Is there anyone out there in cyber-world who remembers how Dick Cheney used to drive the left completely looney tunes? And by “looney tunes” I do mean abjectly certifiably crazy. Commonly known as George W. Bush’s minister of propaganda, Cheney was vilified as a modern-day Cerberus.
If you remember your grammar school days, Cerberus was a Greek mythological character who was the epitome of a badass. A “three-headed dog who guards Hades – both keeping the living out and the dead in…with the claws of a lion, mane made out of snakes, and a serpent’s tail.”
That about says what the left and the media (though those two are synonymous) thought of Cheney. Cerberus: The Cheney if you like.
Today the left has anointed another new, improved Cerberus. And his name is Steve Bannon.
If you think this is an overstatement, here’s a brief sample from John Warner of Inside Higher Ed who believes Mr. Bannon is causing chaos in the new administration — pulling President Trump around like a marionette in both his foreign and domestic agenda:
It makes sense then to consider Bannon’s ideology. As most know, prior to joining the Trump team, Bannon set the ideological tone for Breitbart.com, a website overtly welcoming to white supremacists. He also reportedly told conservative eminence Ronald Radosh that he viewed himself as an “American Nationalist” operating in the style of Lenin. According to Radosh, Bannon told him, “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
This is what happens when a single morally unmoored man comes into proximity with great power, and those with the power to resist him do nothing.
Don’t you love the way Breitbart is summarily labeled “a website overtly welcoming to white supremacists.”? Nasty, foul names seem to be all progressives have left.
Recently, three non-partisan [sic] writers over at Politico wrote a hit piece on Mr. Bannon that included the following:
Bannon’s rise has worried Trump’s critics because he led Breitbart, which associates itself with the alt-right and groups supporting nationalism and other fringe beliefs. After he was hired in the White House, the Southern Poverty Law Center called him “the main driver behind Breitbart becoming a white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill.” Bannon and his friends have denied the attacks and say he is not racist or anti-Semitic.
Nice of them to put that last line in. First damn the person, then quote him denying their lies. The establishment media has become adept at repeating lies over and over until they become part of the American lexicon, and then, to sound impartial, print denials. Would any reasonable person say, “You’re absolutely right. I’m a white supremacist who started an ethno-nationalist propaganda mill. And by the way, Vladimir Lenin is my hero.”?
I think not.
Admittedly, Mr. Bannon is something of an enigma. Perhaps now we know why. He’s tired of getting smeared and slimed by the grimy, establishment media.
For those who are interested in the truth, Mr. Bannon was a U.S. Navy officer for seven years and then special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon. He went on to work at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker. Surely there are a lot of Lenin devotees on Wall Street, right? He then moved on to Hollywood where he produced a documentary about Ronald Reagan called In the Face of Evil and another one called Occupy Unmasked about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Not exactly Debbie Does Dallas.
Look, I’m not saying Mr. Bannon is a perfect angel. Who knows what lurks in the hearts of men? But to viciously label the Special Counsel to the President of the United States and then intimate Donald Trump is nothing more than a stooge is beyond rational.
But then again, what is rational – or even logical — about mythology? And this, naturally, brings us back to that badass Greek character known as Cerberus. Apparently, only “a few living people managed to sneak past Cerberus, with the help from magic music or drugged food.”
But it was only the big man himself – Hercules – who could slay the beast.
The looney left will have to hope against hope that Donald Trump is that Hercules. But of course, then they’d have to say something nice about him.
