Dana Blankenhorn

The Climax State

One advantage that biologists have over economists and political analysts is a clear understanding of a “climax state.”

A climax state, whether it’s a swamp filled in by peat, a redwood forest, or a planet filled with huge dinosaurs, is the most vulnerable thing in nature. It only looks stable. But a fire, or any sudden conflagration, can destroy it utterly. Mankind has, in the last thousand years, created such a climax state.

This was all described to me in the summer of 1991, when we took our family vacation around our home state of Georgia and found ourselves riding in a canoe through the Okefenokee swamp. Our guide described how the life-and-death competition among plants and animals leaves organic matter behind, which fills in the water and creates little islands, which are eventually connected as more water disappears. But these islands are highly flammable. A fire in the swamp clears them out, leaving a new swamp for creatures to compete in.

It's lack of competition that makes ecologies vulnerable.

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 Eye of the Hurricane

The 1978 election, my natural analog for 2018 based strictly on economic history, was not a great one for Republicans.

True, they won 15 House seats and two in the Senate. But Democrats retained control of Congress, both houses.

If history were to repeat itself in 2018, this would give Democrats the Senate and keep the House in Republican hands. History rhymes, it doesn’t repeat.

Jimmy Carter was very popular at this point in his term, in the wake of the Camp David accords. His approval rating was 56%. The fact that Republicans won in 1978 despite this shows their issues had saliency. The Wikipedia entry on the election notes that it set the stage for the Reagan Revolution, and that the Republicans who won were far more conservative than those they replaced. 

No More Mr. Nice Liberal

I have led a charmed life.

When I moved into our present house, in 1983, we were in the lower middle class.

I had just lost my job at a weekly newspaper. My wife had just gotten work and, with her employer’s help, was going to grad school. We could barely afford the interest on the $44,500 we borrowed. Her dad gave us $5,000 down, but grudgingly. He thought we were wasting our money.

My new neighbors changed me.

Moore’s Law of Politics

Moore’s Law does many things. It is deflationary, and it accelerates the pace of change. It has given us longer lifespans, with more ease, than any generation before.

Moore’s Law was originally a prediction that chip densities could double, every year or two, as far out as Gordon Moore, later co-founder of Intel, could foresee, at least in 1965. But it is much more. Moore’s Law infects every technology, and everything technology touches, accelerating the pace of change in every direction.

For example.

I should be dead by now, or infirm, as my father was at my age. But the discovery of statins and ARBs keep my cholesterol, measured at 373 in 2000, and resulting hypertension under control. (My dad had his first heart attack at age 47.) My dear wife should be crippled, or dying, but advances in treating cancer and implanting artificial joints mean she still walks ahead of me.

This is Moore’s Law in action. Call it Moore’s Law of Health. We live longer because of the technology created by Moore’s Law, and for those who can afford it, an active life to age 100 is within reach.

But there is no Moore’s Law of Software. Software only improves as new tools are created and implemented.

There is no Moore’s Law of Education. You learn only as fast as you learn.

There is also no Moore’s Law of Politics. If there is one, it acts in reverse, against change. We don’t change our political beliefs in reaction to technology. Our assumptions remain those we started with. Very few people change political sides.

Peak Carter, Peak Trump

One thing that has surprised me over the last two years is how almost no one understood my point right after the 2016 election, that Donald Trump is a sort of Bizarro Carter. 

By that I meant he is completely the opposite of Jimmy Carter. Carter was a Democrat. Trump is an Autocrat. Carter believed in human rights. Trump believes in the divine right of kings. Carter championed the environment. Trump trashes it. Carter said he’d never lie to us. Trump lies 6 times before breakfast.

What they have in common is they represent the end times for the Political Thesis that birthed them. Carter was elected 44 years after Franklin Roosevelt and was the last President to run on those principles. Trump came 48 years after Nixon and will be the last President elected under the Nixon Thesis of Conflict. 

That 1999 Feeling

For most of the last two years I have felt much as I did in the late 1990s.

Soon after launching a-clue.com, my e-commerce newsletter, in 1997, I began warning of dark days ahead. True, the Internet was cool. Yes, e-commerce was great. But when companies barely have sales, let alone profit, and there are many companies trying to get through the same door, all acting like they’ve gotten through it, and people are still throwing money at all of them, I say nay.

Here’s a life confession. I’m early to any party. I became an avid bike rider in the 1970s. I was arguing with my teachers about what the Internet might mean to the journalism business in 1977. My dear wife was commuting to an office by bike, in sneakers, in 1980, and by train, in Atlanta, starting in 1983. I began telecommuting the same year and became a professional Internet reporter in 1985. I began covering Internet commerce full-time in 1994.

But in 1999 my “spidey sense” was tingling, big time. People were throwing too much at the space, too fast.

When AOL swallowed Time Warner on January 10, 2000, getting 60% of the deal, I knew the jig was up and said so. But I didn’t shift my money away from the space.

As a result, I was as burned as anyone else. In 2002 and 2003 my total income was zero dollars. But I was younger then. I stuck to my guns, found other beats, and today I’m richer than I ever imagined being.

Humility and Democracy

America has been the terror of the world for nearly 75 years now. Along the way we have overthrown many elected governments, killed and brutalized millions. When the Cold War ceased to be our excuse, we did it for oil, or because “terrorists” were doing it back.

We glory in our military excess. This is bipartisan. President Obama attacked Libya to get rid of Qaddafi, which is now a hellhole and source of migrants destabilizing Europe. He got involved in Syria but did nothing to stop the war there. Europe’s refugee crisis has “Made in USA” stamped all over it.

We’re still in Afghanistan. Obama refused to get out. He never moved against the military control of sporting events, the staged reunions, “God Bless America” replacing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” or thank you for your service.

The United States spends more of its treasure on the military than all our conceivable rivals do, combined. We have usually gotten away with it, but not always. We still haven’t gotten our heads around losing in Vietnam, or the Iranian Revolution.  

Thanks to Trump, the price of arrogance is now going to be paid. Trump’s stupidity guarantees it. And there’s nothing for us to do but take it.

This is where the next Democratic Administration will get its fiercest pushback.