It’s only a week since our new president, barely sworn in, signed his Saturday Night Special executive order to ban entry, for 90 days, nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Notwithstanding that citizens from these seven countries have been responsible for exactly zero terrorist attacks in the United States between 1975 and 2015.

(For that matter, Americans really aren’t at risk from refugees — the libertarian Cato Institute estimates that your chance of being killed by any refugee from any country in any one year is less than one in three billion.)

Meanwhile, three countries that could plausibly be singled out for special treatment are excluded from the ban. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which together account for 94 percent of American deaths by overseas terrorists (15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia) rate nary a mention. Why? Look no further than der Führer’s business interests.

It’s so blatant that you’ve got to assume the whole Muslim ban is a smokescreen for something more nefarious: the elevation (on the same day!) to the small national security circle of an extreme right-wing ideologue with zero credibility in national or foreign policy. As of January 28, Steve Bannon is a permanent member of the inner “principals committee” of the National Security Council. Previous members who might know what they’re talking about from an apolitical point of view, such as the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are excluded (except in special circumstances).

(This guy Bannon predicts a war between us and China. “We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years,” he said in March 2016. “There’s no doubt about that.”)

So yeah, I see the seven-nation ban as a distraction from Bannon’s overnight elevation from alt-right propagandist (in his capacity as executive chairman for Breitbart News) to one of the most powerful men in the country. Or if Trump’s just the front man and Bannon is calling the shots, as it appears, we’ve got an “alternative facts” hack journalist actually leading our country.

In any case, putting an extremist in the center of national security considerations — more bluntly, in the position of deciding whether we have peace or war — is by far the rashest move made by Trump to date. Hence, as I say, the anti-Muslim ban to distract us all.

This smokescreen approach of Trump’s seems to be an echo of what happened when he named a 36-year old real estate developer (who happens to be his son-in-law) to be his senior adviser. To quell the outcry about the many conflicts of interest surrounding Jared Kushner, Trump tweeted that flag burners should be imprisoned — which got all the news that day, while Kushner got a pass.

I was going to end with a call to arms, but Atlantic’s David Frum said it so much better than I ever could, in the most important opinion piece I’ve read since the election, “How to Build an Autocracy.” Canadian-American Frum, by the way, is a neo-conservative journalist and was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

Frum writes: “We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered. What happens next is up to you and me. Don’t be afraid. This moment of danger can also be your finest hour as a citizen and an American.”

###

Barry Evans gave the best years of his life to civil engineering, and what thanks did he get? In his dotage, he travels, kayaks, meditates and writes for the Journal and the Humboldt Historian. He sucks at 8 Ball. Buy his Field Notes anthologies at any local bookstore. Please.