Dana Blankenhorn

2018: Halfway Through the Gauntlet

Kids are taught in history that Gettysburg was the turning point of the Civil War, and that Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, was the turning point in World War II.

From July 4, 1863, the South never invaded the north again. From January 1943, the Nazis and Japanese never again had the initiative.

That’s not the way things were to the people living through these crises. While these events were celebrated, people knew better.

I believe it will be seen that November 6, 2018 represented a similar turning point in the crisis represented by Donald Trump, and the invasion of the West by Russia that is, even now, escalating in Europe and the Ukraine. But a turning point isn’t final victory. It doesn’t even mean victory is in sight.

Tsunamis vs. Waves

As soon as it became apparent that Democrats would win the U.S. House, analysts began asking whether this was a “wave” election.

It wasn’t. It was a tsunami.

It’s easy not to understand this because most political scientists aren’t taught the difference between a wave and a tsunami.

The waves that daily hit the shore of the Bonzai Pipeline, on Hawaii’s northwest coast are often 12 feet high. But a wave, no matter how high, will break upon the beach and do no damage, except perhaps to the surfer who doesn’t catch it right.

A tsunami, on the other hand, is caused by forces deep inside the Earth.  A tsunami may be shorter than an ordinary wave, but it will do tremendous damage, because of the enormous power behind it.

The 1979 Game

When you win the popular vote by 9.5% but still lose ground, as Democrats did November 6, your problems are systemic.

The result underlies tech’s obligation to come out of its shell and fight for the political system that birthed it.

Tech moguls have done some things. Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, Marc Benioff bought Time Magazine, Laurene Powell Jobs bought The Atlantic. The key to gaining more power will be in creating journalism business models beholden to tech interests.

Tech must do to Bizarro Carter what oil did to Jimmy Carter, and for the same reason -- to protect its self-interest.

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.

Trump’s War

I’ve been guilty of this myself.

I’ve said that George W. Bush had to have been a worse President than Donald Trump because he lied us into war and Trump didn’t.

Well, Trump did. Trump has. Trump has unilaterally declared a trade war, based on nonsense, and a lot of people are going to be hurt by it.

And it’s all based on lies. (Sculpture by Kimber Fiebiger.)

First. A trade deficit isn’t money you have to borrow. It lowers your cost of goods sold. It’s deflationary and allows you to sell finished products for less than before. It makes the whole global economy more productive and efficient. This idea that we “owe” China for its trade surpluses is, simply, a lie.

Second. Trump is going to war on behalf of industries that deserve to fail. Coal hasn’t been a growth driver since the 19^th century. Steel hasn’t been vital since World War II. Supporting failing industries is bad industrial policy.

Third. Trump is going after China in precisely the wrong way. If he did want to hurt China economically, he would open the H-1B visa floodgates and encourage every Chinese student coming here to remain. What drives economic growth in the 21^st century, as I’ve said many times, is human capital, trained and willing minds. Freedom is our trump card in any conflict with China. Sending them down the demographic cliff while we stay above it, remaining youthful by bringing in the world’s best and brightest, is the only way we’re going to stay in the economic game.

Civil War

The great liberal value of tolerance is ill-suited to war.

If you’re tolerant, and the other side is intolerant, you’re going to get beat.

What has kept America going for 230 years is that, occasionally, under extreme provocation, our tolerance can snap. It snapped in the Civil War. It snapped in World War II.

This is because right-wing intolerance doesn’t know when to stop. Hippies today are elderly. Yet conservatives still punch them. And liberals still accept it.

The reason conservatives continue to win in our politics, despite their minority status, is that liberals have remained tolerant. They tolerated the extremes of conservative behavior the way a mother does a wayward son, thinking he’ll grow out of it.

Conservatives won’t grow out of it. It’s built into their DNA that the most ruthless will rule. The end state for conservatism is fascism, in rule of the most power-mad. The end state of liberalism is true communism, where everyone gets practically nothing.

Trump is the end state of conservatism, but many reporters refuse to accept this. CNN still tries to balance academics and journalists against absolute loonies, as though politics is the Monty Python “Election Night Special” sketch. That’s how the Silly Party wins. We don’t call it out.

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.