Poisoning Steve Bannon
Nothing, not even innocence, is liable to save you, if the state wants to destroy you.
Alexei Navalny, arguably the one and only genuine political threat to Vladimir Putin to emerge in Russia for a decade or longer, was poisoned a few days back (for a second time in all likelihood). This is the man who once called Putin’s political party a party of “crooks and thieves”. He wasn’t wrong of course. This is not the only time or the only way the powers that be in Russia have tried to destroy the guy either. The morning after Navalny was poisoned, Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former top advisor, was charged with fraud in federal court for allegedly paying himself and some of his employees/partners for work performed on behalf of a nonprofit organization dedicated to building the border wall. These are unconnected events to be sure, but they are not so completely unconnected as they might seem at first blush.
The media repeatedly tells us that the many charges and convictions of Trump associates are a sign of how corrupt Trump and his administration are. Ironically, the charges and convictions prove the exact opposite. The state is still firmly in the hands of the Cultural Marxists, and has been for six to seven decades now. Trump is not remotely as corrupt or conniving as the Deep State or the Democrat Party. It is not even a contest really. Trump’s people are paying a heavy price for what is, by and large, minor wrongdoing. Those with real power in America (Clinton, Lynch, Brennan, everyone involved in the Carter Page FISA Affair) pretty much never pay any price, even when their wrongdoing is anything but minor. In sum, the fake scandals, trumped up charges, and coerced pleas, prove not Trump’s moral bankruptcy (though Trump is no paragon of piety to be sure), but the depravity of his foes. In Weimerica, who pays reveals only who lacks power, not who lacks probity.
Every public official in Russia works for Putin and his United Russia, and America is no different. Every government official in America does the bidding of the Cultural Marxist power structure to one degree or another. So it is particularly ironic that the day after Alexei Navalny was poisoned in Russia, Steve Bannon was indicted for fraud here in America, the very same charge the authorities in Russia used to try and sink Navalny the first time they tried to sink him. As with Putin and his cronies, the political left in America does not tolerate any real opposition to their rule.
The allegation against Bannon and his associates is basically thus: you said you weren’t going to pay yourselves when you took money from donors, and you paid yourselves. Voila, you’re fraudsters for paying yourselves for the work you did. Ours is a nation with an uncountable multitude of laws, which are, with great regularity, deliberately written and mendaciously interpreted in the broadest ways imaginable, for the sake of facilitating prosecutions, that not running, or not arguably running, afoul of some of them at some point in one’s life has become a virtual impossibility. Crime, in other words, has become less about the morally depraved choices of criminals, and more about the morally depraved, or at least dubious, occasionally arbitrary, sometimes personal, often politically and ideologically driven, choices of police and prosecutors.
As such, one could easily argue that it is the law itself which has become morally depraved, a weapon wielded by bona fide sociopaths, little more. We are all innocent until our political adversaries decide beyond a reasonable doubt that we are guilty of being on the wrong side of history. That is not even a partial exaggeration. Michael Flynn is a decent, honorable, honest man. The man is a soldier. He is about as ethical a guy as you will find anywhere near politics. If he can be railroaded by law enforcement (charged and convicted of hyped up crimes he didn’t really commit), anyone can be.
The stuff Bannon has been charged with is trivial stuff that half the heads of non-profits in America could probably be charged with at any given time. The stuff Flynn was charged with is stuff that virtually any suspect could be charged with, namely slightly modifying a story or omitting some information during an FBI interview. Police put suspects on the spot, and human memory is terribly wanting. No one remembers everything or gets everything exactly right under the stress of an interrogation. Flynn did not likely deliberately deceive anyone, although even if he had, lying to law enforcement shouldn’t be a crime regardless. And don’t even get me started on the inherent morality of lying, since no group of people on Earth lies more than cops.
Charging Bannon, like charging Flynn, is a fundamentally political act. Only on its face is prosecuting Bannon about enforcing laws. These prosecutions serve the interests of the left and the leftist power structure, not society at large. The authorities went looking for dirt on a major political opponent, and they found a bit, although not much. Do not kid yourself into believing that actual wrongdoing is why Bannon was investigated or charged. Don’t legitimize perfectly transparent corruption. It is not some coincidence that they went after Bannon, and anyone who believes otherwise is a damned fool.
Truth be told, Steve Bannon was guilty the moment he stood beside Trump and started whispering ingenious ideas into his ear. Bannon was always the brains behind Trump’s unexpectedly victorious first presidential run, and to be frank, Trump and his presidential operation have struggled ever since Bannon left. Bannon, like the NRA, an organization another Marxist apparatchik in New York is trying to destroy via, you guessed it, “fraud” charges, is guilty of a status crime. He is guilty of being of the wrong political persuasion. In a thoroughly Sovietized America, that is really all it takes.
Bannon is about as corrupt as Navalny, which is to say not truly corrupt at all. But in modern America, as in Russia, both presently and historically, innocent means, “innocent until your political adversaries, especially those political adversaries with real political power, decide to turn the law against you”. Yet people have the gall to wonder aloud why I say the “rule of law” is a complete joke! They must be having a laugh themselves. The law was of zero help to American colonists in 1776, the Romanovs in 1917, nor is it much of any help, as a general matter, to ordinary Americans today. It won’t be delivering America any more than it will be delivering the Chinese or the North Koreans from tyranny. Quite the contrary really. The law, more than anything else, is just a loaded weapon, nay an artillery line, pointed at the American people, to scare us, to control us, to enserf us.
In a society as low trust, as deeply political, and as woefully corrupt as ours, the law can no more be trusted than the people elected, hired, and/or appointed to enforce that law, who, if you don’t know already, can not be trusted at all. One dopey cop with a foolish thought in his head, one FBI agent with a political vendetta or working under someone with a political agenda, and voila, you’re Michael Flynn! And remember, if it can be done to him, it can be done to anyone. Anyone.
