Dana Blankenhorn

The Limits of Senior Power

If I were around 100 years ago, I would be dead. Instead, I’m rich. (Pictured are my grandparents, May and Edmund O'Donnell, in 1918.)

It’s a demographic and economic transformation that is destroying hope for change in America and (perhaps) making us the last generation.

Until recently, people lived their first 20 years dependent on parents, the next 20 as parents, the next (if they were lucky) 20 as grandparents and anything past that dependent on the children. Most of the world still lives this way.

But starting with Social Security in 1934, and continuing through general prosperity to today, America has turned this on its head. Seniors aren’t just living to an average age of 83, we’re doing it with money. I’m just a 68-year old journalist but, thanks in large part to a wife who works in tech, I’m a millionaire. We own our house. We have enough invested to guarantee a fine retirement, God willing. There may even be something left when we’re gone.

This has changed political incentives. There’s no better example than Florida where The Villages, a huge retirement town of 150,000 (almost all of whom vote), has turned the state’s politics on its head. Add them to those already living up-and-down the state’s east, west and south coasts, and you get a huge state entirely devoted to short term thinking. Education, the environment? Fuck ‘em. We’ll be gone.

The Why of the Guns

Guns have replaced drugs as the tool of systemic racism.

When I was young drugs were effective at this. Push drugs on young black people who are unemployed and feeling hopeless. Arrest the black people doing the drugs. Toss them in jail and they’re not only slaves (for the duration of their sentence) but non-voters for life.

It worked.

But as white folk started getting sentenced, and as black families learned better, you needed a new mechanism.

Lax gun laws are the mechanism.

Righteous War

America hasn’t fought many righteous wars.

In the 19^th century the Civil War was righteous. Everything else was conquest. The “winning of the west” was a slow motion genocide. We took the Southwest from Mexico. We took the Philippines and Puerto Rico from Spain. We teach it as democracy, as freedom. It was empire.

World War II was righteous. In retrospect, I’m glad we fought in Korea.

Other than that? We have been involved in more coups, in more places, for worse reasons, than the British Empire ever thought of. Vietnam was not a righteous war. The Gulf War was not a righteous war. Neither was the Iraq War. Afghanistan began as a righteous mission then turned into a distinctly unrighteous war.

Americans have the blood of the world on our hands, and we deny that every day. The difference between the parties is that Republicans do it more systematically.

Business Needs Consensus

I have long believed historians misread the Progressive Era.

They see it as a victory for liberal values.

I read it as a victory for business. Which isn’t necessarily a different thing.

Fact is, the business of America is business. America has always been led by a dominant industry. Farming, then cotton, then railroads, then infrastructure, manufacturing, oil, and now technology.

Power flows to the highest-value industry and, when that is supplanted, flows away from it. Just as cotton lost to the railroads in the Civil War, I believe railroads lost to infrastructure in the Progressive Era.

What the great inventions of the late 19^th century – electricity, telephony, and the automobile – required for mass adoption was scaled, organized infrastructure. Having two or more electric utilities, two or more phone companies, or (God forbid) two or more private road networks made no sense. What Wall Street saw in the 1890s was that monopolies created efficiency.

But the monopolies would need the approval of government. The price of government approval, in a democracy, would be regulation, and some means of control over the result.

2023: Look on the Bright Side

If we’re to get through 2023 alive, we’re going to have to take joy where we find it.

We certainly didn’t find it in journalism this year. Editors on every beat have taken to writing aggressive, clickbait headlines, designed to provoke feelings of anger and depression. They do it because they’re rewarded by the algorithms of a failing Internet business model. They do it to boost traffic.

This is even true on my business beat, where every negative headline has a positive corollary. Rising prices create incentives and profits for producers. Rising interest rates mean savers can finally catch a break. Layoffs create opportunity for other employers while the job market remains tight.

The headlines are misleading because they take just one side. They make it appear the economy and markets are terrible even though the former is not.

2022: The Global Cold War

It was clear in 2020 that Americans were at war with ourselves.

In 2021 that became a Cold War, mostly played out in the media and state legislatures. There were some violent outbursts. There always are. But for the most part it was our war.

In 2022 that war became global. Russia invaded Ukraine. China ratcheted up its rhetoric about invading Taiwan. Afghanistan and Iran criminalized every woman in their countries. And the war became hotter here.

With the good people of this country activated, we won some notable victories. We held off the horde in our general election. Ukraine held off Russia. China’s economy rolled over, giving Xi Jinping something else to think about. Iran’s women revolted. Jair Bolsonaro lost his re-election.

The New Class Struggle

One of the biggest stories of 2022 is the discovery of a new class struggle, happening right under our noses.

It’s the product of our technology society. It’s between those who own this society and those who “merely” manage it.

When I was focusing my work on American political history, starting in 2006 with the launch of this blog, I assumed technology would lead us toward equity.

That’s because technology runs on human capital. Talent is the gating factor to growth. Not land, not people. Talent.

What does it take to nurture talent? You have to set a wide net, because it can come from anywhere. You have to educate everyone, because anyone could be great, and anyone who’s even good provides value. You can’t care where talent comes from, the color of its skin or the way its heart works or something called “disability.” Let talent find the ability it has, and exploit that.

Let people be free and make them comfortable. That’s the best way to raise children. It’s also the route to economic growth and saving the planet.

The Enemy is Religious Nationalism

The 2022 election mostly put Trumpism into the rear-view mirror.

What it revealed was the larger political battle of this decade, between secular democracy and religious extremism.

I’m not against God. But there are two problems with religious nationalism.

First, it’s intolerant. Wherever one religion rules, its adherents outlaw any faith but their own. This is true for Hindus in India, for the Russian Orthodox, even for Buddhists in Burma. It’s true for Jews in Israel and for fundamentalist protestants in the United States.

This remains true despite every great religious teacher, from Gautama to Vishnu to Confucius, from Moses to Jesus to Mohammed, all the way to Joseph Smith, teaching first the way of tolerance. Love your neighbor. Care for the less fortunate. Seek the enlightenment of faith for yourself.

It’s the leaders of these faiths, the Popes and the Mullahs, the Rabbis, and the Brahmins, who twist it into something else. There is a reason for this. Those faiths that adhered to tolerance were, over time, wiped out by leaders of the intolerant. This is the true original sin.

The Coup Succeeded

January 6 wasn’t THE coup. It was a coup, an attempted coup, a failed coup.

But there is a coup that succeeded, that toppled American democracy, possibly for all time.

This was the McConnell coup. By succeeding, during the course of 4 years, in getting three unqualified political hacks onto the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell won the power to redefine the Constitution and destroy American democracy.

That work has barely begun.

Lies Unmet Become Truth

In politics, lies that are not met with truth become the playing field.

There are some huge ones this year.

The Economy

We’re told, and assume, that the economy is terrible. It’s not.

There is inflation, but full employment and pay raises means the impact on most families is modest. The U.S. GDP rose 2.6%, on an annual rate, in the last quarter. Thanks to the government, millions of families have savings, a cushion against hard times, to see them through, at least for a while.

But this year has sucked for one group of people. Investors. Especially rich investors.

The men who control the Cloud Czars have lost trillions of dollars in market cap this year. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have each lost $100 billion of their fortunes. But these losses are dwarfed, in impact, by the trillions more lost by smaller investors, and speculators, in SPACs, in crypto, in stocks and in bonds.

We don’t live on our investments. We’re not supposed to. Those who are near retirement, like me, are supposed to move into cash and interest-bearing accounts for living expenses. Those who have done so are doing OK. For the first time in decades, we can get a return on our money. The return is guaranteed when you buy I-Bonds, government paper whose interest rate is indexed to inflation.

But the rich are “suffering” and they are busy convincing the middle class they must make up the difference, and that until the poor truly suffer the Fed can’t be expected to ease off. Remember, the rich demanded the Fed fight inflation, last year. The Fed has and they haven’t responded. It’s their own fault.