Dana Blankenhorn

The 1973 Game: The Year Of Going Too Far

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 11 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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There's a natural progression to a generation's historical arc.

A crisis for which current thought has no answer creates new stories from the old opposition, which overthrows the old older and is then validated by a new political coalition.

Until this point it's possible to see the failures of the past as emanating from some extremist fringe, some virus within the old order that, once eradicated, makes it viable again. But then the old mainstream goes too far, the new majority identifies the whole of that mainstream as anathema, and a new generation's politics are made solid, the way starch exploding in heated liquid creates a stable pudding.

I saw this a generation ago, in 1973. Liberals, desperate to gain the last possible advantage they could through court action (since courts are the branch of government that most resists change) handed down decisions like Roe vs. Wade. Roe was a great decision for women but, as even feminist lawyer (now justice) Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted, it was a decision that held within it the seeds of a profound backlash, since it went beyond what legislators and voters were willing to do and enshrined abortion as a natural right.

Pay for Your God-Damned War

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 50 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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I have spent most of my professional career as a Democrat writing for Republicans, while coming back here to my typewriter in order to try and put all that into perspective.

What I have learned, through my study of American history and its cycles, is that disgraced Power, a combination of Myths and Values created in an earlier time, never takes responsibility for the excess that results from its abuse of that power.

There were never Confederates who could admit in their hearts that maybe Lincoln had a point. There were never Populists who accepted the idea that an organized, regulated economy would bring prosperity, that it was the right way to go. Republicans who opposed the New Deal went right into fascism, either excusing Hitler or embracing him, while few Democrats who fought Nixon ever saw that, maybe, he had a point about the Cold War and the need to maintain social peace through discipline.

So it should be no surprise to me that my readers at Seeking Alpha and TheStreet.Com, who are mostly firm believers in the Nixon Thesis, and who supported the excesses of George W. Bush each step of the way, are more than a little reluctant, even now, to see any error in their ways.

I was slapped in the face by this realization when the following was rejected by Seeking Alpha. Plenty of similar commentaries, from Republicans, about the "Fiscal Cliff" and the issues of the budget had been published. One, most memorably, was titled "Has Paul Krugman Gone Too Far?"  Yet this was deemed to be overly political.

Lesson learned. If you want to speak truth, do it on your own time. My view on the matter is contained in the headline at the top of this. The piece, as submitted, follows:

The Limited Power of Validation

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 46 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The election of 2012 validated what I call the Obama Thesis of Consensus.

It's a politics built on the idea of compromise, on the need to come together and muddle through, despite our sharp divisions.

There is tremendous power in that.

But there are also limits, because none of the previous presidencies that changed America, as this President has changed America, ended well.

The Bookends of the Crisis

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 45 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Katrina and Sandy are bookends to the crisis of our time.

The crisis is the War Against Oil, but it's a crisis that dare not speak its name.

Al Gore spoke its name, and he was buried for it. Buried by Bush's Supreme Court in 2000, then buried by ridicule after getting his Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth.”

This President has tried to approach things in a different way. Rather than address the crisis directly, he has sought to make the case instead for the role of government. He used government to address the financial panic, with modest success, and he used it to try and address health care inflation, although success there remains years away. With people impatient for change they could feel, he needed a break.

Sandy was the break he needed.

As a political bookend, Katrina set things in motion. Katrina changed the nation in profound ways, ways we didn't even notice at first. Katrina made us angry, it enraged us. The non-reaction of the Bush Administration became its unforgiveable sin – more than Iraq, more even than the financial panic. Katrina, and New Orleans, became a burning coal in every Democrat's belly. Never again, we promised ourselves. That fire burned hot in 2006, it burned hotter in 2008, it burns in my heart today.

Overcoming the Crisis: Be Who They Fear You Are

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 44 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Regular readers of this space may know that I believe we've had four major political crises in this nation's history, and four crisis Presidents who led us through them.

This is the fifth.

The four previous crises were the Civil War, the Progressive Era, the New Deal and the Nixon Revolution. The fifth crisis began in the last decade, with Iraq and Katrina and deliberate speculation leading directly to the 2008 economic collapse we're still pulling out of.

I call this crisis the War Against Oil. There's an artificial shortage of energy because we define energy as oil, gas, and coal, which deplete. The oil forces, like the slaveholders of the 1850s, took control of our politics in order to maintain this scarcity. Thus the battle is to overcome them so the market, and science, work their will.

Crisis Presidents Are Always Misunderstood

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 43 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The most misunderstood President in American history was Willliam McKinley. (Right, from Wikipedia.)

I'm still reading crap about how conservative McKinley was. With hints about his being corrupt.

Fact is it was McKinley who launched the investigations that broke up Standard Oil, it was McKinley who began the Progressive Era, and it was McKinley who made Theodore Roosevelt the President by making him Vice President.

The reason for the misunderstanding was McKinley's assassination, in 1901, at Buffalo, by an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz. (right.)

Reform is the enemy of revolution, in that reform makes revolution unnecessary. The killing froze McKinley within his time, and as the Republican Party moved to the right, his memory moved right with it. It was Bryan's Populists who were the racists, the states' rightists, and the conservative force of that time.

My Favorite President

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 42 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Win or lose in November, Barack Obama has been the Greatest President of my lifetime. Or yours.

He has the class of a great entertainer and lives his values more completely than most religious leaders. He can seem introspective and cold, but so have all America's greatest leaders. He writes in a way that makes you cry. He inspires but can laugh at himself. We are lucky to have him.

There's a scene in “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,” the 1967 Spencer Tracy vehicle, that always makes me cry these days. Sidney Poitier, playing a version of his “magic Negro” character from the period, wants to marry Tracy's daughter, played by Katherine Houghton (Hepburn's niece). They met, yes, in Hawaii. Tracy has just told him about the discrimination they'll face, that their child will face. “She wants him to grow up to be President,” says Poitier, “but I'd settle for Secretary of State.”

Welcome to the 1970s

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 41 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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This decade could have easily been the 1930s all over again.

You wouldn't have wanted to go there. We're talking no social safety net, people living in shantytowns, and starving. We're talking 32% unemployment at a time when women didn't work outside the home. We're talking social unrest and the almost-universal feeling that democracy was doomed (DOOMED!), that only the iron hand of the Left or the Right could save mankind from extinction. And then, of course, World War II.

Want to know what the 1930s were like? Look at Greece today. Greece was induced to follow the advice of the bankers, to practice extreme austerity in the face of impossible loan demands, and look what's happening. People are going hungry, and they're turning to a neo-Nazi party called the Golden Dawn for comfort. Not just as an electoral force, but as a social one, which is more ominous. Want to know where Hitler came from? Stuff like that.

Things could have easily gone that way for us, had John McCain been elected. What McCain was promising in the wake of a 1929-like crash was a great heaping helping of Hooverism. Instead we got the stimulus, we got some honest government, and while the problems aren't all fixed – too many bankers are still walking around loose – things are indeed getting better.

Why Mitt the Dick is the Best They Had

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 40 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Sure, Mitt Romney is a dick.

He's stiff, he's blind to the real world he never lived in, he has very little empathy for anyone outside his Mormon social circle. He spouts a Randian social gospel that's not from the Gilded Age, but from the Middle Ages.

But he's still the best candidate the Republicans had this year, and that's a more important point.

Let's look at who ran. A perennial candidate and radio talk show host whose only real experience lay in running a pizza chain that made bad pizza. A social neanderthal who lost his last statewide race by 20 points to a Democrat with all the charisma of wallboard. A pompous ass, and Newt Gingrich. A governor from a very big state who actually has no power and has shit for brains. Did I miss anyone? (No, I already mentioned Bachmann.)

Do you think any of those estimables could have run a better race than Willard the Rat? I don't. And if you think about it you won't either.

Why Romney Lost

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 38 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The election after a crisis is a key tipping point for every generation.

A new set of assumptions, a political Thesis with a Myth and Values seeking Power, is uniquely vulnerable at this time. Because it's seeking validation for the very first time.

In 1972 Richard Nixon knew this, and he gamed the Democratic Party's nomination process to get the opponent he wanted. He let his paranoia rule him, he was destroyed by that paranoia, but the more important point is that the new assumptions held.

Not just in 1972, but throughout the period of Republican Party ascendency that followed.