My favorite superhero growing up was the Hulk. He’s green; I’m black: It’s close enough. Guy’s my hero. Did you ever see his TV show? Same dilemma every week: "Don’t make me angry! You wouldn’t like me if I was angry!" You remember what happened after that? They would beat his a** like an animal. Then he’d get mad and turn into a monster and beat them up — and keep on walking like nothing happened. What kind of role model is gonna fight that much? After five episodes, I was like, "Hey man. Maybe it’s you."
—Dave Chapelle’s 1990s-era routine on “The Incredible Hulk”
I was an Incredible Hulk fan, too. One of my earliest childhood memories was being punished in preschool for biting a classmate. (Look, the teacher told us to pretend we were animals. She made me an alligator. What was I supposed to do?) She threw me in the corner and made me sit in the “bad boy chair” for the rest of the day. Even over 40 years later, I still vividly remember sitting in that chair, wishing I could transform into the Incredible Hulk, so I could beat up that evil, lousy, no-good teacher. (And then bite that kid again: I was a GREAT alligator!)
And this brings us to Steve Bannon.
He’s a genius. One of the top thought-leaders in MAGA. Back in 2016, he probably received too much credit for Trump’s victory, but since then, his role in popularizing MAGA, rallying the base, and keeping the troops engaged has been underappreciated. As a tactician and a strategic thinker, he’s one of the keenest minds in the modern conservative movement.
But he also fights with everyone.
He’s declared war on Elon Musk, telling an Italian journalist, “[Musk] is a truly evil person. His sole objective is to become a trillionaire. He will do anything related to make sure that his companies are protected. …Quite frankly, the people around Trump are tired of it. We’ve seen peak Elon, his intrusive nature, his lack of understanding of the true issues. Before, because of all the money he put in, I was prepared to tolerate it: not any longer.” [emphasis added]
Bannon described “Muskism” as “techno-feudalism on a global scale.” In Bannon’s estimation, “It’s going to be the populist-nationalist movement that’ll take [Muskism] on and break them.”
But that’s not all he’s trying to break: He’s also launched preemptive shots at retired U.S. general Keith Kellogg, Trump’s choice as special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, warning, “If we aren’t careful, it will turn into Trump’s Vietnam. That’s what happened to Richard Nixon.”
As Politico noted:
The host of the influential “War Room” podcast is girding for a major political showdown over United States intervention in Ukraine. He advocates ending America’s all-important military aid to Kyiv, but fears his old boss is going to fall into a trap being set by an unlikely alliance of the U.S. defense industry, the Europeans and even some of Bannon’s own friends, whom he argues are now misguided. These include Keith Kellogg, a retired U.S. general who is Trump’s pick to be special envoy to Ukraine and Russia.
The Politico interview was released at 4 a.m. on January 20 — before Trump had even been sworn in. Bannon had already made up his mind: Trump’s policy will be a failure.
And he might be right.
But if your end goal is growing a political movement, circular firing squads are lousy vehicles for long-term growth. Within any organization, a destroyer can destroy faster than a builder can build.
For whatever reason, Bannon seems far more interested in policing and enforcing ideological purity than welcoming new MAGA members into the fold. In his words:
“We love converts. But the converts sit in the back and study for years and years and years to make sure you understand the faith and you understand the nuances of the faith and understand how you can internalize the faith,” Bannon said. “[Don’t] come and go to the pulpit in your first week here and start lecturing people about the way things are going to be. If you’re going to do that, we’re going to rip your face off.” [emphasis added]
A skeptic would argue that it’s simply not realistic for “converts” to “sit in the back” for years and years and years. They joined MAGA for a reason; no self-respecting American would stay silent in a movement — forfeiting their right to offer ideas — lest their face is ripped off.
It’s a lousy growth strategy.
Within every political movement, there’s room for multiple roles. Trump World is no exception: MAGA needs someone to police its ranks, but it also needs someone to rally the troops, mobilize the voters, and popularize its core tenets. These roles are distinct and different.
And Bannon was so good at the latter.
Seven years ago, in Trump’s first term, Bannon was booted from the White House for blasting Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner (“The railhead of all bad decisions is the same railhead: Javanka.”). He also dubbed Ivanka “the queen of leaks,” and freely cooperated with anti-Trump journalists. Eventually, the president had enough:
The Mercer Family recently dumped the leaker known as Sloppy Steve Bannon. Smart!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018
Here we are, seven years later, and history is repeating itself. Bannon is attacking MAGA insiders, using vitriolic invectives to score political points. It’s the same as before; only the names have changed.
Steve Bannon seems to have much in common with another outside-the-box political thinker: Ayn Rand.
Like Bannon, Rand was a genius. It’s impossible to read “Atlas Shrugged” or “The Fountainhead” and not be dazzled by the magnitude of her intellect. Along with Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Ronald Reagan, she did as much to popularize conservative tenets — limited government, personal freedom, the virtues of capitalism — as anyone else.
But she was also utterly impossible to get along with. Nobody was sufficiently ideologically pure. She even led the charge against Reagan:
The Presidential election of 1976. I urge you, as emphatically as I can, not to support the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. I urge you not to work for or advocate his nomination, and not to vote for him. My reasons are as follows: Mr. Reagan is not a champion of capitalism, but a conservative in the worst sense of that word — i.e., an advocate of a mixed economy with government controls slanted in favor of business rather than labor (which, philosophically, is as untenable a position as one could choose — see Fred Kinnan in Atlas Shrugged, pp. 541-2). This description applies in various degrees to most Republican politicians, but most of them preserve some respect for the rights of the individual. Mr. Reagan does not: he opposes the right to abortion.
And there’s nothing wrong with being ideologically rigid. There’s value to intellectual purity. But in the world of politics, inflexible people get very little done. Because in politics, nothing’s ever going to be pure enough. So instead of advancing the ball, purists attack their allies; instead of negotiating the best deal possible, purists flip the table, call the other person names, and threaten to “rip their faces off.”
Due to her inflexibility, Rand’s political impact — as great as it was — was nowhere near what it could’ve been. And if Bannon isn’t careful, he’ll share a similar fate. Such is the danger of trying to fight with everybody.
Just ask the Incredible Hulk.
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