If we ever needed salvation from nihilism, the time is now. I've heard it pointed out that some terrorists are nihilists, people without political goals, but I think that nihilism can reside within a rational frame of reference, as a tactic, and then rise up in an uncontrollable Freudian melodrama and begin to run the show. So it is with racism. Reconstruction ran this way. Deconstruction is a technical term used originally to apply to the analysis of texts.
It seems to have become loosely associated with leaving things in pieces when I think, in fact, it assumes the integrity of the whole in order to function as an analytical framework. But the leaving-in-pieces part appeals to nihilists in a broad, fuzzy, adolescent-boy, wouldn't-it-be-cool-to-blow-this-up-and-see-what-happens kind of way. This appears to be the underlying ethos and ethic of the Trump administration--institutional self-destruction.
It is our society's suicide by Trump. Anyway, think of how, in your own lives, a rational tactic can play out poorly in a larger context. More money is good. You pursue more money and, presumably, more happiness follows. Aha, but there are other, un-independent variables on the same side of that equation. There's a bunch of them, factoring in the irretrievable time lost in the pursuit and how that focus affects you and what happens when the kids realize daddy is deadbeat and a money grubbing dick.
Turning now to Steve Bannon we see that in his mind, assuming he's not out of it, deconstruction appears to entail stripping down an entity--our entity, the federal government--to its most essential, limited level of function, leaving in in parts on the ground, which would then supposedly be reassembled by master, government-craftsmen from Breitbart and Heritage and similarly revered organizations, never mind that it would have been nice if he'd asked our permission, seeing how they didn't exactly get it in the last election and the thing being "deconstructed" is ours and us.
Never mind, never mind--because they know they are right with all the assurance that denial can get you. And deconstruction, it turns out, is a fancy, ambiguous term for dismantle. Why would Steve use such a word? I looked it up and it doesn't apply, in its usual sense, to something such as the government. But it sounds cool, abstruse, learned and abstract and most Americans don't want their government dismantled so its annihilation must be rebranded.
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