Trump, Bannon and the Coming Crisis

[Eric the Green]

(02-08-2017, 04:55 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-07-2017, 05:04 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: I would never discount the potential for violence.  After all, I'm old enough to remember the "revolutionary" violence of the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers (the latter "more sinned against than sinning," perhaps.)  Indeed, in order to refresh my teenage memory and gain a more mature perspective, I watched the recent documentaries about these two militant groups. 

As for armed conflict, I'm not hearing the calls for violence, much less the kind of eliminationist rhetoric, that might spark an outright civil war.  It takes a militant leader with a "megaphone" to begin an insurrection against the state.  I don't see any Mark Rudds and Huey Newtons on the horizon.  Do you?

No, I think the violence is all still at the theatric level: break windows, burn cars (perhaps), but no direct attacks on the police.  You were a teen; I was an adult activist.  I got pulled-in by the FBI, because they were certain I knew the whereabouts of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.  It was an enlightening experience.  Even then, theater trumped revolution. 

I'm not sure what would push the country far enough to try ACW 2.0, but we're not even close at the moment.

When I brought up Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City bombing 1992-1995 here, somebody said that was a long time ago. I dissent. Since we've had only one year when the right wing has not been able to handcuff America, 22 years is virtually nothing. That right wing movement of Neo-Nazis and Timothy McVeigh never went away, and now exists as the Drump White House and 52 Republican Senators. As I've suggested, what might happen may not be a full-scale ACW 2.0, as the militias of the 1990s and the gun nuts and tea party neo-Waco wackos of today think. But it doesn't have to be, to be a violent crisis episode. PBS just broadcast a special on this 1992-95 right-wing rebellion.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperien...ty/player/

Quote:On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, a former soldier deeply influenced by the literature and ideas of the radical right, parked a Ryder truck with a five-ton fertilizer bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City. Moments later, 168 people were killed and 675 were injured in the blast. OKLAHOMA CITY traces the events — including the deadly encounters between American citizens and law enforcement at Ruby Ridge and Waco — that led McVeigh to commit the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history. With a virulent strain of anti-government anger still with us, the film is both a cautionary tale and an extremely timely warning.

If the Left does regain power by or before 2024, then the Right-wing, which feels it is entitled to America, will rebel in the way that it did in the 1990s, with illegal armed militias and reactionaries like the guys in Nevada and Oregon that seized federal land. They will believe that the socialists are coming for their guns and their tax money, and will rebel. It will be as hard to put down as Koresh and McVeigh were, but in a couple of years it will be over, and that will be our ACW 2.0.

If the Right remains in power under Drump, with possibly a Bannon dictatorship or Trump dynasty in the 2020s, then the Left will rebel, with about as much success. This rebellion will consist of black bloc thugs and blacks rioting in the streets because of continuing police brutality sanctioned by Jeff Sessions. This will probably break out sooner though, well before 2020, and after it's put down, the Left may still have time to take power in the mid-20s, despite the "black" rebellion; with the same scenario as above. So perhaps the two sides will take turns making rebellion, with little to show for it either way.

Remember too that I predicted well in advance that Feb-March 1993 would be a pivotal violent moment. I wasn't sure how dangerous it would be; world war was even a possibility, I thought. A dangerous violent event with consequences for the future, I predicted. But Uranus conj. Neptune brings about new political conditions, frameworks and issues; it's the start of a great cycle. And it did. The previous one had occurred in 1821, when the Missouri Compromise in the USA set the stage for the polarization that came to a head in the 1860s. The 1993 conj. has a similar meaning, so the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Waco standoff and mass suicide of Feb-April 1993 fits the bill and was the sign of things that have come, and are still to come.

Remember the conjunction was also in effect from about 1988-1998, with the exact conj. in 1993. In 1989 Saturn and Jupiter were also aligned with Uranus and Neptune, which is why I predicted 18 years earlier that a major revolution would occur in the Fall of 1989. When 1989 came, months before the event, I predicted it would occur in "the Soviet Empire." It fully fulfilled what I had expected for years beforehand. So this whole era was the end of one political cycle in international affairs and the start of a new one. We call it "the new world order," thanks to George Bush I's phrase after the Gulf War in 1991 (which I also predicted, of course). And to me, 1993 is yesterday. And I think it is, really. Rebellion against "the new world order" has become a rallying cry for this right-wing movement, Marie Le Pen, Brexit and Trumpland.

If you don't think the Uranus-Neptune conjunction was significant, just take a tour of the birthdates of nations. You'd find that more of them were born/reborn and created in the 1820 and early 1990s periods than any other times in history by far. And consider how the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 set up the world order in those times. That's why I predicted it would happen in the early 1990s again.

Of course, a more drastic scenario is possible too. And remember this 4T lasts until 2028-29. If certain coastal states illegally secede, such as CA, from a USA that is no longer what it was (and which it is fast becoming now), and does not back down; and Trump or his dictator successor declares war to keep it (or them) in the union, then we have our ACW 2.0. It could be very dangerous, and should be avoided. If you watch the PBS series though, you'll see that the terrorist fanatic Tim McVeigh predicted civil war. I think however if the Left regains power, and Texas or Alabama etc. secede instead, there's a good chance the Left will just let them go, and so no major war will happen; just a painful and inconvenient break-up preceded by some wacko right rebellions.

[David Horn]

(02-07-2017, 09:33 PM)Marypoza Wrote:

(02-07-2017, 09:20 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Technically, neither's the broad in the center.

-- yeah, she's from France, isn't she?

Originally, she was supposed to be Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia



... so not really French

[Marypoza]

(02-09-2017, 08:26 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-07-2017, 09:33 PM)Marypoza Wrote:

(02-07-2017, 09:20 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Technically, neither's the broad in the center.

-- yeah, she's from France, isn't she?

Originally, she was supposed to be Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia



... so not really French

-- she was built (born) in France

Cool specs, btw

[TeacherinExile]

(02-08-2017, 04:55 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-07-2017, 05:04 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: I would never discount the potential for violence.  After all, I'm old enough to remember the "revolutionary" violence of the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers (the latter "more sinned against than sinning," perhaps.)  Indeed, in order to refresh my teenage memory and gain a more mature perspective, I watched the recent documentaries about these two militant groups. 

As for armed conflict, I'm not hearing the calls for violence, much less the kind of eliminationist rhetoric, that might spark an outright civil war.  It takes a militant leader with a "megaphone" to begin an insurrection against the state.  I don't see any Mark Rudds and Huey Newtons on the horizon.  Do you?

No, I think the violence is all still at the theatric level: break windows, burn cars (perhaps), but no direct attacks on the police.  You were a teen; I was an adult activist.  I got pulled-in by the FBI, because they were certain I knew the whereabouts of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.  It was an enlightening experience.  Even then, theater trumped revolution. 

I'm not sure what would push the country far enough to try ACW 2.0, but we're not even close at the moment.

Theater, effectively, oh yeah.  The "Days of Rage" in 1969 was a big, fat flop.  Only a few hundred activists showed up to join with the Weathermen rampaging down the streets of Chicago, a demonstration roughly on a par with the WTO demonstration in Seattle in 1999.
A rebellion maybe, but hardly a revolution.

[David Horn]

(02-08-2017, 05:28 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Please define what you consider his "limited base", and what "other, less dedicated supporters" are supposed to look like.

There are the rabid supporters, many of whom entered the fray for the first time just to support Trump. They were there from the beginning. Then there are the millions, many in the "surprise!" states, who voted Obama twice then Trump this round. I see them as energized, but not for Trump so much as for themselves ... as they should be. Trump already leads a minority movement, so stripping it of any substantial support makes it a rump.

SomeGuy Wrote:Yeah, I've long been skeptical of the ACW 2.0 thesis, too.  I don't think it impossible, but there are a lot of intervening steps that would have to take place between here and there.

Who would be the sides?  Over what issue?  How many of the people running their mouths now would actually be willing to pick up a rifle and kill other people over said issue(s)?  What would the (desired) end-state be?

There was a great map set in the NY Times (if you can find it, please do), that showed a map of Blue America and another of Red America. Blues own the urban areas, at-risk ethnic and racial enclaves, and places that benefit from the non-security-state government. Reds own the security state and rural/exurban areas -- dominating the military bases and their immediate surrounds. The only Purple areas are the suburbs, and not all of them. I don't see either group invading the land of their opponents, so no war. Unless the military decides to back a putsch, there is no military option I can see.

It does raise the uncomfortable issue of an all-volunteer force that is almost totally derived from one philosophical tribe.

[David Horn]

(02-09-2017, 09:19 AM)Marypoza Wrote:

(02-09-2017, 08:26 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-07-2017, 09:33 PM)Marypoza Wrote:

(02-07-2017, 09:20 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Technically, neither's the broad in the center.

-- yeah, she's from France, isn't she?

Originally, she was supposed to be Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia

... so not really French

-- she was built (born) in France

Cool specs, btw

I understand that the model for the figure was an Egyptian woman.  Bartholdi changed her to Greek Goddess for the Statue of Liberty, but the face remained the same.  There's real irony in that. 

[SomeGuy]

Quote:There are the rabid supporters, many of whom entered the fray for the first time just to support Trump. They were there from the beginning. Then there are the millions, many in the "surprise!" states, who voted Obama twice then Trump this round. I see them as energized, but not for Trump so much as for themselves ... as they should be. Trump already leads a minority movement, so stripping it of any substantial support makes it a rump.

In what way is this different from the support for any other political figure?

Quote:There was a great map set in the NY Times (if you can find it, please do), that showed a map of Blue America and another of Red America. Blues own the urban areas, at-risk ethnic and racial enclaves, and places that benefit from the non-security-state government. Reds own the security state and rural/exurban areas -- dominating the military bases and their immediate surrounds. The only Purple areas are the suburbs, and not all of them. I don't see either group invading the land of their opponents, so no war. Unless the military decides to back a putsch, there is no military option I can see.

 
"At-risk" enclaves?  Is this a bit of jargon I am unfamiliar with? At risk from what?

[SomeGuy]

Quote:Originally, she was supposed to be Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia

I understand that the model for the figure was an Egyptian woman.  Bartholdi changed her to Greek Goddess for the Statue of Liberty, but the face remained the same.  There's real irony in that.

Sorry, not true.  Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia never got past the proposal stage, there was no "Egyptian model".  The Statue of Liberty was built for America in France by Bartholdi and Viollet-le-Duc.

[Marypoza]

(02-09-2017, 11:23 AM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:Originally, she was supposed to be Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia

I understand that the model for the figure was an Egyptian woman.  Bartholdi changed her to Greek Goddess for the Statue of Liberty, but the face remained the same.  There's real irony in that.

Sorry, not true.  Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia never got past the proposal stage, there was no "Egyptian model".  The Statue of Liberty was built for America in France by Bartholdi and Viollet-le-Duc.

-- yeah, but there were specs for it, which David posted. Somebody modeled for them. When the Egyptian deal fell thru, Bartholdi shopped the specs to a dude named Laboulaye, who wanted a monument for the United States. Lady Liberty was born:

http://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/statue-history

Jamie Kaler did a show on this, btw...

http://www.vudu.com/movies/#!content/608846

[SomeGuy]

Sketches, originally in the neo-classical style he was educated in, the Khedive proposed some modifications, went bankrupt, and he then went back to his original idea years later for the Statue of Liberty.

I love how the story mutates from "The sculptor initially shopped his idea around in Egypt for the Suez Canal, the thing fell through, and he ended up building one for America instead" to "The Statue of Liberty is actually a Muslim woman, Egyptians are the REAL Americans!".

[Marypoza]

(02-09-2017, 12:09 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Sketches, originally in the neo-classical style he was educated in, the Khedive proposed some modifications, went bankrupt, and he then went back to his original idea years later for the Statue of Liberty.

I love how the story mutates from "The sculptor initially shopped his idea around in Egypt for the Suez Canal, the thing fell through, and he ended up building one for America instead" to "The Statue of Liberty is actually a Muslim woman, Egyptians are the REAL Americans!".

-- wtf... wait a sec.. l never said that last part. Actually the models for the statue were Bartholdi's old ladies-  wife & Mom

http://untappedcities.com/2013/10/14/dai...f-liberty/

[SomeGuy]

I have seen claims for his brother, too, but no hard evidence of any of them.  As for an "Egyptian model", like Dave claimed, no evidence at all.

[pbrower2a]

The greatest risk of a 4T is apocalyptic war, and war is an even more horrible prospect with a dictatorial order. The most horrific warfare ever in modern times was between two political orders infamous for their mass murder -- Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. Political orders that treat the lives of their own citizens as consummately expendable even without war are especially prone to treating war as an enterprise to be waged without quarter, with genocide and slavery. Human life is incredibly cheap under any dictatorship, and I would expect no difference in that pattern in America. Our American culture is not that different in its foundations from that of Weimar Germany.

Dictatorial regimes act irresponsibly toward pariahs, whether Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, Jews in Germany, kulaks in the USSR, or educated people under the Khmer Rouge. No country has more potential targets for official misconduct than does America. Minorities doing well have proved especially vulnerable... Jews again? Middle-class blacks? Asian-Americans? The helpless wretches who do cheap labor under appalling conditions are comparatively safe because the exploiters protect them. But people seen as somewhat successful and somehow different are easy to blame for any economic distress or political tumult when the political leadership that must shift blame for its failures elsewhere.

Say what you want about the Democratic Peace Theory of the late Rudolph Rummell -- democracies do not end up in wars against each  other no matter  what the cultural differences are. Tyrannies wage war no matter what the cultural similarities are. Tyrants see resources to plunder and people to exploit beyond their borders. Democrats see resources available for fair dealing and people with much the same desires and motivations beyond their borders.

[SomeGuy]

The Democratic Peace theory only holds true if you twist the definitions of "war" and "democracy" to the breaking point.  Just another set of just-so stories to buttress your pre-existing prejudices.

[TeacherinExile]

Now this from The Nation yesterday:

"Steve Bannon Wants To Start World War III"
His 2009 film, Generation Zero, shows a hellishly bleak vision of our past, present, and future, driven by a magical belief in historical determinism.

Here is the link to the full article: https://www.thenation.com/article/steve-...d-war-iii/

I cite a few (noncontiguous) passages, beginning about midway through the article:

...there is one Bannon production that deserves more attention for what it explains about his underlying worldview: his 2010 movie Generation Zero. In 90 minutes of often lurid images from the last hundred years of world history, interspersed with interviews with a seemingly never-ending array of conservative intellectuals, nearly all of them white men, Bannon’s script offers a coherent and hellishly bleak vision of our past, present, and future, driven by a magical belief in historical determinism...

I interject with a question here: Has anyone else watched Generation Zero?  If so, what did you think of it?

...To Bannon, and the parade of conservatives he marshals to make his case (Newt Gingrich, Heather MacDonald, Roger Kimball, Michael Novak, and Shelby Steele all get lots of face time), the rebellions of the 1960s were all rooted in the baby-boom generation’s narcissism. Not once do racism or the Vietnam War appear as possible causes for mass movements for social change or human liberation. Instead, the left—represented by organizer Saul Alinsky and academics Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward—is blamed for manipulating the children of the 1960s into believing that American society was evil and that disruption of the status quo was moral. Only if you ignore the proximate causes of protest, like racism or war, can you make this sort of intellectual leap. But Bannon is just warming up.

One quarter of the way into [i]Generation Zero, the filmmaker unveils the deeper theory that guides his thinking: the notion of generational turnings popularized by authors Neil Howe and William Strauss in their books Generations: The History of America’s Future (1991) and The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy (1997). According to Strauss and Howe, roughly every 80 years—a saeculum, or the average life-span of a person—America goes through a cataclysmic crisis. Marked by savagery and genocide, and lasting a decade or more, this crisis ends with a reset of the social order and its survivors all vowing never to let such a catastrophe happen again...[/i]

...In a [i]Time magazine article published shortly after November’s election, David Kaiser explains why this is so chilling. Bannon had sought to interview him for Generation Zero because he is one of the few professional historians who have taken Howe and Strauss’s work seriously. As he writes, “My own interpretation of [their work] is that the death of an old political, economic and social order creates an opportunity for any determined movement or leader to put a new vision in place.” The Republican Party, he says, has such a vision, while the Democrats have been more concerned with protecting the achievements of the New Deal.

But Bannon, Kaiser says, had more on his mind than merely rolling back the legacies of Democratic presidents from Barack Obama to Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt...[/i]

...Bannon doesn’t just believe that we are in an existential conflict with Islam or with China. It seems he wants to exacerbate those conflicts into a new world war. As a believer in Strauss and Howe’s theory of history, Bannon fantasizes that he can use that cataclysm to forge a completely new order. He is now in a position to make that a reality.

I'm no fan of Donald Trump, as I have indicated time and again.  And to some extent, Steve Bannon seems to pose more of a risk to liberal democracy in America than does Trump.  But at the ripe age of 62 years, I've learned to take predictions of catastrophe (World War III) with a yuge grain of salt.  Attention must be paid in times of crisis, but is Bannon really playing Iago to Trump's Othello, as articles like this insinuate?  Is Trump of one accord with Bannon's worldview about existential conflict with Islam and/or with China?  What measures would the Trump administration have to take to make any of us conclude--and rightfully fear--that, yes, Bannon is steering us toward a geopolitical cataclysm, as a self-fulfillment of Fourth Turning prophecy?

[SomeGuy]

Iago?  Othello?  I question the aptness of the comparison.  In what way would Bannon and Trump be filling those roles, even under the scenario you propose?  Is Bannon plotting to destroy Trump?

[TeacherinExile]

(02-09-2017, 05:18 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Iago?  Othello?  I question the aptness of the comparison.  In what way would Bannon and Trump be filling those roles, even under the scenario you propose?  Is Bannon plotting to destroy Trump?

I'm not sure where I saw it, probably while I was grazing headlines.  Some fringe source openly speculated that Bannon is deliberately giving Trump bad advice so as to engineer a coup d'état.   Crazy stuff, to be sure, and to which I assign no credence whatsoever. 

Trump is overmatched (intellectually) by Bannon, though that doesn't necessarily translate into a president easily manipulated by his chief political advisor.  I would say, however, that if Bannon keeps "laying eggs," like the ill-conceived travel ban, you would have to wonder, at least, if he truly has the best interest of the president in mind.  Too, Bannon seems to operate in the shadows, so to speak, making no public statements or interviews that I'm aware of since Trump took office.  Is that unusual?   

This headline appeared recently, too: "White House Denies Report That Bannon Had to Be Reminded He Wasn’t President Amidst Travel-Ban Chaos"

Chief White House strategist Steve Bannon tried to order Department of Homeland Security secretary John Kelly to not issue a waiver exempting green-card holders from President Trump’s travel-ban executive order, according to a report — which the White House is denying — in the Washington Post. Per two Trump administration officials who spoke with the Post’s Josh Rogin, Kelly apparently rebuffed the attempt, telling Bannon that he only takes orders from the president. The president never weighed in, and Kelly went ahead and issued the waiver...

One wonders if, from this single incident alone, Trump really is the Decider...This executive order was a big issue, a fulfillment of his campaign promise to restrict immigration.  How could he have been "out of the loop" on key provisions of the travel ban?

[freivolk]

(02-09-2017, 05:18 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Iago?  Othello?  I question the aptness of the comparison.  In what way would Bannon and Trump be filling those roles, even under the scenario you propose?  Is Bannon plotting to destroy Trump?

The great crisis presidents, Lincoln and Roosevelt, both died in office.

[Eric the Green]

(02-09-2017, 05:05 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: I'm no fan of Donald Trump, as I have indicated time and again.  And to some extent, Steve Bannon seems to pose more of a risk to liberal democracy in America than does Trump.  But at the ripe age of 62 years, I've learned to take predictions of catastrophe (World War III) with a yuge grain of salt.  Attention must be paid in times of crisis, but is Bannon really playing Iago to Trump's Othello, as articles like this insinuate?  Is Trump of one accord with Bannon's worldview about existential conflict with Islam and/or with China?  What measures would the Trump administration have to take to make any of us conclude--and rightfully fear--that, yes, Bannon is steering us toward a geopolitical cataclysm, as a self-fulfillment of Fourth Turning prophecy?

That's a good question. I think Bannon is already pushing Drump in that direction, with the saber-rattling over Iran and the Muslim travel ban. This latter has also angered our Muslim allies in the fight against the IS. If this continues to rile our Muslim allies, then the IS may gain followers again and the Iraq-USA alliance could dissolve. That puts the battle with the IS squarely back in Trump's hands, with the need to send ground troops and the goal of seizing Iraqi oil fields. It makes a clash of civilizations the only route to victory over Muslim extremist jihadism, rather than working with Muslim allies. Then on top of that, you have Trump taking Netanyahu's side in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and exerting less control over Israeli desire to attack Iran. And now Trump is rumored to be appointing neo-cons like Elliot Abrams to high foreign policy positions, apparently yielding to Bannon's influence rather than holding to his own supposed non-intervention approach. We also have Trump backing Putin in the Syria conflict, which keeps another warlike tyrant in power there, and gives carte blanch for Russia to keep interfering in the region as a natural Bannon ally. All of this indicates a possible Bannon push toward the clash of civilizations, and it seems wise to be afraid of this; very afraid, or very concerned.

[SomeGuy]

Out of curiosity, have you actually read anything Dugin has written?