Podcast 605-Bannon's Fourth Turning

Podcast 605-Bannon’s Fourth Turning

Steve Bannon and The Fourth Turning

The President’s co chief of staff is obsessed with a book called The Fourth Turning. Podcast 605-Bannon’s Fourth Turning discusses reaction to the idea someone as powerful as Steve Bannon would formulate a political philosophy on a pop history/sociology best seller. The Fourth Turning co-author the late William Strauss was a playwright, theater director and lecturer. Co-author Neil Howe is a best selling author and consultant. Strauss and Howe coined the term ‘Millennial’. Both men described themselves as Amateur Historians. The Fourth Turning, Bannon’s apparent zeitgeist, was published in the early 1990’s. See a video of the two authors appearing on C-Span’s BookNotes here.

Chaos Dead Ahead

The book some say Steve Bannon has based his political philosophy on postulates every 80 years the United States is marked by crisis and chaos. Business Insider says Bannon believes the United States will soon reach our climax conflict and that Trump is in the White House to usher it in.

Is the United States in a Political Crisis?

Politicians tend to magnify the political challenges they face. Reporters play along. Divided since the beginning crises of one kind or another have been a way of life in the US. It’s very American to think of the government with distrust and apprehension. Especially when, as the saying goes, the legislature is in session. Are we in a political crisis?

Want To Know The Future?

Crisis will find the Trump administration. The response to crisis is what will determine it’s fate. Theories predicting ‘the’ crisis are questionable. Free Will is a gift to Human Beings. We think and act voluntarily. We can be the authors of our own stories. Controversy surrounding the Fourth Turning and Steve Bannon’s embrace of the theory encapsulates much of what is wrong with our politics. In Podcast 605-Bannon’s Fourth Turning I’ll tell you why.

One Day At A Time

Living one day at a time doesn’t mean avoiding passionate views. We do not remain passive and uninvolved but do the best we can with what we have. We will never know exactly what tomorrow may bring. Isn’t that the fun part of life?

Sponsored by X Government Cars and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

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Podcast 389

Black Swans. What is a Black Swan Event? By definition, its not necessarily predictable, but we try in this podcast. We’re at the end of an era in the United States. You could say the same about the west in general, and maybe the rest of the world. While things seem on a relatively predictable path in the present time frame one thing we can all be sure of; Something will happen. Things will change. Perhaps significantly. What then is the event that introduces the pivot point that changes politics, society and history? We can only speculate. A financial crisis in China that leads to chaos. Disruption in the Euro Zone triggered by Greece that upsets the balance of power and destabilizes the Balkans. A nuclear weapon in the hands of ISIS. An EMP attack that turns our our technological wonders into junk. Disease. Earthquakes. Comet strikes. Aliens landing. Pick your poison. Or, Black Swan Events that end up being really good. The discovery of a stable anti or reverse aging drug. A way to increase intelligence in human beings. Manageable Machine Intelligence. A breakthrough in agriculture or energy that provides a stable source of food and power. The development of anti-gravity capabilities to lift huge payloads into space, revolutionizing space travel. A really good powdered milk! (JK). The key with these events isn’t necessarily predicting the event itself; It’s being prepared for, and predicting the reaction of mere mortals to the event. It wasn’t the stock market crash of 1929 that caused the depression, it was the government’s lame brained reaction to it. It wasn’t the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand that caused World War I, it was the secret pacts and misunderstood capabilities, coupled with irreversible mobilizations that caused World War I. And so on. It’s fun to speculate on the future. Sponsored by X Government Cars. 

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Podcast 310

Jeb Bush “Conservative”. Jeb Bush talks about the Middle Class and the American Dream in the nitty gritty northern city of Detroit, Michigan serving up ‘The Right To Rise’ political concept. Will Republicans buy this warmed over rhetoric one more time? If Bush convinces the mainstream GOP ‘he can win’, bet on it. If someone doesn’t come along to counter Bush’s contributions, and command of the rhetorical battleground – regardless of what the few crummy polls say right now – he will be the Republican nominee in 2016. Yet, nothing is harder to define than the so called Middle Class, and The American Dream. The Middle Class is supposed to be an income bracket, yet pundits, politicians and academics have defined it as low as thirty thousand dollars a year and as high as two hundred thousand dollars a year. The American Dream is supposedly enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, on the Statue of Liberty, in Martin Luther King’s speeches and so deeply ingrained in our culture you’d think its in the US Constitution. Where did the American Dream come from? What about the dystopian vision of the American Dream? Really, these concepts – and that’s what they are – mean anything any politician, demagogue, preacher or commentator want them to mean. What policies will Bush use to ensure a ‘middle class rise’? Well, to start with, he says, power will pass from the Federal Government to the states, but the Federal Government will also pass policies that benefit the so called middle class. We won’t repeal Obamacare, we’ll just fix it. We’re going to fix immigration, because illegals are just like the people who came over on the Mayflower. What’s the fix? Truthfully, solidifying what the President has been doing by executive order for the past three years, or more. All of this provokes a question? Aren’t Republicans and Democrats really just different sides of the same coin? Aren’t they both conservative in that they want to continue the status quo? What if what we need is a radical departure, a radical reduction in the scope of Federal Government Power that could be catastrophically dangerous to a Republic. Moreover, as technological developments become industry; That is, the new retail, manufacturing, autonomous machines and software, new ways to use media (like this podcast), sell and buy, hire and find jobs the disruptions will be chaotic. Add more government to that mix, whether it has an R or a D in front of it, and you’re going to have yet more chaos. What are you? How do you know? What are your values? What are your principles? How do you translate these into political ideas, policies, and ideas people can get behind. This is what is meant by organization, and today’s radicals are a long way from being close to having all that work done. Sponsored by Baklund R&D. 

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