“It is an idea as old as
Aristotle: A republic rests upon a large and controlling middle class.
To wage war upon the middle class
is to wage war upon the republic itself.”
----from
“The Quotations of Chairman Joe”
He takes
his science on climate change from Arthur Robinson, a biochemist, not a climate
expert and contends that concerns about the climate are overblown. He is a strong supporter of Jeff Sessions for
Attorney General, contends that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake;
that African-Americans were better off economically before the civil-rights
movement; that there are no white racists in America today, only black
racists. He is a rabid Clinton hater,
deeply immersed in the various conspiracy theories that abound on the fringes
of the political wrong. He has helped
empower the so-called “Alt-Right” a gussied-up term for white nationalists,
crypto and proto-Nazis, which “has included anti-Semitic and white-supremacist
voices”, foremost among them Brietbart “News”.
He has contributed millions of dollars to Republican candidates, 22.5
million in 2016 alone, and he is the largest private contributor to Donald J. tRUMP’s
presidential campaign. His name is Robert Mercer, “a reclusive Long-Island
hedge-fund manager, who has become a major force behind the (t)RUMP presidency”;
and he has had “surprising success in aligning the Republican (Rescumlican)
Party, and consequently America, with his personal beliefs.” (1)
“Mercer
is the co-C.E.O. of Renaissance Technologies, which is among the most
profitable hedge funds in the country.” (2) David Magerman, described by
reporter Jane Mayer for the New Yorker
magazine, as “a senior employee at Renaissance,” …” told the Wall Street Journal that Mercer’s
political opinions ‘show contempt for the social safety net that he doesn’t
need, but many Americans do’. He also
said that Mercer wants the U.S. government to be ‘shrunk down to the size of a
pinhead.’ Several former colleagues of Mercer’s said that his views are akin to
Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
Magerman told me (Mayer), ‘Bob believes that human beings have no
inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he said, because it provides
pleasure to humans. But if someone is on
welfare they have negative value. If he
earns a thousand times more than a school teacher, then he’s a thousand times
more valuable.’ Magerman added, ‘He
thinks society is upside down—that government helps the weak people get strong,
and makes the strong people weak by taking their money away, through taxes.’” (3)
an attitude “‘typical’ of the ‘instant billionaires’ in finance who ‘have no
stake in society’ unlike the industrialists of the past, who ‘built real
things.’” (4).
Andrew
Breitbart was an idiot when alive; in death, his idiocy has become enshrined in
his legacy “Breitbart News”, an online blog/journal whose most accurate
reporting involved Bill Clinton getting head in the oval office. Since then it, along with the “Drudge Report”
and Alex Jones’ insane “InfoWars” radio broadcasts, has become the fetid petrie
dish for toxic anti-social conspiracy theories poisoning and killing rational
political discourse in this country. The
‘Alt (alternate) Right now presents us with ‘alternate facts’ from some
presumed alternate universe.
Breitbart
was taken over by one Steve Bannon who moved to secure its existence by
enlisting the financial patronage of the Mercers who have contributed millions
of dollars to underwrite the fraud. From
the cesspool of the ‘Alt-right’ straight into the damaged ears of Rush Limbaugh
to the fake news of Fox (accurate about 18 per cent of the time), and on into
the Koch-addled brain of the Republican Party this “alternate reality” is
imposed upon us. Mercer made Bannon at
Breitbart and his financial support of tRUMP made Bannon tRUMP’s campaign
C.E.O. (a position hitherto unheard of), and Kellyanne Conway his campaign
manager. It also put them in the White
House.
A study
of Mercer and Bannon are important not only for what it tells us about the deep
paranoia that lurks just beneath the surface of the alt-right (alt-wrong); a
paranoia held in common, though not to the degree, of the long-suffering conservatives. For this derangement is of an entirely higher
level of magnitude, finding Bannon and his ilk confusing themselves with Leninists
(perhaps explaining their infatuation with all things Russian), and plotting
endlessly with a fictional ‘deep state’ producing, in turn, perpetual crisis
and turmoil as they wage war upon the ‘establishment’, the ‘bureaucracy’ and ‘institutional
competence and memory’. For these reasons,
we can see in Mercer and Bannon a reflection of the mind, such as it is, of our
very own Caesar Disgustus.
It is no
surprise, then, that as of this late date hundreds of senior level positions
have not been filled; that the State Department has been savaged with many
ambassadorships not yet staffed; that draconian cuts are in the works for
virtually every federal agency not involved with the military-industrial
complex; that lack of experience is put at a premium.
But a
study of Mercer and Bannon also reveal how Disgustus views humanity: Ones worth
is directly related to one’s net worth.
Is it any wonder, then, that tRUMP would assemble about him a cabinet
and group of advisors that are worth an estimated $61.380,600,000, a figure
greater than the GDP of 114 of the world’s nation-states? (5). tRUMP’s entire concept of human worth is
invested (and infested) in money. It is
for this reason that he constantly inflates his fortune and for this reason
that Disgustus has assembled what comedian John Cleese has described as a ‘crew
of a pirate ship’ in the form of multi-billionaires skilled in the dark arts of
separating labor from the wealth that it creates. These are the only people he ‘respects’;
the only people, in this view, that have worth; people, in whom, the narcissist
sees his own reflection.
Two
points follow from the above. Disgustus
only recognizes money, indeed worships only money. Nothing else has value. Secondly, in the words of his biographer
David Kay Johnson, the people who supported tRUMP have value only in the votes
they give him. He will not be their
savior, for Disgustus they have no real value.
Let there
be no mistake: whatever Disgustus says about others he is attributing to
himself and he is now about the business of creating that very dystopia so
graphically attributed to others in his inaugural address. The struggle to
create that ‘more perfect union’ has run amok.
The struggle for the ‘American Dream’ has become the ‘American nightmare’;
the ‘American Utopia’, is fast becoming the ‘American Dystopia’.
Meanwhile
the war against the institutions that have built and nurtured the middle class continues
unabated; and with it the war against the republic itself. Whatever and whomever this man touches he
diminishes and destroys.
Impeach and Imprison.
----
(1). Mayer, Jane “Trump’s Money Man. How Robert Mercer, a reclusive hedge-fund tycoon,
exploited
America’s populist insurgency” The New
Yorker March
27, 2017
pp 34-45
(2). Ibid. pg. 36
(3). Ibid. pg. 37
(4). Ibid. pg. 37
(5). Harper’s Index “Harper’s” magazine. May
2017 page 11.
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