Dana Blankenhorn

The Good News About Trump

Sometimes it seems like we’re playing the 1942 game.

There are few people alive now who remember what 1942 was like. After Pearl Harbor, it seemed, the Axis and the Japs were on a constant march forward, while America and her allies were in constant retreat. Freedom hung in the balance, The Man in the High Castle was about to become a real future.

We got through 1942, and I believe we’ll get through 2017. I believe 2017, like 1942, will also teach us enduring lessons, lessons three generations of Americans will retain for the rest of our lives.

The global threat of Trump, the reality of a Trump presidency, is teaching us those lessons.

First. The American System is more than the Presidency.

It’s more than Congress, more than the judiciary.

The American system has robust checks and balances everywhere. There are institutional checks throughout the bureaucracy. There is the voice of the people themselves. There is Wall Street and technology. There is the media. America is a highly complex system. Journalists and pundits oversimplify it to our peril.

The power of the Presidency rises and falls based on the character and popularity of the President. Barack Obama embraced the complexity. He was a successful President by any measure. You may not like his program, but he got it through.

The End of the Beginning

Every American political crisis eventually leads to violence, to acts of war.

Vietnam was a real war, but so was the conflict over that war here in America. The Progressive Era, at the turn of the last century, saw sporadic violence throughout the period from 1890 to 1915.

Who wins the war is not always obvious at the time. I would argue it’s the side whose values define the next era which has won. Never mind that almost all the violence of the Progressive Era ran against the rights of workers. Their values won. Never mind that Nixon was elected, and re-elected, during the Vietnam Era. The protestors’ values won.

Every political crisis is an opportunity, and an obligation, for a new generation to stand up and be counted, to define what their America is all about.

What Comes Next

Reporters on all beats are so obsessed with the here-and-now they ignore what is going on beneath, the trends that will make up tomorrow.

This has always been my indictment of the business I have called home for nearly 40 years. It’s why I didn’t make more of my news career than I did. I was constantly looking around corners, seeking the future, rather than looking closely at what was in front of me.

That’s OK. I’ve had a good life. No, make that a great life. A wonderful life partner, two great kids, a home we have built together, comfort in our old age, and memories of good times.

But I’m still looking around corners, still trying to figure out what’s next. Ask any old person. Inside them you’ll always find a 20-year old going “what the fuck?”

For a decade now, ever since I began seeing that technology was going to achieve political power, and sustain that power, meaning all that’s happening now is a play I foresaw, I have been thinking about what comes next.

The Internet of Things? Renewable energy? Artificial Intelligence? All these of the now. They’re what is happening. I foresaw IoT nearly 15 years ago now, and reported on it here to you, as “The World of Always On.” I began covering renewable energy just as that area began to boom, and predicted we would achieve crossover with fossil fuels by 2016. As we did. Artificial intelligence? I’d settle for some of the real kind, frankly.

Stupid In, Stupid Out

The U.S. economy is going to start rolling over soon.

I can’t give you a date. I just know it’s going to happen.

It’s an easy prediction to make, because since January we have had stupid policy coming out of Washington. Jim Cramer doesn’t think Washington can crash the economy, but Roll 212. 

This is not just me talking. The International Monetary Fund has taken down its estimates on U.S. growth, citing Trumpian stupidity.  Tech funding is declining with more of the money going to mature companies, less to start-ups. That’s not what is happening in other countries – they’re flying.