Dana Blankenhorn

Donald Trump Dies for Your Sins

Over the last decade I have learned that America has four different types of elections:

• Crisis elections, where the assumptions of a generation are proven to be past their sell-by date and are overthrown.
• Validation elections, in which the new assumptions are overwhelmingly ratified.
• Anti-Thesis elections, in which a new coalition arises to challenge the assumptions and eventually breaks through.
• Excess elections, in which the anti-thesis is defeated, narrowly, by the knees jerking on the old assumptions.

America works on a generational cycle, tied to economic trends, so there are some elections that wind up fitting midway between these assumptions. Sometimes events do overturn the apple cart, like Watergate, which delivered Jimmy Carter (narrowly). These are the exceptions that keep people guessing, although I really do think Watergate itself drew extensive press coverage.

The point is that 2016 is a Validation Election. It has a lot in common with 1980, or 1948, or 1908, or 1868. In all those cases, the leader who led the nation through the crisis is off the stage, and the political movement they birthed – its assumptions or ideology, its media, its industry – must find a way forward without him.

Life After Trump

Donald Trump is not going to become President.

America has not surrendered to tyrants, or would-be tyrants, for 225 years. We are not about to start now. There aren’t enough angry white men in the world to elect him.

The question is what happens to the anger that he generated? We have several examples of that in American history, and none should leave you sanguine.

The most peaceful outcome was what happened in the last turn of the cycle, from manufacturing to oil. War in the 1970s became our chief economic export, but it was at least kept far away. The domestic objections, the anti-war crowd, generally left politics after 1972, gradually accepting their role in opposition, suffering the “hippie punching” that distinguished our politics right until the next crisis, in 2008.

World War II followed the 1932 crisis, beginning first in China, then erupting in Spain, before engulfing the world. World War I came in the wake of the 1896 crisis, preceded by a decade of American imperialism, while Filipinos died, Columbians saw their country broken, and Theodore Roosevelt became the first great avatar of American imperialism.

Also, the Civil War, which began right after the 1860 election.

Solving The Problem of Abundance

Everyone is vulnerable to fighting the last war, and ignoring the conditions of this one.

For investors and policymakers, the great fears remain the currency and the money supply. I read it in every Seeking Alpha discussion thread, a pervasive fear that we’re about to be crushed because no one is going to believe the promises of the dollar, or that we’re running out of something essential whose lack is going to make our dollars worthless.

What this decade has shown, already, just halfway through it, is that those fears are baseless. The problems of scarcity have been replaced by the problems of abundance. There’s too much oil, too many commodities, too many cheaply manufactured goods on the market. There are too many devices, there is too much cloud, there are too many good movies and shows out there and not enough time to see them all.

The Internet at War

I think a lot of historians mistake the point of our periodic political crises.

To me, it’s the point where directions turn that are key. To others, it’s the point at which that turn seeks validation, when it’s challenged, that matters.

So to me 1968 matters more than 1976, and 1932 more than 1940. I think 1896 was a key year for America, and that 1860 was probably the key moment in our entire history.

But others just see directions set in those years. The real crisis, in their view, comes after, when the new assumptions are challenged and things turn really violent. World War II is on The History Channel a lot more than the Great Depression is.

National Security and the War Against Oil

The attacks in Paris are a reminder that, 82 years after Texas aligned America with the Saudis’ Arabia, trading technology for oil, things are getting no better.

It’s a chain of mutual dependence. They have oil. We need oil. They sell oil to buy guns. We make guns to buy oil.

It no longer has to be this way.

In just the last five years, the cost of renewables has become cost-competitive with that of grid energy. Warren Buffett buys solar power plants to assure Berkshire-Hathaway with regular electricity supplies. 

At peak times Texas gets 30% of its electricity from wind. Once, due to the peculiarities of its regulatory system, wind suppliers were actually paying customers to take that electricity, it was so plentiful. 

A Brief Political History of the Internet

This is the sixth general election since the Web was spun, and the turning point in this history came with Howard Dean.

The Dean campaign was the first in the history of the Web that was based in and on the Web. Its blog, in 2003, was a mind-opening affair, one which allowed ordinary people the chance to actually have influence on a Presidential campaign for the first time.

That summer, around the time I visited their offices in South Burlington, campaign manager Joe Trippi hired a couple of political bloggers to advise him on what to do next.

Saudi Arabia is Not Our Friend

In my studies of history over the last decade, conducted on this blog, I’ve noticed that each generation has its own political thesis, its own dominant media, and its own dominant industry. Old theories, media and industries continue to exist, but they lose their importance as history marches forward, technology leading, economics following, media reflecting, and politicians trailing somewhere behind.

This is also true regarding our foreign relations. Each generation has a key ally and a key enemy. The identities of the friend and foe shift with the times. Germany, once a foe, has become a friend.

Saudi Arabia, once a friend, has become a foe.

Open Governance in an Open World

Every election represents a conflict, with choices. Some, like the Crisis Election of 2008, are hard. Others, like the Validation Election of 2016, are easy.

They’re made easy by underlying trends in the economy. Technology is now dominant over oil. It’s even replacing oil, solar and wind devices reducing fuel demand. The gating factor in competition among people, companies and even countries has become our ability to build human capital, and deploy it, people becoming the very definition of wealth-generating capacity.

There is also a sense of urgency driving all this change, a mission to which my children, and yours, have been called, one even greater than that faced by our parents, whom we call The Greatest Generation. That is the climate crisis, and “Millennials,” the derogatory nickname stuck on these kids by jealous oldsters, understand this.

Thus trends in technology, and governance, are making the coming political choices easy.

The Obama Era

There is a curious quiet descending over American politics. The gun has gone off for the 2016 race, most contenders have announced, yet it’s drawing a big yawn from most people.

The reason for that is simple. We have entered the Obama Era.

The crisis of 2008 has passed. The economy is growing. A new course has been set, of social liberalism and economic conservatism, something that seemed impossible to imagine a decade ago. Our foreign policy has been transformed, and our children, our troops, our heroes are no longer the “tip of the spear.”

Oil prices are down, and fossil fuels are gradually being displaced by solar and wind power in the electrical grid, which is also acquiring intelligence and storage, becoming what Al Gore once called the “Electranet.”

Change has happened. Most of the change is irrevocable. The roles of the parties have reversed. It is now the Democratic Party that sets the course, and the job of the Republican Party to lean against it.

Political Science

A few weeks before Christians would celebrate Christ’s death and resurrection, a great man stood on a stage in Atlanta and offered himself for martyrdom.

I took my biology student son to see Neil deGrasse Tyson. We wanted to hear about science, or at least about science education, but politics broke out and my son walked out.

Tyson does not style himself a politician, but he sold out the Fox Theater, and politics was what his audience hungered for. So he delivered, with a full-throated defense of liberal scientific values, the kind of talk Howard Dean gave against George W. Bush 12 years ago.

Then he backed away from the punch line, and left me with some hard questions to consider.