The latest fever dream from the Donald Trump campaign is that Irish American Steve Bannon, head of a conspiratorial right wing website called Breitbart, will be the white knight (the name Bannon come from the Gaelic word bán - meeting white by the way) who will slay the wicked witch Hillary Clinton.
He will be joined by another Irish American Kellyanne FitzPatrick Conway who will be campaign manager.
Bannon, named as the CEO, looks like he just stepped out of a vat of Guinness with a map of Ireland face He describes himself as a recovered Irish Democrat.
“I come from a blue-collar, Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats,” says Bannon, by way of explaining his politics. “I wasn’t political until I got into the service and saw how badly Jimmy Carter f***ed things up. I became a huge Reagan admirer. Still am. But what turned me against the whole establishment was coming back from running companies in Asia in 2008 and seeing that Bush had f***ed up as badly as Carter. The whole country was a disaster.”
His journey to the far right of the Republican party took many detours, including working for Goldman Sachs where he made a fortune as part of a syndicate that bought the right to Seinfeld reruns.
Seinfeld was a show famously about nothing and Bannon’s political attacks have been full of hot air as well. His web site peddles the conspiracy of the day, a political version of the National Enquirer.
At the moment Breitbart is obsessed with Hillary's health - there are fake medical evaluations even a fake brain scan (wouldn’t you know you could recognize Hillary from her brain cat scan) circulating.
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They are also running with Hillary propping herself up with pillows in every sit down interview, claiming it shows a major physical malady.
Don't laugh though. Let's remember some relevant facts. Barack Obama has ended up with 40 percent Republicans believing he was born in Kenya despite sensible and irrefutable evidence to the contrary.
Equally back in 2000, John Kerry was blackened as a war hero and his purple hearts in Vietnam became objects of scorn with allegations and conspiracy theories about how he actually got them.
Kerry was so convinced no one would take the accusations seriously he badly misjudged the efficiency of the attack and thus the word “Swiftboated” meaning successfully slamming a candidate with conspiracies not truth.
More conspiracy theories and smears with Bannon at the controls and princes of darkness Roger Ailes and Roger Stone in the wings will sprout in the months ahead.
They are already fermenting. Voter fraud will steal the election, the polls are rigged, Hillary's secret emails etc.
In the internet conspiracy world we live in we should not be surprised--but the day alternative reality beats the real thing and elects a president may not be too far off.
What a sad day for America that will be.
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