Steve Bannon Treating America Like His Own Private Website!

As the world begins to realize that the Trump Administration is unlike anything before, the reason behind this fact may be one person, Steve Bannon.

Bannon, is the founder of right wing website, Breitbart News, and now the senior policy adviser to President Trump and pretty much the head of the National Security Council. He is well known to echo conspiracy theories, racist and xenophobic propaganda. As a promoter of fake news, he has had great success. We often hear Bannon's thoughts coming from President Trump's mouth.

So we must wonder not only how he came to be so powerful, but what his mindset is, as he seems to be the person with the most influence over Donald Trump's agenda.

As they say, it takes one to know one. As a website owner and webmaster, it surely seems to me as though he's treating America like his own private website.

Just imagine that Bannon regards America and Americans as just anonymous people on a website. As founder of Breitbart, he got to decide not only the political bias, but also how they would treat people who visit the site. They could ban anyone who disagreed with them. That would surely explain his inability to understand how that kind of treatment would affect people in the REAL world.

Some webmasters tend to develop a lack of empathy for individuals, since it's so easy to ban someone, rather than deal with them. This attitude, which begins with the need to stop spamming and trolling on a website, can extend to people with certain political views. Banning whole groups of people based upon specific criteria is within the power of any webmaster. If you are in charge of running a website, you can even ban whole countries from gaining access to your website, rather easily by IP#s. Now as policy advisor to President Trump, Bannon decided to ban even those with visas and green cards from certain countries.

Other webmaster powers that Steve Bannon may be eager to wield:
A webmaster can control (to a degree) the tone of discussion.
A combative webmaster who attacks members who disagree, sets the tone for other members and moderators.
A webmaster can stifle dissent by banning certain topics from discussion, and encouraging others.
A webmaster can remove individual posts, whole threads, topics, even forums.
A webmaster could therefore remove trolling and spam but also evidence of misdeeds.
A webmaster can spy on personal communications unless heavily encrypted.
A webmaster can decide which businesses will benefit from the website (usually thru advertising).

As a webmaster, I understand the responsibilities we have to our members. Members are almost like citizens in a virtual world. But they're not citizens. Most websites are privately owned if not corporate owned. They are not really public spaces, nor democracies. That is why people can be banned. That is why their free speech rights are not always enforced. The people don't get to decide website policies or pick their representatives. They don't (usually) get to approve moderators who can also stifle discussions.

In some cases, webmasters can exhibit very fascist tendencies, controlling all content as tightly as possible.
in fact the vast majority of websites don't allow any visitor/member input, except for direct feedback via form mail.

But in the REAL world, bans affect real people and families and countries in significant ways.
Our government attacking the Free Press is a sure sign our democracy is at risk.
Spouting alternative facts and Fake News, the Trumpetts sow doubt and confusion.
Stifling free speech is undemocratic and against the founding principles of the USA.
But that's just another day for Bannon, whose stated goal is to bring down the Establishment.

Expect more heavy handed police actions, including deportations (bans) and protest repression.
Expect more laws enabling even more spying on American citizens.
Bannon is obviously paranoid and probably is already drawing up enemies lists.

Expect the Trump administration to do whatever it can to control the media and the message, even if it means banning media outlets, generating more fake news, and endless lies and denials.

Bannon and Trump know their only real power over us lies in their ability to manipulate the thoughts of the masses via social media. That is why they don't trust other media they can't control. And that is the narrative they've passed on to their followers, "don't trust the media", when in reality, it's they who can't be trusted.
Preventing the documentation (paper trails) of the processes leading up to executive decisions surely means a coverup of those influencing decisions. So don't expect transparency from this administration, only aggression and cowtowing to the oil companies and military/industrial complex. Oh, and WAR, lots of it. Thus the sudden need to secure our borders as never before.

We all need to realize that up till now, Bannon has been King of his own domain and Trump has been King of his own business empire. Neither has experience running a democracy. So don't expect them to treat us as anything else but anonymous peasants living on their land. And it is their land to exploit as they see fit. Climate change and ecological collapse don't fit into their world view. Nor does empathy for those less fortunate.

We are in for quite a ride in these interesting times.

If you want to know more about Steve Bannon's agenda, just visit Breitbart News and see what he has in store for all of us. Or don't. No need to feed his agenda.

Skip Stone is the webmaster of Hipforums.com

Click here to view the article

 

Excellent!

 

The Webmaster has spoken!