It is so strange to watch a truly brilliant mind fixate on a well-past issue as if it were the biggest challenge in contemporary America. Stephen Bannon is unable to let go of an untenable position, update assumptions born of past experiences, and live in the present to anticipate a very different future. As primary strategic advisor, Bannon elected a president on that fixation. He continues to speak for an alt-right constituency yearning for a past where their incomes were secure, their skill-sets admired and well compensated, the rich were rich but not that rich, people bought and made “American,” China was irrelevant, there were no “minorities” bringing strange food, new faiths, and differing values to work side-by-side with traditional blue collar workers… and blacks “knew their place” as the providers of menial services at abominably low pay.
Executive Chairman of alt-right Breitbart News, Bannon was the keynote speaker Friday evening [10/20] at the opening dinner of the California Republican Party's 2017 fall convention in Anaheim. Attacking the president every time he hints at veering from his populist extreme, assaulting Democrats and establishment Republicans; he is telling California Republicans that if they do not get the Silicon Valley power brokers under control, in 10 or 15 years, they will figure out how to pull California out of the United States to form a separate country.
California Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte justified Bannon’s invitation saying, "Steven Bannon is not shy about taking on the establishment on behalf of hard-working Americans… He is a leading voice in the effort to drain the swamp in Washington D.C., a change desperately needed since it has limited our progress." Los Alamitos Patch, October 20th. But former Goldman Sachs banker Bannon is simply an anachronism in the wrong place at the wrong time. His followers want a time machine that no politician can deliver.
Except for the extreme northern parts of sparsely-populated California, a pocket or two of right-leaners in Orange Country and sections of other, largely rural sections of the state, California – dominated by large urban clusters from the Bay Area, Sacramento and San Diego to the megalopolis of Los Angeles – is wildly anti-Trump, anti-alt right, and exceptionally ethnically diverse. Our industries, from food production to aerospace, tech excellence and entertainment, are powerful and relevant. California’s universities are among the best in the land, led by such academic giants as Cal Tech, Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA and USC, to name just a few. Trump’s populist cries, Bannon’s demand for retrograde, slip off the local psyche like eggs off of a Teflon pan.
“Republicans face a rocky path if they hope to rekindle the party in California. Democrats hold nearly a 19-percentage-point edge in voter registration. California voters have not elected a Republican to statewide office since 2006 [those recent Republicans were pretty moderate], and Democrats hold supermajorities in both legislative chambers, allowing them to raise taxes without a single GOP vote.” Los Angeles Times, October 21st.
California, which would be the sixth largest economy on earth if it were a separate nation, gives the federal government far more in tax dollars that any level of benefits we get, a fact underscored in the incredibly low level of support provided by the fed in responses to the recent spate of wildfires. The fires just north of San Francisco killed more people than the combined impact of hurricanes Irma and Harvey… hurricane disasters that triggered the GOP Congress to pass massive relief bills, instantly signed into law by the President. Indeed, given the GOP-dominated government in Washington and its obvious disdain for California, it’s hard to make a case for why California doesn’t try to secede now.
Bannon’s nationalist message still brims with his never-ending litany of hatred for the Peoples’ Republic of China, a country he believes used its massive “cheap labor” manufacturing capacity to target American industry and its blue collar workforce. Globalization is at the top of Bannon’s list of American public enemies, and China is irretrievably linked to that evil. That 20thcentury reality is long past. China’s labor isn’t so cheap anymore; they have developed a rather stunning and well-paid middle class. “Globalization”? Yesterday’s news. Try “automation,” Steve, and maybe you will understand the modern world a bit better.
As manufacturing reshores to the United States by the ton, it is returning to an automated world where machines (and the rich folks who own them) replace workers, where blue collar skills (rapidly followed by many white collar skills as well) are easily replicated by robots driven increasingly by self-adjusting artificial intelligence. The rich get richer. The workers get downgraded or let go. Retrain. Reeducate. Or lose.
Trump and Bannon have managed to convince displaced workers that globalization and government regulation, combined with the rise of an immigrant workforce, are what cost them their jobs. What a distraction, but it is a simple message – Make America Great/America First – that can never, never, never deliver on the underlying promise. Income inequality gets worse without government regulation – not to mention the environmental toxicity and the financial manipulation of an unregulated financial sector that brought down the country in 2008.
Today, because of competitive pressures, simple manufacturing and resource extraction efficiencies demand automation. But Bannon, Trump and an increasing chorus of Republicans cannot let go of these simple platforms that resonate so completely with the displaced workers who elected a populist narcissistic president. They’re so wrong, missing the big picture happening right before their eyes.
“Welcomed with a standing ovation [at the GOP gathering in Anaheim], Bannon clung to themes of ‘economic nationalism’ in his speech, putting the interests and fortunes of American workers ahead of the GOP establishment. He laughed off the small number of protesters outside, saying their liberal message would repel voters and help Republicans keep the congressional districts that Democrats have targeted.
“Bannon’s fiery remarks evoked both praise and consternation among Republicans at the convention at an Anaheim hotel. Few state or federal elected officials attended his speech. But it was a popular ticket among the party’s most conservative members, as was demonstrated when Bannon’s harsh criticism of former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was greeted with boos in agreement.” Los Angeles Times.
Living in the past, heads buried in the sand, and fighting battles that have no relevance in the modern world? Welcome to California where higher education, future tech, massive food supplies are our defining characteristics. There is little in Trump’s or Bannon’s messaging that is even mildly attractive… or even slightly accurate… for us and our lives. And I suspect you can say that for the entire West Coast.
I’m Peter Dekom, and if the stubborn and entrenched red state constituency wishes to march like lemmings into an ocean of change that will swallow them up, it does seem as if there are a lot of blue state constituents who want no part in that self-destructive movement.
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