Dana Blankenhorn

Who is Abbie Hoffman Now

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 22 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Principles are good. They are important. I wouldn't want someone involved in politics without them.

Ideology, on the other hand, is bad. It's anti-democratic, because it doesn't allow for facts or disagreement.  (You can buy this picture as a poster. I've made it small as an ad for the poster company.)

Ideology can destroy principles, turning them ugly, making them murderous. It doesn't matter what the principles are. The ideas of Karl Marx, that we should all treat one another with decency, that no one should be left behind, made perfect sense until they were turned into an ideology. The same was true of most 19th century German philosophy, until these principles were turned into ideologies. Then we had war, and mass murder, and genocide, and madness.

The same is true for American principles. Turn them into ideology -- turn any of them into ideology -- and they become destructive. Democracy seen as ideology led us to Vietnam and Iraq. Capitalism turned into ideology led to Bushism.

Every crisis in American history has caused people to seek new principles, and turned those principles into ideology. It's the hardening of principles, a natural political arteriosclerosis, which creates these ideologies. It also leads to their rejection. It's why we have such a circular political history, a generational metronome marking our progress.

The great political turns in American history have come when we recognized principle becoming ideology. We rejected it in an election, but the extreme believers in that ideology kept going, forward in their own minds, becoming caricatures of themselves. Fortunately, the American people have been wise enough over 200 years not to follow.

So who's Abbie Hoffman now?

Journalists in FoxLand

If this century teaches any lesson above all others it is this.

It doesn't pay a decision maker to listen only to what you want to hear.

George W. Bush did. He destroyed himself by it. He refused to take delivery of news from Iraq, or New Orleans, or the housing market, that differed from his world view. He actually seemed to believe he could create his own reality.

We paid for it.

Reformers Only Morning Glories

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 21 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Money is the most enduring power in American politics.

Reform will come and reform will go, but the only secure way to power is by negotiating with the money power.

Each generational turn of the wheel in American history has been followed by just such a negotiation. Money lost the struggle only once, as Andrew Jackson closed the Bank of the United States. This was followed by economic collapse driven by the states' uncontrolled issuance of bonds. Money won't make that mistake again, especially since Europe is playing the 1837 Game right now.

Republicans put the money power in charge after the Civil War. The progressive era was a continued effort to negotiate with, and struggle against, the money power. The liberal era forced the money power to accept a new normal of regulation in exchange for profit. And the Nixon era overturned the compromise.

The best explanation for why money covets order can be found in the classic "Plunkitt of Tammany Hall." "Reformers are only morning glories," Plunkitt claims. Truer words do not exist. Issues drive reformers, and causes. These are problems of a moment. They may transform, but they do not transact. You can't have constant political revolution. Eventually you have to settle down and do business.

In the years around a genuine political crisis, and that's what we've been in since 2005, this can be hard to see, hard to fathom. There is great fervor on both sides. The question for money is always, who will set the rules.

Optimism for Sale

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 20 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The best time to sell optimism is when everyone is pessimistic.

That's when it gets the best return. The absolute best opportunity to buy stocks in this country's history was probably in October, 2008, when everyone was going around like chickens with their heads cut off.

This is an important political message. It was the secret to Ronald Reagan's success, to that of FDR, and it is going to make Barack Obama a great President.

Optimism. It's the secret ingredient to any success in politics.

Now it's true that your optimism needs to be borne out by events in order to have the right effect. George Bush's optimism about Iraq just became a collection of Friedman Units, and LBJ's about Vietnam spawned his credibility gap.

The 1970 Game: Dispersal of the Tribes

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 19 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Ever ask yourself why the Left broke up under Nixon? (If this motivates you buy the poster at Allposters.com)

Some of it had to do with the loss of their majority -- Nixon's "southern strategy" brought the Wallace people into his coalition creating a long-term majority.

But some of it also had to do with the Left's natural dispersal after it broke up into various cause tribes. Feminists. Black power advocates. Hispanics. Environmentalists. Gay rights activists. Anti-war activists.

Each group sought to place its own agenda first. Each drained adherents from the organized left into their specific cause. In 1970 the media was following each of these movements avidly, thinking that they could coalesce into a cohesive reversal of the Nixon Thesis. Instead, of course, the Nixon people picked them each off one-by-one.

The main thesis of my history stories on this blog is that the media is stupid. Always.

End American Slavery

America has always depended on slave labor. It still does.

This is not to denigrate my black friends. Black folks here were slaves from the moment they came to these shores. Civil rights ended that for many, but there were still broken families, often created with intent, and little memory of the past. All efforts to pull together, to start new traditions, and to reclaim black history are great things to me.

They're evidence of freedom. They're evidence of finally coming into full standing as Americans.

But I digress. Nearly every American family has gone through a period, in its history on these shores, where it was "the other." Where it was exploited. My mother's family were O'Donnells, and in the 19th century they faced discrimination. My dad's people were Germans, who flooded in during the late 19th century and were distrusted during World War I.

(Above is my great-grandmother Anna Korcyniewski O'Donnell, born in 1867, who worked as a midwife in turn-of-the-century New England and who helped (without realizing it) give me a unique name, since Dana is Polish and my German dad never knew that. You may notice a resemblance to this reporter. I do.)

Minor stuff to be sure. The point is that my people were subject to exploitation, and most likely so were yours. We overcame it with time, and with assimilation. Usually it takes about a generation.

But if the flood of your people seems unrelenting, your period of slavery can last a good long while. Millions of Mexican-Americans are fully assimilated, but they feel feel the sting as distant relatives continue to cross the border.