Finally, Steve Bannon is going to prison
Just this morning I warned you that we’d soon see defeatist ranting across social media about Steve Bannon getting a short prison sentence for contempt. Sure enough, the DOJ recommended this morning that Bannon be given six months in prison – and the predictable defeatist ranting ensued.
The DOJ is getting bashed for only seeking six months. But while the DOJ could have asked for up to two years, precedent says the judge would have been unlikely to give Bannon more than six months anyway. In reality, the DOJ it could have picked literally any number – six months or nine hundreds years – and the outrage addicts would still have automatically begun angrily ranting in defeatist fashion about how it was “only” that number.
As a reminder, contempt of Congress is considered a fairly minor charge under the law. Bannon goes on trial next month for more serious fraud charges in New York State, which will come with a much longer prison sentence if he’s convicted. We’re now watching the criminal justice system dismantle Bannon from all sides.
But outrage addiction prevents people from being able to perceive good news as being good news when it happens; they’re compelled to spin it into bad news so they can feel outrage over it. And the doomsday pundits are always happy to exploit their broken psychology for rage-retweets. The one thing that defines outrage addicts is that, whether they consciously realize it or not, they want to lose.
Our job is to recognize this kind of paralyzing defeatism when we see it, and avoid getting sucked into it. Steve Bannon is, finally, going to prison. And when he’s done in federal prison, he’ll likely just move to state prison. Meanwhile we’re just three weeks from the most important midterms in U.S. history. Now is the time for you to be out there volunteering for campaigns. Yes, you. Like, right now. Today. Let’s go win this!
