Dana Blankenhorn

Who Needs Trade Shows?

Among the great memories of my life are computer trade shows, especially Comdex. Just the other day I was telling my son about one year where I got so excited, the day before the show, that I walked from the Tropicana (where I was staying) all the way downtown and back -- about 20 miles. Then I covered 10 venues, switching to sneakers only on the third day.

But I was younger then. And stupider.

Now I wonder why trade shows exist at all. And so does the industry. Does anyone miss Comdex? I don't. Will anyone miss E3? I won't.

A Brief History of Political Derangement

Glenn Greenwald is just one of the latest Americans to decide that Bush Administration policy is "deranged."

My problem with this formulation is it assumes that the disease is in some person, or some movement, which is unique in-and-of-itself.

Not so. In fact, part of my argument is that what is happening right now happens whenever a generation's political myth reaches its sell-by date.

The ship becomes rudderless because the captain's compass is broken.

Some past examples:

1. Lyndon Johnson tried to fight two wars at once, in Vietnam and at home. He thought he could win the first with bullets, the second with welfare. He was tragically wrong on both counts. But he was just following the political myth of FDR past its logical conclusion.
2. Herbert Hoover had no cure for the Depression. In fact he named it. It's not a recession, the President said in 1930, just a slight depression. Was he crazy? No. He was merely following the Teddy Roosevelt playbook, progressivism balanced against the needs of business.
3. Grover Cleveland signed away the government to JP Morgan and Louis Rothschild. He really did. This at a time when workers were being killed in strikes and farmers were being destroyed by "sound money." But he was merely following the Lincoln playbook, Union controlled by Wall Street.
4. James Buchanan (above) diddled while the clouds of Civil War rose into a storm. Was he crazy, was he gay? No, he was following the playbook of Andrew Jackson, the West balancing North and South.

These men weren't crazy. They weren't blind to events. They simply had no political vocabulary with which to address the crises of their time. They had grown up, and grown to age, inside a political myth whose time had passed, and which could not address the problems they faced.

Bush is the same way, as are all the people around him. As are, by the way, most Democrats. We still live in the Age of Nixon, and our leaders therefore have no vocabulary, other than the inoperable beliefs of Richard M. Nixon, with which to address today's gathering storm.

So the unity FDR had built was shattered. So the Republican progressivism of Teddy Roosevelt died. So Lincoln's myth was crucified on a Cross of Gold. So Civil War came.

So the Age of Nixon will come clattering down.

The Cost of Being Political

The Mel Gibson silliness brings with it an interesting point.

The cost of being political is rising.

This is not news. Anyone who remembers the Dixie Chicks as a country band (as opposed to a Mommy Rock group) knows this. Jane Fonda knows this. Bruce Springsteen knows this.

What's interesting is how the shoe is on the other foot. And how it gets there.

Wal-Mart has embraced its politicization. At some point (whenever its critics get a brain about it) Wal-Mart is going to suffer from this. Millions of Wal-Mart's best customers are poor or minority. If its opponents convince these people they should shop elsewhere, Wal-Mart will be hurt in the only place that counts, the marketplace.

Which brings us to Mr. Gibson. Gibson is being excoriated for failing to maintain a political image he created for himself. Would we react in the same way if, say, Toby Keith got sloshed, insulted the cops, then later (after sobering up) apologized? I think it's far more likely we'd take the apology of Mr. Keith, although no doubt he'd take a hit.

The Vietnam Syndrome

The Vietnam Syndrome is not, as Colin Powell once suggested, a fear of getting into “another Vietnam.”

The Vietnam Syndrome is the belief that we won. Or we shoulda won. Or we woulda won, if not for them. And it is the dominant element of the Nixon Political Myth.

When a Myth is based on a lie, as this one is, it can be very hard to get rid of. And the lie is told, wherever the Myth's followers gather. Were it not for Watergate, Vietnam would not have fallen. Were it not for the hippies, the journalists, the academics – the internal enemies – the Vietnam War would have been won.

That's why they Swiftboat. That's why they surveil everyone. That's why the War on Terror seems like a war on the American left. It's the Myth being sustained. 

Throughout my adult life I have watched millions of good people seduced by this lie, because they wanted to believe it, desperately,. In Garden Grove, near where my family lives, Vietnamese-Americans rejected the display of a “North Vietnam” flag. Even here in Atlanta you will see South Vietnam flags, and that country hasn't existed for a generation.,

Vietnamese have not been the only folks affected. Cuban-Americans continue to be played by the Right, and they now await  Castro's inevitable death as the signal for a new War, a war for them.

This Week's Clue: A New Political Thesis

I happen to think this week's essay at A-Clue.Com may be the most important thing I've written in some time.

It describes a new way of  looking at the world, what I call a new political thesis, based on the values of the medium you are now using.

Enjoy. And if you want this kind of great stuff free in your inbox every week, just click here.

---

Most politics is transactional.

But once in a generation, a Crisis emerges requiring a Transformation. (For a review of terms to be used here, click here.)

The Crisis cannot be answered by either the existing Political Thesis, or its Anti-Thesis. The Myths and Values of the past lack the vocabulary to address the new Crisis.

So a new Thesis is needed , a belief structure that will address the Crisis, and which will be held, or opposed, until the old generation dies or a new Crisis emerges.

This has happened throughout America's history, at regular (and lengthening) intervals because we live longer and age more slowly:

• The 1776 Myth of our Origins held until political factions could not stay together.
• The 1800 Myth of Jefferson, stout yeomen and Young America, held until a new America emerged.
• The 1828 Myth of Jackson, of the West balancing North and South, held until the divisions of slavery became too great to bridge.
• The 1860 Myth of Lincoln, of Union, and of the Gilded Age, held until farmers and workers rebelled.
• The 1898 Myth of Teddy Roosevelt, of Progressivism and Republican regulars, held until the Great Depression.
• The 1932 Myth of FDR, of liberal experimentation, held until the 1960s.
• The 1968 Myth of Nixon, of conflict, enemies within and without, is what we live under today.

In 2004, Democrats deliberately walked into this Thesis, nominating a candidate of the Anti-Thesis, Sen. John Kerry, against GW Bush. Bush had already proven to be a leader of Excess, following his Thesis past its logical conclusion, yet the knees jerked, because we age so slowly. We still remembered the old battles, and responded to the old war cries.

But now a new Crisis has emerged. It can't be answered by the current Thesis. It can't be answered by the Anti-Thesis, best represented by Clinton's Third Way.

The new inspiration exists today, right in front of you. Like the old Palmolive ad says, you're soaking in it.

It's the Internet.

Landis

Since yesterday's announcement that a blood sample from Floyd Landis tested positive for excess testosterone, many of us who praised him highly last week have been silent.

So let me say this.

What was once a simple game of "does he or doesn't he" has changed over the years. Everyone does. Those who don't approach the line between conditioning and chemical enhancement don't get near the game.

In all competitive sports athletes and trainers manage bodies like a NASCAR garage. You come as close as you can to the line without stepping over. Meanwhile, however, the doping authorities keep moving the line back. Excess testosterone may mean illegal supplements, or it may mean an excess of legal ones. Or it may mean Landis was jacked up going into Morzine and produced it all naturally. (Or the second sample may show nothing.)

The Why of Media WTF

Christy Hardin Smith asks the right question today.

Why is it that, given the continuing proofs that our current government is Clueless, and is leading us over the cliff, the media narrative remains supportive?

How is it that the response of CNN to our failure in Iraq and Israel's continuing failure in Lebanon is to wonder if Revelations is coming true? I'm not picking on Kyra Phillips here (much). Chris Matthews's Hardball is doing pretty much the same thing.  

I won't even get into Fox, whose “Middle East analysis” team the other day was being done by Wayne Rogers and Ben Stein. But part of the answer does lie there.

We're talking here about three main factors:

• Business Models
• Generational Assumptions
• Occupational conditioning

Let me take them one at a time.

 

The 1966 Game: Who's Frank Sinatra Now?

This may be the most critical game piece yet.

Frank Sinatra was a fabulous entertainer and the rest you can argue about.

But he was also, politically, a very important figure in American history.

That's because, during the course of the 1960s, he quietly switched sides.

Sinatra had sung Kennedy's 1960 theme song, "High Hopes." But by the end of the decade it was clear that he, the old Rat Pack, and his entire generation had come to embrace the GOP.

This was literally the swing vote which put a generation of Republicans into office. Swing fans were disenfranchised during the 1960s by rock-and-roll. There had been swing hits in the 1950s, but by 1966 there were none. Those who tried to sing in any metier other than rock were ridiculed by just about anyone under 25.

Sinatra and other swing artists suffered from this. They did not enjoy watching their audiences age before their eyes. And they didn't like rock music, not at all. It symbolized, for them, a lot of what was wrong with the world. It was loud, it was atonal, it was just guitars and drums and noise.

How the Bells Win: Persistence

It's their job to fight these bureaucratic turf wars. It's about the only thing they do.

So when an opponent wins a fight in one venue, the Bells go to the next. And the next and the next and the next. Until they find someone they can buy or browbeat into agreeing with them.

Then they roll-back everyone else, using the new precedent.

That's the way it's going in Lafayette, Louisiana. The citizens voted to put in a municipal fiber network. This despite Bell push-polling, phone calls based on a fraudulent premise (trying to get opinions) that in fact, pushed "facts" and rhetoric-as-facts in order to change minds.

Didn't work. So they will try to forbid this through the state. And then the federal government. And then they will go to court.

And when all that doesn't work, they will just refuse to cooperate. They won't give access to poles and other assets, even after they're told to. Papers will be lost, people will go missing for days.

That's how they killed the CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers). They refused to obey the 1996 Telecommunications Act until they could get it overturned.

Is Amazon A Buy?

I don't know. (What you think I am, a stock tout?)

At its current price of $26.26, Amazon trades at 43 times last year's earnings. That's still rich compared to Wal-Mart's 13 or the 19 of BestBuy. But Google's P/E is 57 (although estimates for next year's profits would put it at 38) and Yahoo's 31 is in the ballpark.

So what's the problem? Amazon is far more like a brick-and-mortar retailer than it lets on. In order to sell most stuff, it has to stock stuff. In order to stock stuff, it needs an assurance of demand. And it's gone off into a lot of different directions without telling the customers.

What Amazon needs is an old-fashioned merchandiser. It needs to determine what  it can sell without stocking it, and have systems in place to deliver it.  Do I really need to buy my shampoo from Amazon? My groceries? My baby products?