Houston Southard
a name that looks so fake you'll care just as little to learn it's not
Joshua Green - Devil’s Bargain
Joshua Green understood the nationalism and populism that Donald Trump harnessed to win the 2016 election, because he understood the man behind the man.
A brief biography of Steve Bannon: Warred in the navy. Educated at Harvard business school. Worked at Goldman Sachs selling junk bonds. Took that financial savvy to Hollywood with Bannon and Co., representing Westinghouse in selling Castle Rock, pocketing royalties from the then-unknown sitcom Seinfeld. That cash got invested in Chinese video game firm IGE, but not before its gamers wrecked the business model by organizing themselves on message boards, forcing the company to curb the disruptive practice of gold farming (hiring starved 3rd-world workers to help gamers acquire virtual Warcraft gold in order to purchase valuable objects.
An IGE Disaster, Bannon gained a perverse appreciation for the gamers: “These rootless white males, had monster power. The same guys on Thottbot, 4Chan, and later Reddit message boards birthed the alt-right.”
Combining his swindler’s army knife, producing ideologically charged films, sponsoring Sarah Palin’s run at office, he went films to online news, investing in rightwing Breitbart News when its founder died. From news to politics, he started the Mercer-funded AGI, to chip away at Clinton’s reputation.
Democrats and Republicans regarded Trump as a clown and slave to his ego, but Bannon viewed Trump as the perfect vessel of the nationalist populism he had been pushing for years.
Once in the oval office, Trump abandoned promises to transform the GOP into the voice of the working person in place of the mainstream Republican agenda: Repealing the Affordable Care Act, a move that would’ve ended healthcare for 24 million people, including working-class Trump voters. The deeply unpopular plan failed, underscoring Trump’s lack of ideology. Unlike Bannon, who believes fervently in nationalism, Trump believes in himself.
Living in a dystopia where populist ideals via alt-right fundamentals are driving public opinion is wild. What’s not is seeing Bannon go to prison next week is wonderful. We’ll see what his Mexican bunkmates he made his frontrunner deem “rapists” make of that.