This Viral Facebook Post Outlines What Trump Is Doing Perfectly (VIDEO)

Close to half the country still supports President Donald Trump.

It’s a staggering thought really. It’s just so obvious that the man is unprepared for office. So obvious that he is employing the very kind of fascist ideology that the Constitution was set up to oppose.

But there is more to it than a simple case of Democrats vs. Republicans. This divide is not even American vs. American; it’s gone global.

Across the world, the very same liberal values that have kept the peace since 1945 are under attack. And in case you’ve not been keeping score, our side is losing.

Brexit, Russian hacking, mafia ties, the very real possibility of a fascist demagogue winning the French election. All these things are connected; the architects of a new world order are all in cahoots.

And at the center of it all, we have Steve Bannon. That Jew-Hating, walking pile of dishrags. That smug-faced reptile who has slithered his way into a position of power without anyone pausing to question his agenda. Or his motives for that matter.

Why?

Why do they keep winning?

That’s simple. They keep winning because they are focused and we are distracted. Their victories are ubiquitous because they play dirty and we play clean. They win because we let them win, because we are too busy policing each other’s twitter feeds to stand up to them. The fault lies with us.

And if we don’t wise up to these failings — and these days, so few of us are willing to admit that we fucked up — then their victory laps will continue ad infinitum.

The Stimuli

Take the Muslim ban as a case in point.

For Heather Richardson — professor of American history at Boston College — the ban has nothing to do with preventing terrorists, nothing to do with fulfilling promises and everything to do with tried and tested political tactics. Tactics designed to manipulate. There were outrages to relate and dissent to organize and everywhere, chaos and confusion, confusion and chaos.

The ban worked beautifully. There were outrages to relate to one another, dissent to organize, and everywhere, chaos and confusion, confusion and chaos.

Which is exactly the smoke screen Bannon needed in order to grab the reigns of power and have himself appointed as head of the national security council.

In a post to Facebook, Richardson shared her understanding of exactly what was going on. She watched Bannon’s use of tried and tested blitzkrieg tactics and called it out for what it is.

A man of above average intelligence playing us all for fools.

The piece should be considered compulsive reading. What follows is a verbatim re-run of her post.

Pass it on when you’re done.

The Event

I don’t like to talk about politics on Facebook — political history is my job, after all, and you are my friends — but there is an important non-partisan point to make today.

What Steve Bannon is doing, most dramatically with the ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries — is creating what is known as a “shock event.”

Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order.

When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event.

Donald Trump’s executive order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counterterrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it.

Predictably, chaos has followed and tempers are hot.

The Reaction

My point today is this: unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one’s interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won’t like.

I don’t know what Bannon is up to (although I have some guesses) but because I know Bannon’s ideas well, I am positive that there is not a single person whom I consider a friend on either side of the aisle — and my friends range pretty widely — who will benefit from whatever it is.

This column was originally published by the author as a post on her Facebook account and subsequently republished by Dallas News with Heather Richardson’s permission.

If the shock event strategy works, though, many of you will blame each other, rather than Bannon, for the fallout. And the country will have been tricked into accepting their real goal.

But because shock events destabilize a society, they can also be used positively. We do not have to respond along old fault lines. We could just as easily reorganize into a different pattern that threatens the people who sparked the event.

A successful shock event depends on speed and chaos because it requires knee-jerk reactions so that people divide along established lines. This, for example, is how Confederate leaders railroaded the initial southern states out of the Union.

Realization Bites

If people realize they are being played, though, they can reach across old lines and reorganize to challenge the leaders who are pulling the strings. This was Lincoln’s strategy when he joined together Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, anti-Nebraska voters, and nativists into the new Republican Party to stand against the Slave Power.

Five years before, such a coalition would have been unimaginable. Members of those groups agreed on very little other than that they wanted all Americans to have equal economic opportunity. Once they began to work together to promote a fair economic system, though, they found much common ground. They ended up rededicating the nation to a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Confederate leaders and Lincoln knew about the political potential of a shock event. As we are in the midst of one, it seems worth noting that Lincoln seemed to have the better idea about how to use it.

Heather Richardson is a professor of American history at Boston College. This column was first published on her Facebook account. Twitter: @HC_Richardson and subsequently republished with her permission in Dallas News

Examples of Bannon’s overt racism are not difficult to find. Here’s juts one

Featured image from Jesse Costa/WBUR/Radio Boston.

I'm a full- time, somewhat unwilling resident of the planet Earth. I studied journalism at Murdoch University in West Australia and moved back to the UK where I taught politics and studied for a PhD. I've written a number of books on political philosophy that are mostly of interest to scholars. I'm also a seasoned travel writer so I get to stay in fancy hotels for free. I have a pet Lizard called Rousseau. We have only the most cursory of respect for one another.