Trump, Bannon and the Coming Crisis

[Marypoza]

(02-08-2017, 01:42 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: Jacobin magazine has now weighed in on Steve Bannon and his so-called "obsession" with The Fourth Turning. 

"The World According to Bannon"
Steve Bannon’s vision of civilizational crisis and violent renewal has deep roots in the American political tradition.

The link to the full article can be found here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/banno...urce=email

My main takeaway from the article is that Bannon seems determined to force the issue of a "clash of civilizations" as a self-fulfilling prophecy of Strauss & Howe's expectation of "total war" in the turning crisis now unfolding. 

Two passages, in particular, riveted my attention:

For Bannon, these economic and spiritual crises are compounded by yet a third: the rise of “jihadist Islamic fascism.” Western civilization, he insists, is fracturing from within and being terrorized by “barbarians” from without.

[i]Echoing his prophecy in Generation Zero of a fourth turning, he warned the assembled right-wing Catholics: “we’re at the very beginning stages of a global conflict, and if we do not bind together as partners with others in other countries . . . this conflict is only going to metastasize.”[/i]

I hear echoes of the seminal--and controversial--book The Clash of Civilizations, written by the late Samuel Huntington, a political theorist to whom Strauss & Howe briefly refer in The Fourth Turning.  What troubles me most about Bannon's worldview is his sense that a global conflict along civilizational lines is inevitable.  That's very dangerous--and apocalyptic--thinking for a political operative now seated at the table of the National Security Council.  I try to picture the hypothetical advice that Bannon might have given JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis...and I shiver.  Should a geopolitical crisis arise in the next four years that threatens our legitimate security interests, I would hope that Trump relies heavily on the counsel of more circumspect--and much less ideological--advisors than Bannon.

-- l agree with you here Teach. I think he is definitely misusing S&H. Twisting S&H for his own twisted purposes (sorry couldn't resist )