Tag Archives: Steve Bannon

Returning to a Desecrated Shire

Returning home after 7 weeks abroad feels like Frodo returning home to a devastated Shire.

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Trump’s Lean and Hungry Plotters

There is a tide in the affairs of Trump supporters that, taken at the flood, will lead them to do anything to take power. “Julius Caesar” is warning us.

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Dryden on Charismatic Demagogues

In Dryden’s Absalom, we see a politician who has Donald Trump’s ability to sway a crowd.

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Is Bannon a Thomas Cromwell?

Steve Bannon may see himself as the protagonist of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, but there’s one lesson from Henry VIII’s advisor that he ignored.

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A Fascist Novel & Immigration Policy

Raspail’s “Camp of Saints” is currently influencing White House policy in ways similar to how “Atlas Shrugged” has guided Speaker Paul Ryan. The novel needs to be taken seriously.

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Bannon: Deconstructionist or Con Man?

When Steve Bannon said that he plans to “deconstruct” the administrative state, it sounds vaguely impressive but maybe just be a pretentious way of saying that he’s planning on gumming up the works. A discussion of deconstruction is in order.

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Hughes Dreams the Real American Dream

Langston Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again” is a powerful riposte to President Steven Bannon and Co.’s “Make America Great Again.” Poems like this one can play an important role in resistance against the Trump administration.

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Trump’s Crusoe Wall Goes Up in Airports

This past weekend so a flurry of illegal and unconstitutional executive orders that created chaos in airports and elsewhere as travelers from certain countries found themselves in detention. Defoe captures versions of such dramas in “Robinson Crusoe.”

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All Must Love the Human Form

In “The Divine Image,” Blake gives us a poem for our time, a call to pray for mercy, pity, peace, and love and to recognize the human form in diversity. In “The Human Abstract” he adds that prayer is not enough. It must be accompanied by human justice.

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