Steve Bannon's obsession with one book should worry every single American

[JonLP24]

The name of the book is "The Fourth Turning: What Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny."
...……
(Snip)
This fact should concern every American.

In the book, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe theorize that the history of a people moves in 80-to-100 year cycles called "saecula." The idea goes back to the ancient Greeks, who believed that at a given saeculum's end, there would come "ekpyrosis," a cataclysmic event that destroys the old order and brings in a new one in a trial of fire.

This era of change is known as the Fourth Turning, and Bannon, like Strauss and Howe, believes we are in the midst of one right now.

According to the book, the last two Fourth Turnings that America experienced were the Civil War and the Reconstruction, and then the Great Depression and World War II. Before that, it was the Revolutionary War.

All these were marked by periods of dread and decay in which the American people were forced to unite to rebuild a new future, but only after a massive conflict in which many lives were lost. It all starts with a catalyst event, then there's a period of regeneracy, after that there is a defining climax in which a war for the old order is fought, and then finally there is a resolution in which a new world order is stabilized.

This is where Bannon's obsession with this book should cause concern. He believes that, for the new world order to rise, there must be a massive reckoning. That we will soon reach our climax conflict. In the White House, he has shown that he is willing to advise Trump to enact policies that will disrupt our current order to bring about what he perceives as a necessary new one. He encourages breaking down political and economic alliances and turning away from traditional American principles to cause chaos.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/steve-bannons-obsession-one-book-202400225.html

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. nukes, count on it

[dalton99a]

3. Or something really drastic AND utterly stupid

[underpants]

6. Nukes ruin resources and that's what all conquests are about

Letting Russia run roughshod across the ME is more,likely to me.

[Eliot Rosewater]

7. Could be, problem is rump has no control over his emotions, nor does bannon

and they want to use one.

They will

[Hamlette]

2. what an idiot

what history teaches us is that it is not predictable. I remember when Reagan was elected there was a big brew-ha-ha about how no president elected in a year that ended in zero had lived to the end of his term. And it was true. Until 1980.

It's like all of those evangelicals who encourage conflict in the middle east so judgment day will come.

[underpants]

4. Great read

You may consider putting this in Editorials & Other articles where it can last longer on the front page.

Very intersting read.

[JonLP24]

8. Thanks for the suggestion

Will do.

[Horse with no Name]

5. we actually discussed this book at length here at DU during the Bush years

It was also an interesting thread.

[tinrobot]

9. Strauss-Howe is actually a good theory.

I see a lot of logic in it, and it explains a lot of things. According to he authors, the great recession/war on terror is not yet the crisis point, but we're getting close. They're predicting it will turn in the next decade or two.

The fact that Bannon is trying to force that next crisis is rather disturbing.

[angrychair]

10. What a bunch of nonsense

History does not work that way. One person's cataclysm is another's normal day.
The "great flood" described in the Bible is a good example: to people with such a limited understanding of the natural world and how big the world was, a huge localized flood was likely their whole world, thereby "the whole world was covered in water". To people in present day China it was likely a normal Wednesday.

Cycles are easy to spot if you want to see them, your preconceived notions create your reality. Things like the civil war, Great Depression and so on were important to Americans, not so much to many others around the world, to them it was Tuesday. The US is not the center of the universe, we still revolve around the Sun like everyone else.

[leftstreet]

11. +1

They cling to this shit because they believe in their own 'exceptionalism'

Fucking morons