The Bannon Effect

According to the President, being a liberal is now worse than being a pedophile. With that clarification, here is my new list for the worst things in the world according to Donald Trump:

1.     The truth

2.     Liberals

3.     Rosie O�Donnell

4.     A script

5.     Chuck and Nancy

6.     Being told �No.�

7.     Anybody who disagrees with him.

The list changes from day to day. However, �pedophiles� has yet to appear.

            Tonight�s main story is about Steve Bannon who campaigned for Roy Moore in Alabama last night. His �speech� (if that is what you want to call it) was more of a soapbox for Bannon to go off on all kinds of people. One of the obvious targets was Doug Jones, the Democrat in the Senate race. Bannon described him as a �personification of Hillary Clinton�s policies.� He also attacked Senator Jeff Flake who wrote a check to Doug Jones because of his disgust with Roy Moore.

            However, the attack that bothered me and made me decide to dedicate a blog to Steve Bannon was about Mitt Romney. Romney was the former Republican nominee for President in 2012 and has criticized Moore repeatedly throughout the past few weeks. Last night, Bannon slammed Romney for �hiding behind his religion� which allowed him to avoid serving in Vietnam. Romney was a missionary in France during the draft. Bannon also noted that none of his five sons had served in the military at all. He said, �You went to France to be a missionary while guys were dying in rice patties in Vietnam.�

            I spend a lot of time on this blog exposing hypocrisy and I am about to do it once again. Bannon claimed that Romney has no integrity or honor because he dodged the draft in order to be a missionary in France. I feel like I�ve heard about another draft dodger before. Oh yeah, it�s our president who received four deferments because he was attending the Wharton School of Finance in Pennsylvania and a medical deferment after he graduated because of a bone spur in one of his feet. When he was asked about it, Trump could not remember which foot.

            The difference between the two is that Bannon loves Trump and hates Romney. He slams Romney for dodging the draft because he was a missionary but is silent about Trump�s draft dodging while he attended school. How is serving as a missionary any worse than going to school? Is it because Romney is a Mormon? I mean this is Steve Bannon so it might be because Romney is a Mormon. The more logical answer is that it was politically convenient for Bannon to slam Romney over this and not mention Trump.

            The biggest problem with some Republicans and especially the alt-right is their hypocrisy and selective outrage. They do not even try to be open and transparent anymore. The latest tax bill is evidence of that. They have determined that by demonizing liberals and Democrats, they will continue to win elections. They do not have solutions or policies. They use fear mongering to get people to the polls. That is why they don�t care if they are hypocritical and corrupt. They can just call any criticism fake news and their base will believe them. Allegations of sexual harassment? Fake news. Corruption? Fake news. Nepotism? Fake news. Tax cuts for the rich? Fake news.

            The political discourse in our country has devolved from actual debate into a circus of people screaming fake news and completely ignoring the other side. This change is due to people like Steve Bannon who present themselves as somebody who knows what they are talking about. They say offensive things and if you criticize them for it, they slam you for being �politically correct� even though they are actually incorrect. I call it the Bannon effect. Almost a year ago, I wrote an article for the Summerville Journal Scene where I described a war occurring between fact and fiction. One year later, fiction is on the winning side of this war. Facts do not phase people anymore. What a strange world we live in. That�s all for this week.