A profile in “The New Yorker” (How Hollywood Remembers Steve Bannon) describes the backstory of the president’s poison whisperer. He comes from Roman Catholic, blue collar origins and grew up in Virginia where his father was a lifetime AT&T employee.

Though this piece doesn’t mention it, some other students of Bannon attribute his swerve to the populist fringe to the fact that when the phone giant encountered hard times it laid off or offered early retirement to many and jettisoned a generous pension plan in favor of a paltry payout. Bannon’s father chose unwisely and ended up with a less secure retirement than he had counted on. He didn’t blame the company, but his son did.

He didn’t start out as a foe of Wall Street. After seven years in the Navy where he ended at the Pentagon doing budgets, he left having acquired a master’s in government from Georgetown on the government’s dime. Interesting that conservatives hate government spending unless it’s on them. Bannon then decided if he wasn’t going to be an instant Admiral he would hustle off to Wall Street and make a bundle, so he went to Harvard and got an MBA when nearing 30.

A chance meeting with the son of a senior executive at Goldman got him a job at a place he would later teach us to regard as the epicenter of evil. He didn’t think so at the time. Within a couple years he was sent to Los Angeles to try to drum up business at a time when Japan was doing mega-deals, taking over American movie companies. It is worth noting that this was the first, but not the last time Bannon hitched his wagon to a wealthy and powerful meal ticket.

Bannon actually had little luck making rain in Hollywood, but within a couple years chose to leave Goldman and start an independent financing business with another fellow. Soon his partner moved on but Bannon continued to try to strike it rich. He had a hand in several flops, but apparently his abrasive personality did not play well in laid back La La Land.

Once again he attached himself to a very wealthy man, this time one of the Texas oil Bass brothers. He had funded the somewhat fanciful Biosphere project. Bass thought the inmates were spending his money too lavishly and put Bannon in charge of tidying up.

In a characteristically operatic move Bannon decided to depose the visionary in charge, brought a legal action and showed up with armed men to stage a raid, or perhaps a putsch. When the case came to court, Bass lost because Bannon denied making inflammatory remarks about some of the environmentalist only to find they had him on tape.

Back in Hollywood, Bannon continued trying to engineer deals without success. An investment banker who knew him in this period summed up the problem by concluding Bannon was “a smart guy, who was funny and enjoyable, who had a quick laugh, who was ineffectual.” Ouch!

Also during this period was a bitter divorce complete with charges of spousal abuse, fights over custody, habitual failure to pay court-ordered support and his famous rejection of a private school for his daughters because it admitted too many spoiled Jewish brats.

Having failed as a mainstream Hollywood financier, Bannon eventually became involved with anti-Hollywood filmmakers as a quasi-producer doing right-wing documentaries about good Ronald Reagan, evil Bill and Hillary Clinton, decadent baby boomers as the root of all evil, and saviors in the shape of Tea Party darlings Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin. He also met Andrew Breitbart and encouraged him to expand his website.

Enter the next zillionaires, the far right Mercer family who were already Breitbart fans. Bannon persuaded them to pony up $10 million to help Breitbart expand and to put him on the board. When the eponymous founder dropped dead of a heart attack Bannon talked the Mercers into putting him in charge. He made Breitbart crazier, crueler and more remunerative. He was soon appearing as a popular rabble-rouser on the libertarian, anti-government circuit.

Soon the Mercers were persuading Trump to put Bannon in charge of his campaign. In this capacity he was theoretically supposed to be watching out for the Mercers’ investment in Trump and making sure he was hewing to their libertarian line. But not for the first time, wealthy backers discovered Bannon might be out for himself rather than acting as a loyal factotum. As Trump now seems to be learning. But clearly Trump was irresistible to Bannon as a like-minded empty vessel that he could fill with his overflowing animus.

What are we to make of this saga? First, this Horatio Alger hero isn’t as cute as they used to be in an early age of Robber Barons. Second, if Bannon pere hadn’t got screwed out of his pension, Bannon fils might not have gone so enthusiastically to the Tea Party’s Dark Side. Though it is weird, he seems to blame big business for the cruel disregard for loyal employees, but also objects to government regulating such behavior to protect workers. But Bannon’s talent is clearly more for disruption and destruction than for patiently constructing solutions.

Finally, if Bannon had been able to make a hit or two in Hollywood, he might have lived out his days as a producer of innocuous TV or B movies and left the world to muddle along without him. Instead, “The New Yorker” quotes a longtime friend of Bannon to the effect that he was always odd man out.

He was “a gauche Irish kid” who never fit in the world of investment banking, a conservative firebrand who didn’t fit in liberal Hollywood, and a brash bomb-thrower unwelcome in the “uptight” world of mainstream Republicans. Only when he paddled far right, promising to “weaponize film” to slay progressives and lead a “populist revolt,” did he succeed.

Here, perhaps is an argument for funding the arts, especially by angry, creative people whose talent no one else appreciates. If Bannon had gotten a grant or two, he might have made obscure, irate movies and left the rest of us in peace. He did nurse film making aspirations. We learn from this profile that he modeled his documentaries on the work of Leni Riefenstahl.

One should never forget that Hitler wanted to be a painter but was refused entry to the academy by the gatekeepers. Stalin and Mao were unappreciated poets. A couple gallery shows or poetry publications might have saved the world a heap of trouble. Hell hath no fury like an artist manqué.