There may never be a “Trumpism,” and unless one emerges, the closest we may come
to understanding this administration is as an expression of “Bannonism.”
Mr. Bannon, 63, has won a reputation for abrasive brilliance at almost every stop in his unorthodox career — as a naval officer, Goldman Sachs mergers specialist, entertainment-industry financier, documentary screenwriter
and director, Breitbart News cyber-agitprop impresario and chief executive of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.
Their argument assumes an 80- to 100-year cycle divided into roughly 20-year “highs,” “awakenings,” “unravelings”
and “crises.” The American Revolution, the Civil War, the New Deal, World War II — Mr. Bannon has said for years that we’re due for another crisis about now.
Nor does it make Mr. Bannon a fringe character that during the meetings of the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2013
and 2014, he hosted rival panel discussions called the Uninvited — although it did show a relish for the role of ideological bad boy.
“Not one criminal charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis.” He warned against “the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism,” by which he meant “a capitalism
that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people.” Capitalism, he said, ought to rest on a “Judeo-Christian” foundation.