How Sweet! Tom Friedman and Steve Bannon Make Friends

Here' are the new BFFs on Squawk Box fellating each other:

Guess Bannon told him to suck on this, and Tommy-boy was only too happy to oblige. 

More relevantly, and to stay in the metaphor, this was entirely and jointly consensual. Because this is what Thomas Friedman is; this is what he represents. It's what he's always represented: whatever the ruling class wants, essentially. He and what he represents are this close to Steve Fucking Bannon's view of the world, which is just pure American-exceptionalist global domination, period. The only friction is how best to achieve that.

Anyway, these pathetic fantasies aside, here's how Jacobin put it, properly: "China Is Not the Problem. Capitalism Is." The intro:

C. S. Lewis said that people become friends because “they see the same truth.” On a recent episode of CNBC’s Squawk Box Tom Friedman and Steve Bannon looked downright chummy defending President Trump’s recent decision to raise tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports. Perhaps this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Friedman might even snag an invitation to Bannon’s new alt-right academy housed in a former Italian monastery. The two could don matching robes and co-teach a seminar on How Trump Saved Western Civilization. Both men seem to think that the fate of the free world, or at least “free market democratic capitalism,” is at stake in the US-China trade war.

The Friedman/Bannon story goes something like this: For decades China broke the rules of international trade, engaging in illegal subsidies, intellectual property theft, industrial espionage, forced technology transfers, dumping, slave labor, etc. But for a long time nobody really cared because China dealt mainly in toys and t-shirts.

These days, however, Friedman and Bannon say the playing field has leveled. Chinese companies are competing head to head with American companies in advanced sectors and their vision for the future — China 2025 — is actually a plan to take over the world.

I’m phasing out tutoring. I can’t look at these teens and pretend their lives will be peachy if they memorize some fucking formulas and chintz their way toward success on the test. I’m lying through my teeth to them: their lives are effectively over insofar as they’ll have lives anything like those of their well-off parents. 

Nobody’s much interested in doing much of anything: note how fast the Highly Dedicated Resistance just fell back on Joe Fucking Biden, of all people, who will at best be a neofascist interregnum, presuming there’s a limit to his triangulation, and who knows about that? Chuck Schumer keeps pretending he’s against Trump while trying to make a frictionless perpetual motion machine for any lunatic judge Trump would like to install for life on some bench somewhere. And tweeting that Trump continue the trade war with China. Big Resister(TM).

The only reason any of these people get away with it is because we let them. We let them because we want someone else to take care of all the problems. Period. Mueller, Biden, CNN, anyone but us. 

Wait, Doug -- you mean actually spend some of my precious, status-sustaining money on securing my children’s future? You mean, like, maybe even think about my own political biases, given the five-alarm emergency facing the country and species, just, you know, as due diligence to see if they're still, if they ever were, fit for purpose? 

Wow. That's some "ask." 

But let me make sure I got this straight. The choice is:

1) Denial so I don't have to do jack shit and I don't have to face that I don't want to do jack shit, or,

2) Put out the bare minimum of effort to, like, maybe do twelve percent of what I really should be doing for my children.

And you think...[Trying to control the laughter; failing.]...you actually think...[Holding self up by steadying on a handy bookcase.] that people will choose the second option? [Falls on the ground laughing helplessly.] You really are fucking nuts! [Tears flowing freely.]

[Enter Victor Komarovsky from Doctor Zhivago.] Doug, Doug, Doug—you don’t understand. When I say I love my children, what I mean is, “I know I should say I love my children in public, while constantly advertising my very loud and noticeable helicopter-fretting over trivialities, while I know for a complete and utter fact that even my real and deep love for my children just isn't sufficient to change my daily habits One. Fucking. Femto-iota. 

My suggestion to you is that you don’t point it out if you’d like to remain friends. In any fashion. That's not what friends are for: friends, you moron, are supposed to be mirrors. Just reflect glory back upon me, and we'll be fine. Question anything, and we're done. What world have you been living in, dude? You think people give a shit about honesty, loyalty, honor, or anything else? Please. People make the noises but if anyone dares question the noises, they will be despised. 

Just get on board, hate on the Trumpers, do nothing, and take as many short-hop flights as necessary to display one’s class membership. You actually think anyone—ANYONE—gives that much of a fuck about anyone else, including their children? I mean, in any statistically relevant numbers? Look around you, pal. 

I brought some sugar for your children, too. [Exeunt Komarovsky.]

We will not change one iota of what we do, not for our kids, not for ourselves, not for the species, not for anyone or anything, and while the carbon pours into the air, and while the fascists show up, throw down, and take over. 

Here's the deal: most of us will just join them, eventually and quietly. Most of us already have via inaction. The only issue is how many will move from a sin of omission to a sin of commission  

That’s how it rolls historically, and who are we to think we’re any better than the French, Germans, Austrians, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Argentinians, Chileans, Chinese, and on and on and on and on…