I often peruse social media in order to find something interesting to write about. Today I found the task rather daunting. But the tired old subject of Steve Bannon once again reared its ugly head. It was a quote of his where he compared himself to Lennon. In whiit, he said “I want to bring everything down. I want to destroy all of today’s establishments.”

Someone then compared him to a Bond villain pointing a death ray at the planet. I took a second to think about this reference but soon found the comparison wanting. In that void, I began to attempt to objectively understand what is driving this man and his seemingly insane agenda.

English immigrants, Manifest Destiny, Native Americans and founding fathers

Let us go back in history a bit to the time when English immigrants murdered their first Native American. They cited Manifest Destiny. In layman's terms, that means, “God said we could do it!” From this ilk came our founding fathers. These founding fathers were also very keen on destroying the theretofore accepted establishments

So intent were they on destroying these establishments that they took up arms in order to accomplish it. Naturally, we think they were right to do so. Maybe they were. Were they right to murder hundreds of thousands of Native Americans? Were they right to own human beings like cattle? Steve might agree.

Bannon: Deadhead hippie to conservative bigot

We can all agree that at least morally, Steve Bannon and these men of old might’ve got along richly. But that’s not where I’m going with this. It might still surprise some folks to know that Steve Bannon was once a Deadhead and a liberal hippie. He bucked the “establishment” much the same way all young hippies did in the 60’s.

Somewhere along the line Bannon and his ideology changed. We all do. Those that were hippies in the 60’s became yuppies in the 70’s and now, many of them are Republicans. Such is the nature of evolution.

Democrats were once conservative and owned slaves, and now are liberal and inclusive, while Republicans now seem to fill the role of conservative bigot.

Again, such is the nature of evolution. It’s the mechanism of revolution and/or rebellion that I would like to bring to the reader’s mind.

Evolution, revolution, and rebels, or tyrants, fascists, and dictators?

An observer of history and evolution might agree that revolution and rebellion are apparently an integral mechanism in the evolutionary process. Without such, we might cease to evolve. By being conservative we might become stagnant. Without bucking established norms we could also cease to evolve. So we rebel.

Usually, we rebel when we’re young and not too bright. Often we do so out of teenage angst and a need to make a mark on the world. And it seems that a certain few people throughout history never outgrow it.

In fact, they tend to galvanize the youngsters. Depending on which side in history they end up, they might be terrorists, insurgents, freedom fighters, patriots, or rebels. Unfortunately, sometimes out of this complicated relationship between rebels and their leader's, fascists, tyrants, dictators and genocidal maniacs arise.

Fascist Bannon will destroy all of today’s establishments if he can

And this is why I’m writing about Steve Bannon today. What seems to drive this man is a desire to lead rebels. He, as far as I can tell, is not a rebel. He’s too old for that. He wants you to do that. He is a glory hound, perhaps even a psychopath. He wants to be a “founding father”. Now, where this gets really scary is the substance of the Steve Bannon rhetoric.

He calls for violence, fear, and anger. He wants a revolution.

Steve calls himself, “alt-right,” but we all know that is just a smoke screen for White Nationalism. However, we don’t need hearsay. Steve Bannon has forever kept his bigotry on display. And we know he would be part of a Fascist movement if he could. His oratory is divisive and bigoted. I will leave you with the quote in question taken by a writer for The Daily Beast who had met him at a 2014 party. Keep in mind that Bannon claims not to recall the conversation.

“I’m a Leninist,” he said, “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too,” the site further quoted him as saying. “I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”