LIke A Business: A Short Story

So, the other day, for no real good reason, I thought about writing a bit of science fiction about our current administration and where it would like to take us. I won’t actually write it, of course. It is beyond, I fear, my limited abilities as a writer. But, it is interesting to amuse myself with, if nothing else.

Anyway, the story revolves around the fact that one of the underlying themes of the Trump administration is that government needs to be run “like a business”—i.e., with efficiency and dispatch, avoiding waste, and making a real profit.

Of course, this idea is not restricted to Trump himself or even just his close associates (those that are left, that is, after his periodic purges), but also the whole crew of individuals who are behind him --  for example, the “dark money network” of wealthy men and women (the Koch Brothers, for example), Fox News and its Supporters, the self-described anarcho-capitalists and their ilk...the whole, in short, cadre of Right Revolutionaries who clutch their copies of Atlas Shrugged and James Buchanan, and dream of a world where liberals and socialists are kept in cages, and billionaires are properly recognized as the only true children of God.

So, for the moment, let’s say they succeed in their goals. What sort of government would they construct? Well, I think you would have the Constitution revised, or wholly replaced, so that the President is more like a corporate CEO, his/her powers no longer so very limited by what Trump has famously called the “archaic” nature of our system. Then, Congress would be supplanted by something like a board of directors whose purpose would not be to legislate but rather to make certain the CEO remained efficient and effective, and that share-holder value was increased on a daily basis.

And the Supreme Court? Well, it is hard for me to see what role that institution would have in this new, improved, business-oriented world. It would get in the way, you see, of effective action. But, maybe, it could be replaced by a sort of central accounting office, a new body whose purpose would be to limit unnecessary expenditure.

The independent press, meanwhile, would cease to exist—replaced by some sort of Department of Public Relations. Social services would be drastically cut or eliminated entirely. The police and the military would still exist and, indeed, be enlarged...though, their purpose would subtly change. The former would no longer be quite so concerned with defending the public and would be rather more interested in keeping that public in line. The latter would be less focused on national defense, and more on expanding the overseas power of financial interests...corporations, banks, and so on.

And even they, the police and the military, would find their autonomy gradually eroded, and their functions slowly privatized. The Navy Seal would be replaced by the Black Water mercenary.

Okay, so that’s the setting. Where do we go from there? Where does the story go?

Well, in it, there is a new dawn in America...an age when James Buchanan’s “economic liberty” trumps (no pun intended) all other kinds of freedom. All the organs of government (those few that still exist) adopt a sound business model.

And, for a time, it works. One national CEO is gracefully replaced by another, and then a third. There is an economic boom (at least for some people) as regulation is itself regulated to the scrap heap of history.

But, then, gradually...very, very gradually...strains and stresses appear. For, of course, governments are not businesses. The art of governing is not identical to that of business management. The possession of an MBA does not make you an expert in everything.

Privatized schools and universities... where “education is a business like any other”... fail to genuinely educate their charges. The “shareholders” and “customers” ...the wealthy and the powerful...seek more profitable investments elsewhere (in nations that still have a tax-supported infrastructure). The “employees”...everyone else...grow ever more restive and dissatisfied.

And finally, there is a disaster. There is some sort of crisis—an outbreak of plague which the disbanded CDC can no longer oppose, an excess of corruption on Wall Street which the SEC was not there to forestall, a war...with a nation which still believes in nationalism and the loyalty (or otherwise) of whose military is not up for sale.

And the whole Grand Prix down Fifth Avenue comes roughly to a halt.

How does my little story end? I think it concludes with the national CEO, and the Board of Directors, and the other members of our Power Elite, confronting this debacle...and suddenly realizing that (by God!) there is, in particular, one way in which government is most assuredly not like a business.

To wit, in business, failure...even catastrophic failure...is an option. You declare bankruptcy, the stockholders eat the cost, and the chief officers retire to Caribbean islands with their “performance bonuses.”

However, in government, when there is an invading army at your gates, or an insurrection at your door... consequences are swift, and fierce, and very often, fatal.

But...still...

As I say, this is only my fiction. And I have already revealed that I am not a talented writer. I lack the skill to write the piece. So we will simply leave it there.

Though, maybe, perhaps...some other, more potent author than I will adopt this tale, and tell it.

With details that are most concrete. And vital. And critics will applaud its refreshing, if distressing, brutality.

Almost as good as American Psycho, or even Blood Meridian.


~mjt

The Secret Life of Stephen Bannon

The other day, I saw yet another article about the books you need to read to understand Stephen Bannon, the current White House’s ideologist-in-chief and resident Jabba The Hut impressionist. Specifically, the piece was an excerpt from an upcoming book by Joshua Green, and ran under the title “Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steven Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia.” I saw it in the online version of Vanity Fair.

In the excerpt, the author, Joshua Green, makes the compelling argument that Bannon may be considered a radical traditionalist, and that his thinking can be traced back through authoritarian political Catholicism, through the Italian national-racialist, Julius Evola (1898–1974), and finally to “René Guénon, an early-20th-​­century French occultist and metaphysician who was raised a Roman Catholic, practiced Freemasonry, and later became a Sufi Muslim who observed the Shari.”

I’d heard of Evola, but Guénon (1886–1951) was completely new to me. According to Green, Guénon, like Evola, believed the West has been sickened by materialism and modernism. Thus, we need to return to a purer, more simple age, when spirituality was a living thing among us.

I rather enjoyed Mr. Green’s writing. It was informative and interesting. But, it struck me that the excerpt is actually part of a larger genre—that is, texts which try to figure out Bannon by looking at his reading. I’ve seen a good many such pieces in the last few months. In February, Neil Howe wrote in the Washington Post, “Where did Steve Bannon get his worldview? From my book.” Howe says that Bannon is “enthralled” by The Fourth Turning, the book Howe wrote along with the late William Stauss proposing that American history runs in roughly 80-year cycles spanning prosperity and crisis, with us very much due for a crisis in the near future.

Meanwhile, last March in the Huffington Post, Paul Blumenthal  and J.M. Rieger, say that you can’t make sense of Bannon without reading The Camp Of The Saints by Jean Raspail. This, they say, is key to understanding Bannon’s conception of race. It is a dystopian tale in which Europe (and white people) are overwhelmed by hordes of economic migrants from the Third World.

And, I could go on, naming article after article. I’m sure, too, that such works are useful things, and that they really do help us understand what is happening in Washington, and the world, at this particular moment. After all, if we are to understand and oppose our adversaries, it is necessary to get into their heads...know what they are thinking, what ideas they hold dear, and what ideologies. Given that Bannon seems to be the closest thing to an official ideologist that the Trump cabal has, it is therefore important to understand him and his intellectual underpinnings.

Still...

Sometimes I wonder if all of that is quite as useful as we think. People on the Left tend to be....not exactly bookish, but at least reflective and self-aware. We tend to take ideas seriously. So, we assume that other people do so as well.

However, in the case of Bannon...or, rather, in the case of Trump’s inner circle...

Consider the Great White Shark. From one perspective, it could be considered the supremely philosophical beast. It is perfectly attuned to its world, it knows neither guilt nor shame, it suffers not from self-doubt, it never feels ennui, is never neurotic or maladjusted...always lives life to the fullest, always seizes the day.

Yet, were it somehow possible to enter its brain, I doubt you would find there thoughts of Nietzsche or Adorno...or even of Evola and Guénon...but something rather less. Say, something more like elemental passions—hunger, fear, rage, the siren scent of blood in the water.

I draw no parallels. However, should you wish to do so, you would have my truest encouragement and fullest consent.


Addendum

In the piece above, I (entirely unoriginally) use the metaphor of the shark. It’s amazing how much things have changed with that particular animal. When I was young, it was regarded as the quintessential apex predator, to be feared and hated and perhaps destroyed. Now, forty-something years on, the shark is very much under siege. Overfishing and shark fin soup have begun to seriously endanger its populations and men and women of good will are now working to protect them.
But, of course, “good will” is not a term I would use for the Trump administration. Which worries me.
I wonder, do they...those genuine apex predators, those suits and ties at the top...have any idea what they’re doing? And how grim and sad and empty a world it would be, should we not learn to practice restraint?

---

Sources:

“Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steve Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia,” an excerpt from Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green . Vanity Fair. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/the-strange-origins-of-steve-bannons-nationalist-fantasia

“Where did Steve Bannon get his worldview? From my book,” Neil Howe, The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/where-did-steve-bannon-get-his-worldview-from-my-book/2017/02/24/16937f38-f84a-11e6-9845-576c69081518_story.html?utm_term=.f1c725a4baf5

“This Stunningly Racist French Novel Is How Steve Bannon Explains The World,” by Paul Blumenthal and JM Rieger. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-camp-of-the-saints-immigration_us_58b75206e4b0284854b3dc03


#

An Alternative History of Sean Spicer

So, like everyone else in the populated universe, I’ve watched with considerable fascination the departure of Sean Spicer from his sublimely agonizing role as White House spokesperson these past few days. I gather, from what I read on the web, that he left as he came in—with a final snarl at the press he was supposed to be wooing.

It is hard to have sympathy for him, of course. He knew the job was going to be horrible when he took it. And he clearly lacked some of the fundamental skills required to be a PR person. Likability, being one of them. Yet, in spite of that, I (like, I’d guess, a lot of people) still found something sad in his departure, and even felt a little sorry for him. His task was, after all, impossible—to make the rantings of our current commander in chief something like a coherent statement.

So it is that I like to envision a different future for him. Yes, I know it will not happen. I know it is impossible. Yet...what a wonderful thing it would be for him, and for us, if rather then slink off in a sulk to seek that final and total obscurity which is the normal lot for such men, he had instead left the White House, hailed a cab, and gone directly to the offices of the Washington Post. And that, once there, he’d sung like a canary. Or, rather, not a canary, but like the entire, combined cast of Wagner’s Ring cycle, from Wotan to Fafner to Brünnhilde and back again, complete with thunder, hail, and gargling Gibichungs...

And, after that...he’d caught a shuttle north and shown up, unannounced, at the offices of SNL, with a bouquet of roses for Melissa McCarthy, and, for the writers and producers, an offer of one free episode, with himself as a reporter, and her, as himself, in that former, sadder, and more torturous role.


*

BTW, I read today that in his first post-resignation interview, Mr. Spicer said he rather enjoyed Ms. McCarthy’s impression of him, though sometimes she went “too far.”

So, who is to say? Maybe the above scenario is not completely impossible. Merely almost so.

And, for him at least, therefore all the more sad. For you see, revenge may or may not be living well. But it can certainly be found in a guest shot, and making your choicest enemies appear the most exquisite of all possible idiots.