White, grey, and alt-white.
Bannon must have a ton of dirt on the inner workings of the White House. He must know where all the bodies are buried. I guess we’ll never know for sure, though. A man with Bannon’s deep respect for American institutions and governance would never reveal classified or damaging information just to undermine the state.
Hmm. Figurative thermonuclear war gets a little dicier when one side can wage literal thermonuclear war, doesn’t it?
According to the politico article, Breitbart news just posted #WAR! without explanation.
Mm, fun.
They are starting out with jaundice yellow for their test marketing.
I’ve always thought that line of thinking is BS.
True, the “Vizier” of any leader may help to bring out his worst qualities. From reading history, for example, I do believe Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell were toxic influences on Richard Nixon. But, they simply simply to bring out qualities that already existed in him. Trump is gonna Trump with or without Bannon. He takes more of his intel and opinions from Fox News than anything else.
I think you have the causation backwards. A smart leader always ensures he’s set up a fall guy before he makes a controversial move. If it goes bad, it was all the fall guy’s idea. if it goes good, it was all the Boss’es idea. This has nothing to do with the fall guy actually influencing the leader; it’s all about the spin.
Part of the set-up for having fall guys is first convincing the public: “The Boss is Good; the fall guys not so much.”
As every gambler knows, the best games are the ones where you come out ahead no matter what. Done right, this Boss & Fall Guy tactic amounts to “heads I win; tails you lose” for the Boss every time. With each flip of the coin increasing the public’s love of the Boss no matter heads or tails. He’s either a genius, or he’s cleaning the stables; either way America is Greater than it was yesterday.
Here’s an example much closer to home. Can a baseball be hit farther with a heavy bat or a light one? - The Straight Dope is a randomly selected Straight Dope column by the SDSAB = Cecil’s viziers. The article itself doesn’t matter; read the all-caps disclaimer at the bottom. Same logic. If it’s a winner it was inspired by Cecil. If it’s a loser it wasn’t his fault.
As **elucidator **said, it’s one of the oldest tricks in human relations. The fact it continues to work says to me that it exploits a very fundamental defect in human reasoning.
So am I. Is the puppet now going to just sit there motionless?
No, don’t get out of hand here. 
Just observe both sides, the entirety, the way I hear that some people watch Nascar races- for the crashes.
Bannon’s ouster is presumably not really a mutual decision, even though Bannon most certainly saw it coming like a Kansas tornado. That puts Trump in an extremely difficult position. I find it difficult to believe that he can reconcile with his critics on the Left, who have branded him as a racist, and I find it difficult to believe that he won’t eventually in some way fail to appease his demons sitting to the Right. He doesn’t really have anyone close to him with the sort of political aplomb and skill to guide him out of this – he does have John Kelly to at least manage the administrative part of this but he doesn’t have anyone in the way of a skilled messenger and strategist who can help Trump build the right kinds of coalitions. And even if he had that person close to him, he doesn’t listen. This could really be the beginning of the end.
What I heard on the hourly network news today is that Bannon had been asked to resign several weeks ago and refused, so he was eventually fired outright. I don’t recall that a source was given for this information, but this comical administration has more leaks than a spaghetti colander.
Pretty sure it’s a classic case of:
Bannon: “You van’t fire me! I quit!”
Trump: “You can’t quit! You’re fired!”
Bannon says he’s going to “war” for the White House according to Hufpo.
“For” or “with”?
Well know we’ll never get to see Rosie O’Donnell play him on SNL.
For, apparently.
I think the idea is that Breitbart will be the pro-Nazi mouthpiece that Donald feels has been unfairly missing from the discussion of his many achievements.
I’m not one for complicated plots, but turning Bannon or Breitbart loose to be an attack dog saying all the things DJT thinks but is slowly realizing the President can’t say and still survive might be an excellent maneuver.
To the degree the alt-right is politically hyperactive, the Trumpist/Authoritarian forces can keep the traditional Rs on the back foot. And keep the D’s slobbering incoherently and irrelevantly in the corner. Remember I’m still a progressive D while I say that.
So anything DJT can do to keep the pot simmering under his alt-right supporters is to his advantage. We all really need to begin to think of US politics in terms of three parties: D, R, & T/A. The old duopoly is dead (or at least unconscious) for the Presidency UFN and for many other federal and state offices in favorable states. The land rush to become the Authoritarian candidate for congressman in 2018 is starting already.
Nice.
Will it make any appreciable difference? Breitbart has been pretty close to pro-Nazi already, and they haven’t refrained from attacking Trump’s ‘enemies’ (The Media, Democrats, intelligent people, etc.).
Can’t see how this will change things, but maybe I’m missing something.
Complete agreement. It’s not like he’ll be doing anything but preaching to the choir. Maybe the serious media will report some of it, but so what? The Goon Squad have proven themselves racists already. Do they think they’ll manage to slide legislation through without anybody noticing, or that it’ll somehow make them any more palatable to swing voters?