[justadeveloper2]

I'm not sure it has truly been any different except during times of national emergency, e.g. WWII. The states were always like separate little nations and people traditionally never described themselves as American but rather as Texan, Minnesotan, New Yorker, and people from New Jersey just kept quiet ;-)

I never understood Bannon or what his role was supposed to be or which parts of the platform he represented. In general, I'm not opposed to the US re-establishing itself after decades of not even trying, but I doubt this Administration is going to accomplish that. For me, Trump is the closest thing to a libertarian (and yes,I know he's not very libertarian--I mean, compared to the big government freaks like Clinton, McCain, Obama, etc.) we have ever elected, but I know better than to expect any good outcomes because big business and big government don't want to relinquish any power or create the conditions for wealth to trickle down, or really do any of the human-centric things that we need. The machine just blindly defends itself until the machine eventually breaks and we go through a collapse. I don't want there to be a collapse, but without real reform, that's where we'll end up.

ETA: Americans have been screwed since Day 1 of going off of the gold standard. The internal powers that run things were handed the keys to draining the people's wealth at that moment and we've never recovered and that was 1971! It's amazing we got this far.