Day: January 31, 2017

Day 10+ 11: True Colors

While the immigration executive order signed by Trump on Friday is less than the sum of fears imagined by rating machine DJT on the campaign trail and the leftists shaken by his Twitter, it still amounts to an attack on the American character. The media outlets have profiled many of the afflicted. Many generous attorneys and translators have descended on the airports to assist them.
We are birthed or for immigrants baptized by the ideals of an empire’s dissents. While many asylum seekers from the seven banned countries are low skill, their souls call them to an higher moral order: The United States. To shed the traditions of the old for the new. That calling shouldn’t be dismissed. I may especially disagree with temporary worker visas for low skill positions; I would never support immigration reform that bans all low skill immigration. Even Reagan called to welcome the Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees

as Americans. He was the original Immigration hardliner.
It is no surprise that Steve Bannon is the mind behind the poorly written order. In his ascension this weekend to permanent member of Trump’s National Security Council which downgraded the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, he has become the most powerful non elected man in America. Besides the immigration order, he told the NYtimes in an interview that the press should be silent. Imagine his reaction if Axelrod told him that during his time at Breitbart. With his naval assistant experience and dreams of infrastructure, he lives as a twisted Roosevelt. Unelectable and impulsive, he opens the gates of Hell.
-E.C. Fiori

Day 10

The False Dimitris, Time of Troubles, Making the Apolitical Political

It’s Monday and with Monday comes a new hot liberal article that E.C. Fiori and myself have been inundated with questions about. It pertains to a possible trial run of a coup at the highest levels of government by Trump’s inner circle.
I knew that in the days after the inauguration the left would be ripe for conspiracy theories, and lo and behold, here comes one after the first truly brutal act from Trump’s cabal.
How much evidence is there for this plot? Not as much as I would like to be honest. Are the purges in the state department and manic consolidation of power real? They are, but point me to a single kleptocracy that hasn’t done the exact same thing. I thought the voting public was clear on what Trump would be doing when he got behind the Roosevelt desk.
This, perhaps, is where both the left AND the right got Donald Trump wrong. The left took him literally, but not seriously. The news cycle would begin and end with mocking his ideas as foolish and impossible. The right took him seriously, but not literally. Among millennials, the large majority of votes in his favor were the fabled “culture” vote, where the empowerment of a candidate makes no policy sense, but has a desired effect in the wider popular culture. The idea was that he is serious about change, and will say anything to get the elite liberal media oppressors enraged. Let’s sit back and watch the show. But the show goes on, and now we increasingly live in Trump’s world.
So where is all of this going? First, people will believe almost anything in times of fear and uncertainty. This includes people on the left and it includes conspiracy theories.
Second, what is a radical centrist to do in this climate? Catalogue the actual crimes of the new administration, starting with the worst. And no, it is not the Muslim ban, idiotically unhelpful and un-American as it certainly is.
No. It is the making of the apolitical, political. Steve Bannon getting a permanent seat on the National Security Council is so incredibly dangerous, that I can’t help but wonder if the “Muslim ban” was designed to fail as a cover for this outrageous power grab. The reason aids to the president are almost never allowed to participate in such meetings (or often attend) is because the security of our nation should never even hint of a political leaning. This is something new.
It is up to us now to take Trump literally and seriously. We’re 10 days in.
-Jack Delaney