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Diana of Ephesus, rather more nourishing than what’s on offer in the Oval office.

I just listened to a discussion between New York Times’ columnist Ross Douthat and Steve Bannon, who Donald Trump recently pardoned from federal prison for his role in attempting to overthrow the government. 

I am not generally inclined to listen to traitors but as Bannon still has Donald Trump’s ear I thought it worth my while. I would probably have listened to Tulsi Gabbard’s favorite traitor too, Eddie Snowden, now a guest of Russia’s Vladimir Putin along with the national security secrets he stole.

Podcaster Douthat didn’t raise the subject of treason with the pardoned traitor and moved quickly to the question of why Bannon became a populist. Bannon said establishment Republicans sent American jobs overseas. I agree. 

Bannon said Americans had been screwed by the rich during the housing crisis. I agree. 

Bannon acknowledged that establishment Republicans gave billionaires a trillion in tax breaks in the first Trump term while the average Trump supporters got nothing. 

I had a quibble with Bannon here. What can Bannon’s “little people” expect from Donald Trump as he renews tax cuts for the super-rich? 

What’s more I remember Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, a Wall Street leech, who swallowed up the mortgages of 36 thousand little people during Bannon’s baneful housing crisis, thus making tens of millions on the little people’s lost homes. 

Bannon particularly derided tech billionaires calling them, “broligarchs.” Brannon was quick to blame Biden for currying favor with the techies by allowing them to keep their monopolies. 

Now, after the election, the Techsters have been quick to pour millions into Trump’s various Swiss accounts. Brannon described their sudden obeisance to Trump as a “damascene” moment. Damascene refers to the light God blinded the avenging Saul with as he entered Damascus intent on martyring Christians. God’s light turned Saul into the Apostle Paul. Bannon was unimpressed with the Bezos and Zukerberg conversions.

Bannon was cagier about Elon Musk. Bannon acknowledged Elon spent a quarter billion dollars and effectively elected Trump. That made Musk different from the Damascene converts who were late to their Mar-a-Lago pilgrimages.

Bannon views techies as the enemies of populism because they demand cheap foreign serfs and deny Americans decent salaries. 

If Bannon, the nationalist, thinks the grape and lettuce pickers of his youth weren’t serfs 50 years ago his memory is very selective. 

Bannon describes the California tech mafia pushing Artificial Intelligence as 11-year-old boys dreaming of living forever by implanting chips in their brains and altering their DNA. As a cryogenics skeptic I wish them well but I doubt they will outlive Steve Jobs by much more than a couple decades. I’ll be more than satisfied if I make it to 100. 

This odd digression was all part of a discussion about humanism which Bannon considers to be very important as brain chips, pig valves and titanium hips render human’s machine-like. 

I can’t help but wonder how Trump’s rounding up 14 million illegal immigrants can be considered humanism. These humans risked the deserts of Arizona, the swamps of Panama and leaky boats to reach America so that they could change the diapers of aged people like my mother in understaffed memory care facilities. 

Bannon’s brand of humanism sets the Gestapo of Vichy, France, as a model for ICE. 

Bannon describes the Trump he knows as kind and generous, a man’s man full of testosterone to be sure, but nonetheless good. Beyond this Bannon told the podcaster Trump is “rational.” 

Maybe he is. Facing considerable legal jeopardy as he sulked in Mar-a-Lago Trump correctly calculated that being a candidate for President would thwart a half-dozen criminal prosecutions before the election and even better, should he again find himself in the Oval Office, give him a get-out-of-jail card until he was 82-years-old. 

Convicted rapists and fraudsters can indeed be very rational. But kind and generous?  No, that describes Lincoln and Washington, two great presidents, however, Bannon told the podcast that Trump had risen to their level. 

I have a more cynical take. I see congressional Republicans and billionaires by the score availing themselves of Trump below the belt much as the Romans of Ephesus envisioned the Goddess Diana’s bounty. 

Bannon’s flattering of a nonexistent Trump simply demonstrates that Steve has taken his place in line behind the congressmen and tech billionaires. At least for pilgrims suckling Diana there was nourishment. For those in line at the Oval Office there is only debasement.

Harry dreams of being Trump’s worst nightmare but he faces stiff competition from the president himself. Share his blog: lincolndemocrat.com.