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Steve
Bannon’s Apocalyptic ‘Unravelling’
ICH,
ICH,
9
March, 2017
Donald
Trump’s upbeat slogan is “Make America Great Again,” but his
chief strategist Steve Bannon sees apocalyptic days ahead, a harsh
winter before society’s renewal, writes ex-British diplomat
Alastair Crooke.
By Alastair Cooke
By Alastair Cooke
March
09, 2017 "Information
Clearing House" - Steve Bannon is accustomed to
start many of his talks to
activists and Tea Party gatherings in the following way: “At 11
o’clock on 18 September 2008, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke told
the U.S. President that they had already stove-piped $500 billions of
liquidity into the financial system during the previous 24 hours –
but needed a further one Trillion dollars, that
same day.
“The
pair said that if they did not get it immediately, the U.S. financial
system would implode within 72 hours; the world’s financial system,
within three weeks; and that social unrest and political chaos could
ensue within the month.” (In the end, Bannon notes, it was more
like $5 trillion that was required, though no one really knows how
much, as there has been no accounting for all these trillions).
“We (the U.S.) have”, he continues, “in the wake of the bailouts that ensued, liabilities of $200 trillions, but net assets – including everything – of some $50-60 trillion.” (Recall that Bannon is himself a former Goldman Sachs banker).
“We are upside down; the industrial democracies today have a problem we have never had before; we are over-leveraged (we have to go through a massive de-leveraging); and we have built a welfare state which is completely and totally unsupportable.
“And
why this is a crisis … the problem … is that the numbers have
become so esoteric that even the guys on Wall Street, at Goldman
Sachs, the guys I work with, and the Treasury guys … It’s so
tough to get this together … Trillion dollar deficits …
etcetera.”
But,
Bannon says — in spite of all these esoteric, unimaginable numbers
wafting about — the Tea Party women (and it is mainly led by women,
he points out) get it. They know a
different reality: they know what groceries now cost, they know their
kids have $50,000 in college debt, are still living at home, and see
no jobs in prospect: “The reason I called the film Generation
Zero is
because this generation, the guys in their 20s and 30s: We’ve wiped
them out.”
And
it’s not just Bannon. A decade earlier, in 2000, Donald Trump
was writing in
a very similar vein in a pamphlet that marked his first toying with
the prospect of becoming a Presidential candidate: “My third reason
for wanting to speak out is that I see not only incredible prosperity
… but also the possibility of economic and social upheaval … Look
towards the future, and if you are like me, you will see storm clouds
brewing. Big Trouble. I hope I am wrong, but I think we may be facing
an economic crash like we’ve never seen before.”
And
before the recent presidential election, Donald Trump kept to this
same narrative: the stock market was dangerously inflated. In an
interview on CNBC, he said,
“I hope I’m wrong, but I think we’re in a big, fat, juicy
bubble,” adding that conditions were so perilous that the country
was headed for a “very massive recession” and that “if you
raise interest rates even a little bit, (everything’s) going to
come crashing down.”
The
Paradox
And
here, precisely, is the paradox: Why — if Trump and Bannon view the
economy as already over-leveraged, excess-bubbled, and far too
fragile to accommodate even a small interest rate rise — has Trump
(in Mike Whitney’s words)
“promised … more treats and less rules for Wall Street …
tax cuts, massive government spending, and fewer regulations … $1
trillion in fiscal stimulus to rev up consumer spending and beef up
corporate profits … to slash corporate tax rates and fatten the
bottom line for America’s biggest businesses. And he’s going to
gut Dodd-Frank, the ‘onerous’ regulations that were put in place
following the 2008 financial implosion, to prevent another
economy-decimating cataclysm.”
Does
President Trump see the world differently, now that he is
President? Or has he parted company with Bannon’s vision?
Though
Bannon is often credited – though most often, by a hostile press,
aiming to present Trump (falsely) as the “accidental President”
who never really expected to win – as the intellectual force behind
President Trump. In fact, Trump’s current main domestic and foreign
policies were all presaged, and entirely present, in Trump’s 2000
pamphlet.
In
2000, Bannon was less political, screenwriter Julia Jones, a
long-time Bannon collaborator, notes.
“But the Sept. 11 attacks,” Ms. Jones says, “changed him” and
their Hollywood collaboration did not survive his growing engagement
with politics.
Bannon
himself pins his
political radicalization to his experience of the 2008 Great
Financial Crisis. He detested how his Goldman colleagues mocked the
Tea Party’s “forgotten” ones. As Ms. Jones sees it, a more
reliable key to Bannon’s worldview lies in his military service.
“He
has a respect for duty,” she said in early February. “The word he
has used a lot is ‘dharma.’” Mr. Bannon found the concept of
dharma in the Bhagavad Gita, she recalls. It can describe one’s
path in life or one’s place in the universe.
There
is no evidence, however, that President Trump either has changed his
economic views or that he has diverged in his understanding of the
nature of the crisis facing America (and Europe).
Tests
Ahead
Both
men are very smart. Trump understands business, and Bannon
finance. They surely know the headwinds they face: the
looming prospect of a wrangle to increase the American $20 trillion
“debt ceiling” (which begins to bite on
March 15), amid a factious Republican Party, the improbability of the
President’s tax or fiscal proposals being enacted quickly, and the
likelihood that the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates, “until
something breaks.”
If they are so smart, what then is going on?
What
Bannon has brought to the partnership however, is a clear
articulation of the nature of this “crisis” in his Generation
Zero film,
which explicitly is built around the framework of a book called The
Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy,
written in 1997 by Neil Howe and William Strauss.
In
the words of one of the co-authors, the analysis “rejects
the deep premise of modern Western historians that social time is
either linear (continuous progress or decline) or chaotic (too
complex to reveal any direction). Instead we adopt the insight of
nearly all traditional societies: that social time is a recurring
cycle in which events become meaningful only to the extent that
they are what philosopher Mircea Eliade calls ‘reenactments.’ In
cyclical space, once you strip away the extraneous accidents and
technology, you are left with only a limited number of social moods,
which tend to recur in a fixed order.”
Howe
and Strauss write: “The cycle begins with the First Turning, a
‘High’ which comes after a crisis era. In a High,
institutions are strong and individualism is weak. Society is
confident about where it wants to go collectively, even if many feel
stifled by the prevailing conformity.
“The
Second Turning is an ‘Awakening,’ when institutions are
attacked in the name of higher principles and deeper values. Just
when society is hitting its high tide of public progress, people
suddenly tire of all the social discipline and want to recapture a
sense of personal authenticity.
“The
Third Turning is an ‘Unravelling,’ in many ways the opposite
of the High. Institutions are weak and distrusted, while
individualism is strong and flourishing.
“Finally,
the Fourth Turning is a ‘Crisis’ period. This is when our
institutional life is reconstructed from the ground up, always in
response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. If
history does not produce such an urgent threat, Fourth Turning
leaders will invariably find one — and may even fabricate one —
to mobilize collective action. Civic
authority revives, and people and groups begin to pitch in as
participants in a larger community. As these Promethean bursts of
civic effort reach their resolution, Fourth Turnings refresh and
redefine our national identity.” (Emphasis dded).
Woodstock
Generation
Bannon’s film focuses principally on
the causes of the 2008 financial crisis, and on the “ideas” that
arose amongst the “Woodstock generation” (the Woodstock musical
festival occurred in 1969), that permeated, in one way or another,
throughout American and European society.
The
narrator calls the Woodstock generation the “Children of
Plenty.” It was a point of inflection: a second turning
“Awakening”; a discontinuity in culture and values. The older
generation (that is, anyone over 30) was viewed as having nothing to
say, nor any experience to contribute. It was the elevation of
the “pleasure principle” (as a “new” phenomenon, as “their”
discovery), over the puritan ethic; It celebrated doing one’s own
thing; it was about “Self” and narcissism.
The
“Unravelling” followed in the form of government and
institutional weakness: the “system” lacked the courage to take
difficult decisions. The easy choices invariably were taken: the
ĂŠlites absorbed the self-centered, spoilt-child, ethos of the “me”
generation. The 1980s and 1990s become the era of “casino
capitalism” and the “Davos man.”
The
lavish taxpayer bailouts of the U.S. banks after the Mexican,
Russian, Asian and Argentinian defaults and crises washed away the
bankers’ costly mistakes. The 2004 Bear Stearns exemption which
allowed the big five banks to leverage their lending above 12:1 –
and, which quickly extended to become 25:1, 30:1 and even 40:1 –
permitted the irresponsible risk-taking and the billions in
profit-making. The “Dot Com” bubble was accommodated by monetary
policy – and then the massive 2008 bailouts accommodated the banks,
yet again.
The
“Unravelling” was essentially a cultural failure: a failure of
responsibility, of courage to face hard choices – it was, in short,
the film suggests, an era of spoilt institutions, compromised
politicians and irresponsible Wall Streeters – the incumbent class
– indulging
themselves, and “abdicating responsibility.”
Now
we have entered the “Fourth Turning”: “All the easy
choices are back of us.”
The “system” still lacks
courage. Bannon says this period will be the “nastiest,
ugliest in history.” It will be brutal, and “we” (by which he
means the Trump Tea Party activists) will be “vilified.” This
phase may last 15 – 20 years, he predicts.
Greek
Tragedy
The
key to this Fourth Turning is “character.” It is about
values. What Bannon means by “our crisis” is perhaps best
expressed when the narrator says: “the essence of Greek tragedy is
that it is not like a traffic accident, where somebody dies [i.e. the
great financial crises didn’t just arise by mischance].
The
Greek sense is that tragedy is where something happens because it has
to happen, because of the nature of the participants. Because the
people involved, make it happen. And they have no choice to make it
happen, because that’s their nature.”
This
is the deeper implication of what transpired from Woodstock: the
nature of people changed. The “pleasure principle,” the
narcissism, had displaced the “higher” values that had made
America what it was. The generation that believed that there was “no
risk, no mountain they could not climb” brought this crisis upon
themselves. They wiped out 200 years of financial responsibility in
about 20 years. This, it appears, captures the essence of Bannon’s
thinking.
That
is where we are,
Bannon asserts: Stark winter inevitably follows, after a warm, lazy
summer. It becomes a time of testing, of adversity. Each season in
nature has its vital function. Fourth turnings are necessary: they a
part of the cycle of renewal.
Bannon’s
film concludes with author Howe declaring: “history is seasonal and
winter is coming,”
And,
what is the immediate political message? It is simple, the narrator
of Bannon’s film says: “STOP”: stop doing what you were
doing. Stop spending like before. Stop taking on spending commitments
that cannot be afforded. Stop mortgaging your children’s future
with debt. Stop trying to manipulate the banking system. It is a time
for tough thinking, for saying “no” to bailouts, for changing the
culture, and re-constructing institutional life.
Cultural
Legacy
And
how do you re-construct civic life? You look to those who still
possess a sense of duty and responsibility – who have retained a
cultural legacy of values. It is noticeable that when Bannon
addresses the activists, almost the first thing he does is to salute
the veterans and serving officers, and praise their qualities, their
sense of duty.
It
is no surprise then that President Trump wants to increase both the
veterans’ and the military’s budget. It is not so much
a portent of U.S. military belligerence, but more that he sees them
as warriors for the coming “winter” of testing and adversity.
Then, and only then does Bannon speak to the “thin blue line” of
activists who still have strength of character, a sense of
responsibility, of duty. He tells them that the future rests in
their hands, alone.
Does
this sound like men – Bannon and Trump – who want to ramp up a
fresh financial bubble, to indulge the Wall Street casino (in their
words)? No? So, what is going on?
They
know “the crisis” is coming. Let us recall what Neil
Howe wrote in
the Washington
Post concerning
the “Fourth Turing”:
“This
is when our institutional life is reconstructed from the ground up,
always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very
survival. If history does not produce such an urgent threat, Fourth
Turning leaders will invariably find one — and may even fabricate
one — to mobilize collective action. Civic
authority revives, and people and groups begin to pitch in as
participants in a larger community. As these Promethean bursts of
civic effort reach their resolution, Fourth Turnings refresh and
redefine our national identity.”
Trump
has no need to “fabricate” a financial crisis. It will
happen “because it has to happen, because of the nature of the
participants (in the current ‘system’). Because the people
involved, make it happen. And they have no choice to make it happen,
because that’s their nature.”
It
is not even President Obama’s or Treasury Secretary Hank
Paulson’s fault, per
se. They are just who they are.
Trump
and Bannon therefore are not likely
trying to ignite the “animal spirits” of the players in the
financial “casino” (as many in the financial sphere seem to
assume). If Bannon’s film and Trump’s articulation of crisis
mean anything, it is that their aim is to ignite the “animal
spirits” of “the working-class casualties and those forgotten
Americans” of the Midwest, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and
Pennsylvania.
At
that point, they hope that the “thin blue line” of activists
will “pitch in” with a Promethean burst of civic effort which
will reconstruct America’s institutional and economic life.
If
this is so, the Trump/Bannon vision both is audacious – and quite
an extraordinary gamble …
Alastair
Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in
British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the
founder and director of the Conflicts Forum.
This
article was first published at Consortium
News
I would llke to hope that readers will not be led by the nose by the mainstream echochamber but will make up their own minds, perhaps from Bannen's doc.
I would llke to hope that readers will not be led by the nose by the mainstream echochamber but will make up their own minds, perhaps from Bannen's doc.
