Dana Blankenhorn

The 1978 Game: Dialing Nixon to 11

I hate to brag, but I wrote about 2018 over a decade ago, when I first published this blog’s most important piece, “The Nixon Thesis of Conflict.” 

Here is how I described it then.

“Its assumptions include the ideas that political adversaries are enemies, that politics is a form of war, that attack is always better than defense, and that the system is always under threat from outside.”

It is only because those people who came of age during the Nixon period still live, and dance to its tune, that we have Trump. Trump is the Nixon Thesis of Conflict, dialed to 11.

• Trump supporters deny the reality of trans people.
• Trump supporters are racists.
• Trump supporters are sexists.
• Trump supporters hate Hispanics.
• Trump supporters hate gays.
• Trump supporters hate China.

Trump supporters distrust technology. They ignore climate change even while Florida drowns. They want to give health care to the “free market,” even knowing that doesn’t work. They want to kill Social Security and Medicare, having already handed that money to defense contractors and billionaires. They hate Medicaid. They prefer private colleges to public ones.

Oh, and they want to privatize the VA.

Isn’t there something wrong with this picture?

If you’re hating on most people, and calling them “haters” when they resent it, aren’t you just asking for trouble?

The Future is Not American

I was noodling on a story about the cost of Trump when I realized an important truth. (This is Ladi Delano, Nigeria's youngest billionaire. From millionaire.ng) 

Because of Trump, the future is not American.

I don’t know whether the future will be based in China, or in India, or even in Africa. I just know it’s not going to be here.

Because of Trump.

Barack Obama had a dream, of an inclusive society, multi-ethnic, diverse, and tolerant, that would attract people from all around the world and keep America from falling down the demographic cliff single-ethnic societies were falling into. We would beat China by attracting their best minds, renew ourselves with immigrants from every land and remain forever young.

It would have worked.

Look Around, Look Around

At times like this, when it seems the political world’s going to hell in a handbasket, it helps to take the long view.

My life is infinitely more comfortable, and will likely be longer, than that of my parents or (especially) my grandparents. I have a large, air-conditioned house, next to a train that will get me to an Airport in under an hour and from which, for under $5,000 round-trip, I can travel to anywhere in the world.

The medicines I take prevented the heart attack that began claiming my father in his 40s. The miracles of our time saved my wife from cancer. The technology I began covering in its infancy, this Internet, has given us both fulfilling and independent careers. Our kids are taking this to the next level, studying ecology and the mechanics of life, so their children’s lives will be even richer than our own.

It’s especially important, at times like this, to understand American history and what drives our politics.

Business drives our politics.

The business of America is business.

The industry, or industries, that provide the most added-value to each generation inevitably winds up controlling our politics. What they do, in their own self-interest, is filtered through the actions of each generation into the genie we call progress.

The Medical Oilpatch

One of the first business stories I covered was the Houston oilpatch, in the late 1970s.

The oilpatch, or the oil exploration industry, has always lived in a boom-and-bust cycle. When I was in my early 20s it boomed, and so did Houston. We were Dubai before Dubai was cool. Then prices busted in 1981 and the city followed.

The oilpatch had another boom early in this decade, with the rise of fracking. The idea is credited to George Mitchell, a man I interviewed while at the Houston Business Journal, and involves shooting water, sand and chemicals down a wellhead to break apart the rock, allowing oil and gas to seep out of the new cracks.