The ban on people from 7 Muslim nations is not only unconstitutional because it violates both the Geneva Accords and the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 banning immigration based on national origin, race, or religion, many astute analysists now see it as a form of what Naomi Klein calls the Shock Doctrine. Shocking events are used to confuse and divide the public while more important and radical changes are made without drawing much attention. This is the strategy by which the US was transformed into a spy and police state after 9/11. This is the means by which radical right wingers have tranformed our nation into an incipient fascist state.
Here are some of the experts who have looked beneath the surface of the news-dominating outrage about the Trump ban.
" "What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night's ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries-- is creating what is known as a "shock event." Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos," theorized Political History Professor at Boston College, Heather Cox Richardson, in a Facebook Post. "People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order. When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event "My point today is this: unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one's interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won't like. . There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event."
The Observer's John Schindler explained in an op-ed that during the hysteria over the Muslim Travel Ban, "accomplished what may have been its actual purpose--distracting everyone from the White House's far more consequential changes to the National Security Council." Those changes included removing the he Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence from the National Security Council, and adding Trump's Chief Council Steve Bannon to the Committee. This provides Bannon and General Michael Flynn, two wholly unqualified persons whose hiring have no congressional oversight, significant authority over the National Security Council."
Former Blackwater CEO Eric Prince is advising Trump, who is keeping private security in order to bypass constraints on Secret Service: is he doing the same with the National Security Council, putting it under his direct control without Congressional oversight?
" Yonatan Zunger offered a similar theory. "Trump is likely to want his own intelligence service disjoint from existing ones and reporting directly to him; given the current staffing and roles of his inner circle, Bannon is the natural choice for them to report through. (Having neither a large existing staff, nor any Congressional or Constitutional restrictions on his role as most other Cabinet-level appointees do)," wrote Zunger, explaining his theory that Trump's recent reshuffling is an attempt to consolidate power within the executive branch. "Especially if combined with the DHS and the FBI, which appear to have remained loyal to the President throughout the recent transition, this creates the armature of a shadow government: intelligence and police services which are not accountable through any of the normal means, answerable only to the President."
Thus, the criticism of the disorganized Muslim ban may be missing the point: that the chaos and resulting media domination and public outcry is a distraction from the much more dangerous rearrangement of national security power into the hands of a fascist dictator.
For more detail, see the counterpunch article at click here
Trump is a master of distraction, often being criticized for being "off task" without understanding how he uses lesser outrages to mask more radical changes which, if offered without distraction, would become objects of outrage. What we may be witnessing is the execution of a coup d'etat that goes far beyond regime change but undermines the entire constitutional structure of government.
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