Dana Blankenhorn

Our Gang

A few weeks ago my part of Atlanta was galvanized by the issue of crime.

A white guy of about my age, outside with a weed-wacker on a Saturday morning, whacked and now in critical condition at Grady Hospital. He's still in intensive care, but they hope he will be out in a few weeks.

Best I could gather from reading between the lines of reports on our neighborhood bulletin board is that this was a gang initiation or, perhaps, a stupid loss of temper between two guys trying to impress the same girl. The suspects at this writing are still at large and until they're caught we won't know.

Last weekend a protest demonstration was held. We went. There were about 150 people there, including political candidates, cops and neighbors.

By my count over 80% were white. Kirkwood has changed a lot in the last decade but it's not 80% white. Far from it. More like 40%. Maybe less.

More important the whites of Kirkwood are different in important ways from our black neighbors. We're  wealthier. We're better educated. We're more likely to be in our 30s, 40s or 50s. We're more likely to be gay, less likely to be regular churchgoers. If we attend any service on Sunday's it's the "church of the brunch" which meets at every breakfast bar in town.

Can You Fight for Civility?

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 35 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

It's the most profound question of our time.

Is there a way to enforce civility, to demand that adults in a democracy behave as adults or else. Or else what?

The last month has revealed that Republicans, from the top of their leadership to the bottom of their grassroots, are simply not interested in civil discourse. They have thrown in with the Haties as Democrats never threw in with the hippies of 40 years ago.

Those who pretend to civility, like Sen. John McCain, use that pose as a weapon, demanding it of Democrats while doing nothing to assure it among his own people. Worse are those like Sen. Charles Grassley quietly egging on the hate while pretending to be negotiating. He needs to pay a price for that.

The hatred unleashed here has been profound. Our President is routinely called names like Obongo, or compared to Hitler with no evidence other than his stated desire for health care reform and his necessary work (begun under Bush) to restart the economy by flooding it with cash.

The President is routinely dehumanized, with the excuse given that Democrats attacked President Bush and painted him too as Hitler. The word for that is projection. It's the attitude of a toddler. And we're talking about men and women in their 50s, 60s and 70s here, even 80-somethings.

It's also beside the point, because it's apparent the same hatred would now be on display, the same attempt to dehumanize, had Hillary Clinton or even John Edwards been elected last year. The same attacks are used against anyone in the media who calls people on this game, whether that's Keith Olbermann on MSNBC or your average blogger-on-the-street.I have been verbally assaulted many times, and likely will be for writing these words, by children pretending to be adults.

Regular readers here know where this comes from. The Nixon Thesis of Conflict was all about dehumanizing other Americans as some unAmerican "other," and this attitude reached its apotheosis with the Bush Administration. A generation has been raised to believe that bullying works, that the Argument Clinic is a parliamentary procedure, that their leaders are always right and the other side always has dark motives.

21st Century Jeeves

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 34 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

Recently Netflix sent us a classic comedy from 20 years ago, Stephen Fry (now a director) and Hugh Laurie (now House MD on Fox) starring in a true-to-the-book series of P.G. Wodehouse' Jeeves stories, called Jeeves and Wooster.

Laurie played Bertie Wooster, an upper class twit who thought he was smarter than he was. Fry played Jeeves, a "gentleman's gentleman" with the remarkable ability to get Bertie out of his self-made scrapes.

This got me thinking. How might someone deliver this value, or some portion of it, in the age of the Internet?

Even when Wodehouse was alive Jeeves was becoming antique. I don't need my pants pressed. I don't need my bath run. I can't afford to have someone else in my house taking care of me.

I am not alone in asking this. You may recall that the search engine Ask.com was originally called AskJeeves, the conceit being that it would deliver, not search results, but real answers to real questions. This same conceit powers Bing, Microsoft's new search engine. (Makes me wonder why Hope and Crosby didn't do a Jeeves series, with Hope as Wooster of course.)

There is a vast distance between a full-time, live-in butler like Jeeves and a software-driven online resource called Ask.Com. It occurred to me this morning that bridging this gap can spell opportunity.

Free to Lie

I have what is called the "good insurance" and it has never let me down.

But it doesn't provide health care. 

I got no help with my cholesterol until it became an illness. Now I take pills for it. The same thing for my kids' ADHD and whatever it is my wife has -- she's never been diagnosed with anything.

There is a big difference between health care and health insurance.

• Health care involves regular coaching, either from a doctor or someone like her. It's wellness management, and referrals to whoever may be needed to keep you well. It's exercise, it's diet, it's mental health.
• Health insurance, like car insurance, waits for something to go horribly wrong and then pays a portion of the repair bills.

Health care is also cheaper than health insurance. A lot cheaper. Think about the cost of managing your diet from the time you stop seeing a pediatrician until the diagnosis comes of diabetes. Or heart disease. Or alcoholism. Or morbid obesity. Now imagine we know from your family history that Type II diabetes, or cholesterol problems, or obesity, are very likely heading for you. Health care can prevent disease, not just manage it.

Compare that to what health insurance will do for, or to, diabetics when they're suddenly diagnosed, seemingly out of the blue, in mid-life. Constant monitoring, forced diets that can cause other problems, no attention to the mental aspects of this wrenching change. Small wonder patients become impatient, getting worse and worse, costing society more and more. 

Yes, it's simpler if they wait and wait and wait until they get the diagnosis they're about to die, and are just waved bye-bye. That's called Social Darwinism. And it goes against every precept of a civilized society, everything that is truly American, as well as all the norms of medicine.

If you're for that, please state so clearly, but while you're at it pay back all that government aid you've been collecting -- the state-funded education, the government-backed home loans, the aid your business got to get going, the VA care, the Medicare. (Need I add the military and police protection you have gotten all these years?) At least be honest with yourself, if you're not going to be honest with the rest of us.

That's what I think, but here's the real secret of our time. You won't. You will stand there as a naked hypocrite, unashamed, and pretend that you, the naked Emperor, are wearing the finest of suits, which you made with your own two hands. 

There is an important political lesson in all this. 

While proponents of health reform have to act like Democrats, their opponents are free to lie.

The Silent Majority

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 33 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

The hardest thing for a majority to learn, once its Thesis has overthrown that of the last generation, is that it is in fact the majority.

There is a natural dysfunction to a political balance. The minority acts like an abused spouse, alternately screaming in impotent rage or crouching low, ready to be hit. Liberals have been in this crouch for a generation, ever since the Nixon-Wallace coalition ushered in the Nixon Thesis of Conflict.

This thesis has been especially hard because, as noted, it is based on conflict, on bullying, on disrespecting the opposition as illegitimate, an intractable "other." Those who abandon the Thesis are traitors, no matter their past contributions. This Thesis had its apotheosis during the Bush years, where the right's foot soldiers were allowed to become like the hippies of 40 years ago -- haties I call 'em -- intimidating their opponents, shouting them down, forcing them off the political stage through their own triumph of the will.

Every new Thesis faces this type of battle with the past. Confederates. Populists. The Rich. The Hippies. It took a Great War for Lincoln to beat his enemies, Teddy Roosevelt co-opted populism, FDR used the media and Nixon used scorn -- his "nattering nabobs of negativism."

Mexico Wins

I actually preferred watching the USA-Mexico match yesterday on Telemundo, even though my Spanish is horrible.

Andres Cantor is one of the world's great announcers, the vocabulary of the game is sparse (pelota is ball, partido is game), and they concentrate on what is in front of them.

What was in front of them yesterday was some good football. For once I can't fault USA coach Bob Bradley for either his game-day selection or his second-half tactics. The players just didn't execute.

(Notice how in this picture from SoccerbyIves both fans are smiling, and they're not segregated from one another. An example for the rest of the world. I love Mexican soccer fans, by the way -- really enjoyed them during the recent AC Milan-Club America match in Atlanta.)

The USA got a small lead when Charlie Davies got a through ball from Landon Donovan, beat the off-side trap, got behind the defense and finished brilliantly. (The Usher-at-the-microphone celebration was also first-rate.) That was the idea. Long balls from Tim Howard (brilliant all game long), from the defense, anything to get over the midfield fast and hit them on the break.

The 1969 Game: Days of Rage

---

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 32 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

When a political thesis is overthrown, when a generation's assumptions about political right or wrong cease to be the majority view,  the inevitable result is rage.

That's what is happening at the "town hall" meetings over health care. It's not just that activists are feeding their people lies. It's that people are acting on those lies, with a virulence and potential for violence that threatens our democracy.

The shoe was on the other foot, in my lifetime.

The year was 1969. The subject was Vietnam.The 1968 election had settled this question. The war was a "Cold War activity," as Robert McNamara said, and surrender was not an option. But those who opposed the war (and it was a stupid war) could not accept the peoples' verdict, resulting in a series of protests climaxing in the notorious "days of rage" protests organized by the Weathermen.

The turning point in the larger battle had already occurred. That turning point was November, 1968, when between them Richard Nixon and George Wallace drew 58% of the popular vote.

What the Days of Rage did was create a reaction within the larger society, one of rejection. Not only was opposition to the war afterward discredited, but so were war opponents. For a generation to come, Republicans could win office easily by referring even obliquely to those days, by waving the "hippie" flag.

The Left's Katrina

Four years ago this month, the worldview of conservatives began to collapse with Hurricane Katrina.

The reliance on leadership, the rhetoric about drowning government in a bathtub, the assumption that government was more a hindrance than a help, it all came together in the figure of Michael Brown. "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie" became the epitaph of the movement.

The Netroots rose as a direct consequence of Bush-era failure. The idea was that people, ordinary people, could get involved in politics, could take power on behalf of intelligence, and prevent new Katrinas from happening.

But a Katrina is happening right now, testing whether that movement, or any movement dependent on volunteer activism, can long endure.

That crisis is health care reform.