Good riddance to Steve Bannon. The last thing America needed was a conservative/populist/statist alternative to the Welfare State/Warfare State/Bailout State status quo. Yet what Bannonism boiled down to was essentially acquiescence to the latter—even as it drove politicization deeper into the sphere of culture, communications and commerce. Stated differently, the heavy hand of the Imperial City in traditional domestic, foreign and financial matters was already bad enough: Bannonism just gave a thin veneer of ersatz nationalism to what was otherwise the Donald’s own dogs’ breakfast of protectionism, nativism, xenophobia, jingoism and strong-man bombast. By the latter, of course, we mean Trump’s essentially content free notion that America was falling from greatness mainly due to stupidity, … Continue reading Steve Bannon’s Done