up here!” Ben said.
So, I will.
###
In graduate school, I had a pal named April. Single mother. Plucky. Smart. Pragmatic. She’d discovered house-flipping. One of her X-boyfriends, a sleazeball lawyer named Sheldon, was responsible for helping her find distressed properties. Now, some 35 years after the fact, I suspect he may also have loaned her the initial down payment.
Sheldon always had a string of hot young girlfriends. He was one of those nervous, skinny guys with a braying laugh and oily skin. You just knew Sheldon had been a loser in high school and that he was never gonna get over it. But now, he had money!
Anyway, April had a dinner party. Invited me. Invited Sheldon. Invited some other folk.
Sheldon turned up with his latest girlfriend in tow – an extremely striking young African American undergraduate.
Sheldon was one of those people who liked to insert sexual innuendoes into every other sentence, and during the course of the evening, as he grew drunker and drunker, the sex talk grew louder and louder.
“You would not believe what this one here can do with her tongue!” he announced, grabbing his date and inserting his tongue in her ear. “Mick Jagger is right! Brown sugar is the sweetest.”
The poor girl looked as though she wanted the ground to open and swallow her up.
“Stop it, Sheldon!” I said. “Just stop it. Right now. Cease and desist.”
Sheldon did the wide-eyed innocence pose. “Stop it? Why?”
“Because you’re embarrassing me, and you’re embarrassing your friend.”
“Embarrassing you? Well, who the fuck are you? You don’t get to tell me what to do. And as to embarrassing this little piece of prime black ass –“
“That’s it,” I said. I rose from the table and headed for the bedroom to retrieve my coat.
April followed me.
“Patrizia!” she entreated. “Don’t do this. Sheldon’s an ass, but he’s harmless –“
“No, April," I said. "That’s where you’re wrong. Sheldon is not harmless.”
April looked as though she wanted to cry.
So, I patted her tepidly on the shoulder – could not bring myself to hug her – and walked out the door.
In the days that followed, I was led to understand that I had embarrassed April horribly, had ruined her dinner party.
I can live with that, I thought.
But April and I remained pals. “Pals” in my lexicon is code for people with whom you interact on an amicable and regular basis but with whom you exchange no real intimacies. Pals are a necessary survival tool. Cogs in what I suppose marketers call “networking.”
Generally speaking, I only make dramatic gestures and cut off people to whom I’m bound by ties of love or blood. Possibly because I have higher expectations of them, and when they disappoint me, it’s a very big deal.
Most people, though, I see as more-or-less interchangeable personas who are currently occupying a particular slot in my brain. They’re not that important. What they do is not that important. And if I cut them off, then I’m gonna have to go to all that trouble to recruit somebody new for that slot in my brain.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2016-11-18 05:23 pm (UTC)Found you on the front page, btw, hope it's all right to comment.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-18 05:31 pm (UTC)One might be correct in saying that a disregard for foreign policy is a feature not a bug when you're a Libertarian. :-) But I get what you're saying. Johnson's fumbles made him seem like a big doofus who samples a bit too much of his own product. (Since leaving politics, he's been trying to corner the commercial marijuana market.) He came across as ignorant.
I voted for him anyway. Trump is an abomination, but I just couldn't bring myself to vote for HRC.