• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • NEWS+OPINIONS
    • NEWS TO US
    • COLUMNS
      • APPARENT HORIZON
      • DEAR READER
      • Close
    • LONGFORM FEATURES
    • OPINIONS
    • EDITORIAL
    • Close
  • ARTS+ENTERTAINMENT
    • FILM
    • MUSIC
    • COMEDY
    • PERFORMING ARTS
    • VISUAL ARTS
    • Close
  • DINING+DRINKING
    • EATS
    • SIPS
    • Close
  • LIFESTYLE
    • CANNABIS
      • TALKING JOINTS MEMO
      • Close
    • WELLNESS
    • GTFO
    • Close
  • STUFF TO DO
  • TICKETS
  • ABOUT US
    • 5 DOUBLE-U’S
    • MASTHEAD
    • DISTRIBUTION
    • ADVERTISE
    • SUBMISSIONS
    • PRIVACY POLICY
    • Close
  • BECOME A MEMBER

Dig Bos

The Dig - Boston's Only Newspaper

CURRENT STREET EDITION

DIG 23.05 – 4/8/21

FIRE AND FIRE AND FURY

Written by BAYNARD WOODS Posted January 17, 2018 Filed Under: COLUMNS, Democracy in Crisis

 

 

I went to bed on Saturday night reading Fire and Fury, which, if I need to explain it at this point, is Michael Wolff’s ribald and riveting account of the early days of the Trump regime. It quickly became clear in the book that no one involved in Trump’s campaign expected, or wanted, him to win.

 

That was a horrible thought: Trump and his motley crew of enablers, the doltish adult children, sleazeballs like Paul Manafort and Corey Lewandowski, fascists like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, they all overestimated the American people.

 

They thought we were better than we were.

 

They thought they were safe because we would never elect Donald Trump.

 

I went to sleep with this somber thought. At some point in the night, I woke up smelling smoke. I got up and looked around and sniffed and couldn’t find anything. It was like 10 degrees in Baltimore that night, so I assumed it was a neighbor’s fireplace.

 

At about 9 am, my wife woke me. “The dog is acting weird,” she said.

 

The dog was shaking, pawing at us.

 

“Smoke!” my wife yelled.

 

I looked over, and smoke was coming up through the floorboards. Then it burst into flame. By the foot of the bed.

 

Fire and fury ensued. This is the essence of this year.

 

Ultimately, the fire in my bedroom wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. The fire department—Big Government!—was there before the fire destroyed much. They cut through the floor and broke the windows. Most of the damage was caused by the smoke. We were safe, and we didn’t lose anything of real value. We have renters insurance, and I’m writing this from a hotel, where I spent a lot of time waiting on the bureaucracy of insurance and disaster mitigation to move. I bought the audiobook of Fire and Fury and listened to the rest of it as I threw out former possessions that were now nothing but junk.

 

However difficult my week, it turned out to be much better than that enjoyed by many of the people in the figurative conflagration of the book—especially Steve Bannon.

 

Bannon is the almost Ahab-esque antihero of Fire and Fury, which in many ways charts his rise and fall—at least up until the point that the book’s publication precipitated a further fall. For being such a horrendous pseudo-intellectual schlub, Bannon is also fascinating, a far-right Svengali. According to Harvard studies, during the last election, Breitbart was three times as influential as its next closest competitor (measured in terms of retweets and shares), the titanic Fox News. Bannon was at least partly responsible for that—and for getting Trump elected.

 

That perception, that Bannon orchestrated Trump’s victory—as shown in another book, Joshua Green’s Devil’s Bargain—was probably the No. 1 factor in his August White House ouster, even more important than the alt-right terror that ripped apart Charlottesville that month.

 

In Fire and Fury, though, Bannon is right about how horrible the Trump kids and Jared Kushner are. It was actually beautiful to listen to him (or Holter Graham, who read the audiobook) railing against the idiocy of Jarvanaka—Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

 

And Jarvanka were also right about him, his whack-job far-right Leninism, reveling in the destruction of the world. That circular firing squad is what makes the book so compelling. All of these people are so disastrously wrong about America, but they are pretty right when they assess each other’s weaknesses. Bannon’s weaknesses are nearly infinite—and the most important ones are intellectual. Sure, he’s a slob and all that, but he is a sexist, racist “nationalist” who created a section of the Breitbart site called “Black Crime.”

 

After Wolff quoted Bannon saying that Don Jr.’s Russia meeting was treasonous, the president went on the attack with a new epithet, “Sloppy Steve.” Bannon tried to apologize, saying he was really attacking his predecessor as Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort. But it wasn’t enough. Bannon was fired first from Breitbart and then from his Sirius XM show (with Fox preemptively refusing to hire him). Worst of all, billionaires Robert and Rebekah Mercer, who have supported most of his endeavors and funded his nationalist endeavors, cut ties with their schlubby honey badger.

 

I watched all of this play out on cable as I tried to deal with the disaster bureaucracy. And it was delightful to see the pundits all talking about Bannon’s terrible week, even if it came for all the wrong reasons.

 

Bannon, by the way, did not have the worst week in Washington. That would go to the more than 12,000 Salvadorans who live in the district (the numbers are far larger if you count the DC suburbs, which have large Salvadoran enclaves). Ultimately, a Department of Homeland Security directive to end the Temporary Protective Status for people who came to the US from El Salvador following a 2001 earthquake will affect more than 200,000 people who have been in the US for more than 15 years now. It’s almost impossible to imagine how deeply that will affect their communities in and around the district.

 

Bannon may be gone, but this is the essence of the dark alignment of Bannon’s alt-right with Jeff Sessions’ revanchist racism and Trump’s big boner for a wall. So on Thursday, when Trump was meeting with a group of senators about TPS and asked why we have so many people coming here from “shithole countries,” like El Salvador, Haiti (which already had its TPS rescinded), and various nations in Africa, it was clear that it didn’t matter whether or not Bannon was in the White House or “in the wilderness” or not.

 

Trump, Bannon, and their crew may have overestimated the electorate in their expectation of losing. We should not make the same mistake and overestimate them. Whatever happens to Steve Bannon, racists now rule the executive branch.

BAYNARD WOODS
More from author
  • BAYNARD WOODS
    https://digboston.com/author/baynard-woods/
    MUCH LOVE AND GRIM SOLIDARITY: BAYNARD WOODS TAKES STOCK IN THE LAST DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS COLUMN
  • BAYNARD WOODS
    https://digboston.com/author/baynard-woods/
    TRUMP’S ABSURD THEATER OF CRUELTY
  • BAYNARD WOODS
    https://digboston.com/author/baynard-woods/
    TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN AND THE POLITICS OF THE PSYCHEDELIC RENAISSANCE
  • BAYNARD WOODS
    https://digboston.com/author/baynard-woods/
    DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS: 500 DAYS IN HELL

Filed Under: COLUMNS, Democracy in Crisis Tagged With: Baynard Woods, Democracy in Crisis, Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff, social media, Trump, Twitter

WHAT’S NEW

IF YOU’RE SURPRISED THE BPD CODDLED AN ACCUSED MOLESTER COP, YOU’RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION

IF YOU’RE SURPRISED THE BPD CODDLED AN ACCUSED MOLESTER COP, YOU’RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION

PICS & RECAP: COMMUNITY CANDLE VIGIL HONORING VICTIMS OF ANTI-ASIAN VIOLENCE

PICS & RECAP: COMMUNITY CANDLE VIGIL HONORING VICTIMS OF ANTI-ASIAN VIOLENCE

CAMBRIDGE CHURCH MINISTER SPEAKS ABOUT RECENT VANDALISM OF SIGN

CAMBRIDGE CHURCH MINISTER SPEAKS ABOUT RECENT VANDALISM OF SIGN

PRESSLEY MEETS WITH LOCAL 26 WORKERS

PRESSLEY MEETS WITH LOCAL 26 WORKERS

THE HOUR THAT THE SHIP COMES IN

THE HOUR THAT THE SHIP COMES IN

JANEY OFFICIALLY DECLARES THAT SHE WILL RUN FOR FULL TERM

JANEY OFFICIALLY DECLARES THAT SHE WILL RUN FOR FULL TERM

Primary Sidebar

HEMPIRE FREEDOM PACK 25% OFF

FEATURED EVENT

Most Popular

  • VACCINE EQUITY NOW! COALITION ASKS BAKER TO ALLOCATE 20% OF NEW DOSES TO HARD HIT COMMUNITIES by SHIRA LAUCHAROEN
  • A NEW PLACE FOR MORE PEOPLE TO CALL HOME IN TOUGH TIMES by MARK EMMONS
  • rally to protest discrimination and crimes against Asian and Pacific islanders during Stop Asian Hate rally on Boston Common in Boston PICS & RECAP: “STOP ASIAN HATE BOSTON” RALLY ON THE COMMON by KEIKO HIROMI
  • IF YOU’RE SURPRISED THE BPD CODDLED AN ACCUSED MOLESTER COP, YOU’RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION by CHRIS FARAONE
  • A FAREWELL TRIBUTE (OF SORTS) TO MARTY WALSH by DIG STAFF

READ CURRENT MEMBER EDITION

DIG Member 2.1 – March 2021

READ CURRENT STREET ISSUE

DIG 23.05 – 4/8/21

Footer

digbos

digbos
“We’re not going to survive for 20 more years “We’re not going to survive for 20 more years if we don’t do this [move to a bigger space].” https://digboston.com/how-juliet-hit-a-100k-kickstarter-goal-in-4-days/ #restaurant #business #food #crowdfund #SomervilleMA #coronavirus #COVID19
EDITORIAL: DIGBOSTON SEEKS CLIMATE IDEAS FOR MAYOR EDITORIAL: DIGBOSTON SEEKS CLIMATE IDEAS FOR MAYOR KIM JANEY. Environmental organizations and individual activists invited to submit opinion articles for publication. https://digboston.com/editorial-digboston-seeks-climate-ideas-for-mayor-kim-janey/ #politics @boston_mayor #environment #globalwarming #climate #activist #callforsubmissions #policy #Boston #Massachusetts
“Most are some of my favorite bars or local clas “Most are some of my favorite bars or local classics that I’ve learned to love in my time living in the city. Others just have a great facade that I know would make a great drawing.” https://digboston.com/drawn-but-not-forgotten-local-artist-sketches-beloved-boston-restaurants/ #art #artist #sketch #drawing #Boston #Massachusetts #bar #restaurant
Despite #pandemic hurdles, Mass #music instructors Despite #pandemic hurdles, Mass #music instructors hit new high notes. “My #teaching has gone to another level.” https://digboston.com/the-medium-is-the-maestro/ #education #Massachusetts #coronavirus #COVID19
From the podcast to the book, Wayne Federman chron From the podcast to the book, Wayne Federman chronicles the business of joke-telling. https://digboston.com/the-history-of-stand-up-from-mark-twain-to-dave-chappelle/ #comedy #history #book #interview #Boston #Massachusetts
“I’m calling on some of you to drop by a local “I’m calling on some of you to drop by a local field office and hear what people have to say.” https://digboston.com/dear-reader-the-political-season-is-upon-us-embrace-it/ #politics #commentary #election #Massachusetts
“I think most people agree that we want our publ “I think most people agree that we want our public dollars to go to those companies that are not cutting corners.” https://digboston.com/bill-seeks-to-penalize-contractors-for-unsafe-conditions/ #politics #legislation #construction #safety #labor #Massachusetts
“It’s just shocking to me for Massachusetts, t “It’s just shocking to me for Massachusetts, the state that puts itself forward as this paragon of democracy. Those are just fundamental building blocks of a democratic society.” https://digboston.com/researchers-show-extent-of-lobbying-against-climate-bills-in-ma/ #environment #globalwarming #climate #crisis #politics #lobby #Massachusetts
I was lucky enough to get an extra #vaccine. Here’s how it went down. https://digboston.com/young-healthy-and-inoculated/ #young #youth #student #college #vaccination #publichealth #health #Boston #Massachusetts #coronavirus #COVID19
The MBTA confirmed that it will “fully fund its The MBTA confirmed that it will “fully fund its operating budget in the coming fiscal year and begin to restore cut service.” https://digboston.com/public-transit-public-good-responds-to-restoring-mbta-service/ #transportation #politics #Massachusetts
Load More... Follow on Instagram
Social Buttons

DigBoston facebook DigBoston Twitter DigBoston Instagram

Masthead

About

Submissions

Advertise

Privacy Policy

Customer Service

Distribution

About Us

DigBoston is a one-stop nexus for everything worth doing or knowing in the Boston area. It's an alt-weekly, it's a website, it's an e-mail blast, it's a twitter account, it's that cool party that you were at last night ... hey, you're reading it, so it's gotta be good. For advertising inquiries: [email protected] To reach Editorial: [email protected] For internship opportunities: [email protected]