Neil Howe: Where did Steve Bannon get his worldview? From my book.

[David Horn]

(04-13-2017, 08:40 PM)justpassingthrough Wrote: Hey again. I found this forum with Google, after seeing that the old one seems to have been removed. Judging by the names here, someone obviously set this up to replace it. I ran across some of the stuff in the OP, which is what sent me back here. I can also add a new one:

Neil Howe NPR Interview (04/11/17)

Interesting interview with Howe, mostly about Steve Bannon. The rest of the left-leaning panel generally attacks Howe and his theories (reflexively, given that they now associate them with Bannon), but he defends them as usual.

I wasn't aware of this connection until now. I remember being aware of Generation Zero when it was released, but never knew Bannon was involved in it. So now apparently S&H is in the White House. Howe consulted with Bannon on the movie, and seems to know him fairly well. 

It is clear that Trump's campaign was based on the kinds of currents S&H defined for a 4T.  I had previously thought it started on 9/11, but I'm willing now to accept that maybe it didn't. Howe has been consistent in declaring the 2008 crash as the catalyst of the 4T. I'm still a bit skeptical of the accuracy of the book's specifics, but the general idea has always seemed legitimate.  

I know just about everyone here will still be on the left, and the left is losing its mind after realizing the vice grip they thought they had on society was imaginary. Howe seems to be in their crosshairs now, because Bannon has had a high opinion of the book. Anyone who's paid attention over time knows that Howe is probably a moderate Democrat, who loved Obama and is now vaguely critical about Trump. His familiarity with Bannon might temper that to some degree.

I made a post on the old forum before the election, joking that maybe Trump is the "Orange Champion". Who knows? If these cycles exist, they would never happen if they were predictable enough for people to see them coming.

The thing I don't want to see, and no one does, is a major war. But while S&H's predictions about the nature of 4T culture and government seemed far fetched a few years ago, they now seem possible. Social conservatism combined with economic populism, nationalism, or however you want to define it, which S&H predicted, was the opposite of Obama. Trump has sounded those themes loudly, but with a relatively incremental policy agenda underneath. The left has howled about Trump's immigration policies, but they're nothing compared to what FDR and Lincoln did domestically (Japanese internment, suspending habeus corpus, etc.).

I guess all I have to say after running into this S&H stuff again is that Howe has more evidence now than he did a year ago to substantiate his theory.

Now that I think about it, I was saying a lot of the things that Trump ended up campaigning on years before, going back to 2006, on the previous forum. Especially about immigration and trade policy being organized around the corporate demand for cheap labor. I wonder if Bannon ever read any of that. That said, Trump has had the same views on trade for decades, so I'm not saying I personally influenced it. The real question is, if Bannon ever posted on the old forum, what was his user name?

FWIW, David Kaiser was in Bannon's movie, and took serious exception to what it argued.  Essentially, Bannon is (was?) trying to use the leverage of cyclical history to move the country his way. He latched on to Trump, and Trump latched on to us.  So far, that's all that's happened.  In 2 years, we'll know a lot better just how successful either Trump or Bannon manage to be.  My gut: they will manage to institutionalize ideological gridlock, but not much else.  I expect the Trump era to be a nothing-burger.  Bluster only carries you so far.  On the other hand, if he actually manages to do something, it will eliminated quickly though the damage done may be substantial.  In short, nothing positive and short odds on something bad.