Dana Blankenhorn

What Works

My current family crisis, which reaches a climax of sorts just hours from now, has taught me a lot.

About myself. About my strengths, and frailties. About my family, about love. About my wife, whom I love more than ever. About my son, whom I admire now, not just as a father, but as a man whose maturity is hard-won, one with his own stories to tell.

About community, about belonging. About blogging. About you.

Mainly it's taught me about what works. What works for me. What eases pain, what calms my nerves, what helps me keep panic at bay.

What works for me, when I get nervous, are talking, writing and walking. Talking about my problems relieves my pain. Writing about them helps put them in perspective. (Coca-Cola, when I'm real nervous and can't eat, can be a blessing. Music, fitting my mood, playing in the background.)

Walking, which is the exercise my father favored before I knew him, the exercise my son favors now, may work best of all.

Once this is over I have made some vows. I will get help for my own condition, help I have put off by hiding from the world behind a typewriter. I will become more involved in the community, with neighborhood groups, perhaps with my son's church. I will become an advocate, hoping to give others some benefit from lessons hard-won.

But first, let's take a walk.

 

Don't Take History Personally

Atrios (alias Duncan Black, left), and other liberal bloggers, continue to blame the lack of media concern over their point of view to conspiracies, intimidation, or personal distaste by the Washington "Village" elite.

It is none of these things.

It is, as I've written here many times, the natural result of an entrenched political thesis meeting a new thesis for which is is unprepared.

Players of The 1967 Game will see this clearly. As a political thesis, a set of myths and values, assumptions and beliefs, is validated by history, everyone in the media comes to accept it, often unconsciously, as the only way to interpret the world. This is true whether they are considered left, right or center, whether they are engaged in fact-finding or opinion-mongering. Expecting different is to expect a fish to have the point of view of a bird.

This was very much true in 1967. Conservatives like James J. Kilpatrick and William F. Buckley were essentially marginalized in 1967, treated exactly as the Netroots have been the last several years despite the growing electoral success of their ideas, as in Ronald Reagan's first victory in California. It is true that the Netroots have had more electoral success than the New Right had at that time -- Congress in 1967 was still controlled by Democrats, the previous general election had been a blow-out against them rather than a narrow loss.

The financial resources of the New Right were also far more substantial than those of today's Netroots,  so their institutional base was broader. But not much. The Heritage Foundation, considered the first and most important New Right think tank, was not created until 1973. The New Right in 1967 was, relatively speaking, a cottage industry, with little-read magazines like National Review, underground newsletters and direct-mail pieces like those of Richard Viguerie, and little-noticed youth groups like Young Americans for Freedom like guppies in an ocean of sharks.

What has happened, in fact, is that the 1968 election set off a generation-long chain of events in which new assumptions were built, then trumpeted, then struggled and triumphed, and were eventually validated. This process was fairly complete by 1988, just as the process of the New Deal's Thesis-creation was complete by 1948. Truman and George H.W. Bush stood at the same point on American history's wheel.

This Week's Clue: Panic is Easy

Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 43  of This Week's Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since March, 1997. It would be the issue of October 29.

Enjoy.

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Posting has been slow here lately. This latest issue of a-clue.com is later than any I have yet published.

I remain in a panic.

Relief should come some time tomorrow. I have done everything possible to make that happen.

But you never know. And when we're talking about our own fates, or those of our family, this uncertainty is bound to cause nervousness. In the case of someone who, like me, deals with ADD plus anxiety (which is at the root of all the current problems) you may say the nervousness is squared.

I should tell you -- before you join me in panic -- that even a total failure tomorrow will not spell doom for my family. There are laws to protect people like me. We have been assured they will be deployed, and then considered, by those in authority. I have also learned, as so many do when facing great pain, that we have friends, not just inside the family but outside it, preachers and therapists and educators who have been extraordinarily patient with me.

So there is hope.

The 1967 Game: Who Are Your Parents Now?

One thing I'm very certain of is that not everyone lives in the here-and-now.

By that I mean many people reference everything around them to some past time. For Joe Lieberman, for instance, it's always 1962, High Camelot, he's a young idealistic liberal, and the alliances of that time still hold.

I suspect that for Dick Cheney it's 1974, his boss Richard Nixon is being forced to back-down over Watergate, and he's determined to overturn the precedent. For Hillary Clinton it's also 1974, but she's on the other side of that divide.

For many of my black neighbors, it's still 1967, but 1967 as it was in white America. Remember, we're now 2 generations (in the ghetto, nearly three) from the actual 1967, a date which is just one generation removed in white America's experience of time.

Most middle-class  black folks I know are first-generation middle-class. By that I mean they are enthusiastic about their position. They love the accoutrement, the kit, the big car, the suburban manse, the suits and the dresses. They believe firmly they have achieved their status through hard work, discipline, and spirituality. They dress for church. Their preachers (left) preach a gospel which says they deserve their wealth, and that the poor deserve their poverty because they lack discipline and give in to temptation. It's their fault, and it gets laid-off on you, you're doubly victimized.

They still like the R&B. That thing with the white shirt, and the tie, and the jacket, and the smooth syrupy singing, they like that. Snuggle up on a Saturday night with a Hennessy after the kids are in bed. Light some candles, turn the sound on low. They also like Steve Harvey. He does "Grown Folks Radio" now. If Perry Como were black, and young, they'd love him too, I think.

These people also have kids, many of whom are enamored of the whole hip-hop thing. (To the right, Curtis Jackson, alias 50 Cent.) They rebel by turning up the music, by posing, with pants hung low and gangster-ish body language. These middle class black kids are a lot like white poseurs of the same age, but the black parents don't see it (and neither do the white, which makes things dangerous for these kids). What they see are thugs. The parents agree with Bill Cosby, with his criticisms of the culture and the young people. He's right, but is the solution really confrontation, a black-on-black civil war between youth culture and the old people? Isn't that just letting yourself get used by The Man? I don't think they care.

I knew these people growing up. They were Jewish, or Italian, many had served in World War II.

They were my parents, too.

The Populists

Many people who read this blog don't like my comparison of 1967's hippies with today's haties.

Personally I like hippies. They were before my time but they were harmless. They just became the scapegoats for a generation's political activism, the bogeymen (and women) people learned to run from. Even today, when a Republican really gets rolling, you may hear some reference to hippies, although most ex-hippies now are 65 or older.

The people who respond best to this call are Populists, direct descendants of William Jennings Bryan (left). He began as an economic populist, then became a foreign policy populist, and left this world as a religious populist. It is the rejection of Populism, and Populists, by Republicans which is the great political story of our time. Only one Republican candidate, Ron Paul, approaches that label and his supporters are so obnoxious to the rest they're banned.

Populism combines economic liberalism, isolationism, and social conservativism. Movie fans will remember Bryan's last battle, fictionalized as Inherit the Wind.
 

Today, as The New York Times reports, Populists are popping off the back of the Republican bandwagon. Most will remain Republican, for now. Others are becoming independent, a few Democratic, and still others just won't vote this time. This month's "Values Voters Forum" may eventually be seen in this light, a party squawking at people, most of whom have already left the room.

What's the matter with Kansas? Evangelicals have stopped drinking the Kool-Aid. They see themselves as having been drawn down a dark road of hate, and many are seeing it as a dead end street. Just as, 40 years ago, hippies like Timothy Leary turned off a generation of Middle America, so it is today with Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly. Just as the great union leaders faded then, so right-wing preachers are fading now.

People of faith have OD'ed on hate and are slowly rejecting it, just as 40 years ago middle America overdosed on the drug culture and slowly rejected it. Keeping the hate-mongers on the tube is actually a blessing.

All this gives the Democrats a daunting coalition and, potentially, dominance of the next generation. On 9 in 10 issues, Rasmussen Reports says, Democrats have the upper hand. And this is a pretty conservative polling outfit.

Depression Kills

One thing I've learned over the last few weeks is how ADD makes depression worse. (Brain scan from Dr. Robert Kohn.)

I seldom thought of this before because, with my wife's help, I have organized my life to minimize depression. I write at home. I keep most sources at a phone-length distance. I use exercise to keep the blues at bay. Readers are kind.

Yet my current depression, over my son's impending tribunal, has left me physically devastated. My wife and daughter, even my son, seem able to continue on with their daily routines.

I can't. I have an ache in my gut, I can't eat, can't sleep. I cough for no reason. The only exercise I can do is walk, and I walk incessantly.

Yesterday I walked to my family doctor. I didn't have an appointment, but he has recently expanded his office, added a colleague, so he had time to see me anyway. He found I have elevated blood pressure and listened patiently to my symptoms, then the reason for them.

"If it's like this for a few weeks you'll live," he said. "Some people lose a parent and can get back on their feet in a few days, others take months. You're within the range of normal." He gave me some samples of a sleeping pill, suggested a psychiatric visit might be good, added they might prescribe anti-depressants. I was more than thankful.

But this kind of depression can kill. I have seen it. It was a decade ago this last summer.

Putin's Nobel

The man, sad to say, is right. What is happening now is a bit like the Cuban Missile Crisis, only seen through a fun house mirror.

But the point of crisis isn't Poland. This really has nothing to do with the planned missile shield.

This is about Iran.

For months George W. Bush has been raising the temperature on Iran, calling it terrorist, calling it a tyranny, slapping on sanctions, bullying Democrats into going along, generally threatening it. Adding funding for special "bunker busting" bombs for Stealth fighters to the budget was a signal, to the world, that the U.S. is serious, and feels it has the right to "take out" the military capabilities of those crazy Iranians.

But who's crazy?

Tin Lizzie Days Ahead?

Many Americans ignore this, but a little over a century ago we had no idea what a car might look like, or how it might be powered. There were electric cars and steam-powered cars.

It wasn't until the mass-produced Model T, affectionately known as the Tin Lizzie, appeared in 1914 that the question became settled. The mass market in cars led to a mass market for gasoline, the infrastructure gradually expanded, and by the end of World War II we were ready for the true automotive age.

This age is now ending. We're running out of the necessary fuel. We're running out of the necessary roads. It is obvious that the gasoline-powered car running under individual control is not a sustainable model for 21st century transport.

What will replace it? We don't know.

A Price for Everything

Everything has its price.

Not just economically. Politically, morally, socially, you pay a price for everything you get, everything you think you take is ready to take its price from you.

Want to take away everyone's rights, have everyone be treated as a suspect? Your pool of suspects is now so large the bad guys get away, and now the innocent start acting like suspects. That's the real reason why the Administration's domestic wiretapping and abuse of civil rights is bad, not because it's wrong but because it's counter-productive. Good police work among citizens who respect the police works better. Cheney reportedly holds out Russia as a model for what he's trying to do -- that's the most corrupt place in the world.

As in politics, so it is morally. Get drunk, suffer the hangover. Take the coke, do the crash. Even marijuana, a relatively harmless drug, may take away your dreams and memories. It feels good when you're high, but you always pay the price later. And every pharmaceutical in the world has a label on it listing the side effects, or a group of advocates warning of its dangers.

Genius has a price. You may go mad. ADHD is a pretty small price to pay for genius -- your mind expands but you're socially isolated, immature, even blind to other people. You're labeled as disabled by society, and you either take the label or find yourself punished for the consequences of things you didn't even know were wrong.

Small Beer

Your reaction to yesterday's post about myself and my family was very gratifying, welcome and humbling.

I don't mind admitting now that I gained strength to face this from our church, a church my son had led us toward. A few years ago he said, "I want to join a church," and this is the one he chose.

I don't often go to service,  and as I noted the sermon helped me, but it also made me feel a little ashamed at my grief. The service always begins with concerns and celebrations, and the concerns expressed this day were truly horrible -- parents dieing, people in hospitals, cancer. I had passed what I took to be a bald-headed man upon approaching our pew, and found then it was a woman, undergoing chemotherapy, not expected to survive. She smiled and waved when she was recognized -- she hadn't been expected to make it to the service.

I was small beer compared to this. My kid is taking a hard knock but he's well, he's smart, he'll get through.