Dana Blankenhorn

Propaganda for Good

Russia thought it was attacking a Russian province.

Turned out it was attacking Europe.

Europe is a state of mind. It’s egalitarian, but it’s fractious. It’s united, but not entirely. It’s western civilization in microcosm – messy, slow to anger, but mighty when provoked.

The invasion revealed that Putin’s Russia wasn’t even a nation-state. It was a medieval Empire, gilded by 20^th century ideologies, wealth, and technologies.

What makes this Empire so dangerous is that it has used all it had to attack America. Until recently it was successful. Putin ran our government, through Trump. Had we not beaten Trump he would be sitting in Kiev right now.

The Putin threat to this nation is still alive. It can still win. That’s because Trump was never Putin’s most dangerous puppet.

Rupert Murdoch is.

Without Fox News, Trump would have gone nowhere. Without Fox News, racism could not still be rising. Putin is a King. He won’t be satisfied until he rules everything. Murdoch is an oligarch. Rich man wants to be King.

Find me three issues on which Murdoch and Putin fundamentally disagree. I’ll wait.

I’ve written this before. It is time for Americans to become Ukranian in the defense of our heritage and rights. I’m not talking about grabbing guns and heading for Kentucky. I am talking instead of using what Ukrainians have taught us, in their hour of need, about propaganda.

The video above teaches this lesson. The song is about mothers, how they grow gray but still treat us like children, protecting us. What we see are women soldiers rushing into the war zone to take children to safety.

Then note the twist. These aren’t their own children they’re saving, or not just their own. When the children are safe, the women go back to the war. They seek their faith. They go on. They are soldiers. Everyone is a soldier.

What America is going through is a struggle. It’s a struggle that can be won. But it will take every weapon at our disposal, including propaganda. We have 5 ½ months and, if we win this time, anything is possible. If we fail, nothing may be possible for a long, long, long time.

The Year of Clarity

This is the year the masks came off. This is the year the cold war became a hot one.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine was a mask coming off. The oligarchs who embraced Vladimir Putin for two decades, and all those who pretended he wasn’t the second coming of Hitler, were exposed. Some tried to back away. Others doubled down. It doesn’t matter. We know now who is on the side of freedom, and who isn’t.

It was a clarifying moment. It created clarity across Europe, and in much of America too. Lines have been drawn. On one side lies democracy, liberty, everything we’ve claimed to stand for over 230 years. On the other side lies evil. Yes, many of its ghosts are American, in genocide, in slavery, in racism and eugenics and the rest. But these are ghosts.

At least we pretended they were.

The leak on overturning Roe vs. Wade is a second clarifying moment. That’s not so obvious yet. Many still try to pretend it is politics as usual.

It’s not. It’s a declaration of war.

The Way to Wealth is Tolerance

There’s nothing wrong with wealth.

Wealth is supposed to create a sense of responsibility. Andrew Carnegie understood this after he sold his Carnegie Steel in 1901.  Thereafter he devoted himself to giving all his money away. MacKenzie Scott, formerly Mrs. Jeff Bezos, is doing that today. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have promised to do that.

They do it to protect the system. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith defended capitalism by positing that wealthy people would be inclined toward the common good. Some are. Others are not.

For every Carnegie there’s a Vanderbilt. The good news is that, after a few generations of profligacy, even a Vanderbilt fortune can run dry. Anderson Cooper is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt but he’s not a rich man. That’s a hopeful story.

The good news is that, so far, 2022 is giving me an 1898 feeling. David Traxel’s book on 1898  describes a nation facing a Populist uprising amid a progressive ferment. It describes a war that was blissfully short, a turning point because it brought to power a man who would get along with Wall Street.

The Progressive movement and Wall Street’s self-interest lined up perfectly. Few people understand this, even today. Utilities for electricity, telephony, for transport, for water and for natural gas, could only be created through regulated monopolies. The late 19^th century’s efforts to create them in other ways failed. J.P. Morgan portrayed the evil trust king in the popular imagination, and Theodore Roosevelt the benevolent trust-buster. But they were working toward the same end. The result was today’s American cities.

Isolation

I’ve been watching a lot of soccer lately. I’ve also been reading a lot. I’ve even checked in on Amazon Prime.

What I haven’t been doing is obsessing over politics. I think that’s true for many millions of people, especially on the left.

Why? Because it doesn’t matter until it matters.

The result is an assumption in Washington that fascism is about to take over. They see progressives isolated within their own lives, confusing that with acceptance.

This is true around the world. Ukranians feel isolated. Chinese feel isolated. Religious minorities are isolated everywhere.

Silent Majority

The thing about a Silent Majority is that we’re silent.

We just want to get on with our lives.

There used to be two seasons in Washington. There was political season and policy season. Drunk on the attention of the last few election cycles, Washington reporters and pundits now think it’s always political season. Republicans, the minority party, have indulged them with constant outrage. The insurrection meant to bring down the U.S. Constitution was just the start.

But I can’t see a single issue on which Republican stands represent a majority view. The only way these views get any traction is by filtering everything through a Republican prism. There’s an entire media class, owned by oligarchs, doing nothing but that. Extremism in the defense of liberty is a vice, for in extremism there is no liberty. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is a virtue, for without moderation there is no justice.

Ghosts of Our Fathers, Angels of Our Nature

When someone says of the Fascists, oligarchs, religious bigots, and racists of today’s Republican Party “that’s not us,” I shake my head.

That is us. I’m a history major. America has always been a battle between our ghosts and our better angels. There’s nothing Russia or China can teach us in that regard.

• Slavery? We perfected it, in the American South.
• Genocide? We perfected it, in the American West.
• Eugenics? We invented it, in American cities.

The Taliban have been here since the Puritans. Nearly all Christianity’s craziest cults were American-born. The Great Awakening of the 19^th century was just an appetizer.

Tech Demands Freedom

America dominates the global tech economy because freedom.

The freedom to think what you want, and be who you want, is now the key to economic growth.

This is a point that’s widely ignored by American elites today. Americans love to talk about what’s wrong and have overestimated our global adversaries since 1776.

It’s most obvious now in our economic competition with China.

China is a great manufacturing power. But it continues to trail in software and science. It deliberately put down its Cloud Emperors for threatening the state. It can’t deliver the latest semiconductor technology.

Software is the product of hands and minds. You can’t automate its production, the way you can a car. You can improve productivity with better tools. But organizing a team requires that coaches listen as well as speak. Man management, they call it.

The best scientists, coders, and writers are all motivated by something inside. We’re not doing it for the money, we’re not doing it for an ideology. We each have our own reasons. In my case, it’s a desire I’ve had all my life to be heard, to be seen, to be part of the conversation. If you want to get the most out of us, you must respect that. China’s government doesn’t respect that.

The Privilege of Struggling Against Taliban and Oligarchs

I had no idea I was privileged until I moved into my present house.

My new neighbors were all black. Lower middle class. They worked hard. They had bought into the neighborhood 15 years before, in a rush, after the Open Housing Act enabled “integration” in Atlanta. It was, in fact, just a new form of segregation. But they were thankful for what they had, with a stubborn working-class pride in what they did and what they had done.

They raised me. (Mrs. House here lived to be 101. She was 99 and still going strong when I took this picture.)

About 20 years ago, with Afghanistan underway and Iraq coming, Republicans talked about how “we have to fight them over there, so we won’t have to fight them here” and about how “freedom isn’t free.”

Now we are fighting them here. The American Taliban and economic oligarchs represent the whole of today’s Republican Party.

They were right about one thing, however. Freedom isn’t free.

The Paralysis of War

War is paralyzing, even for those unconnected with it.

You can’t make plans. You have no energy. You have no idea what’s going to happen next.

I go back and forth. One day I think Ukraine can win this thing, or at least hang on until Putin is deposed. The next day I think they’re doomed, and the world with it.

Regardless of the result it’s already clear that Ukraine and Russia must be rebuilt. Ukraine, physically. Russia, politically.

It’s Russia that’s the biggest problem. It can’t sustain a Ukraine occupation. We couldn’t sustain one in Iraq, or even Afghanistan. Yet Putin thinks he can, and so-called “analysts” in the West agree. They don’t think the Russian people can do anything, nor do they think the Ukranians can once occupied.

This is naïve.

The Second Coming of Armand Hammer

During the decades of the Soviet Union, there was a Russian spy hiding in plain sight. He was welcome in boardrooms, even the White House.

His name was Armand Hammer.

Hammer represented Soviet interests practically from its beginning. As detailed in the 1996 biography Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer, Hammer befriended Lenin back in 1921. He continued to represent Russian interests almost until his death, in 1990.

During his life he was often called a “go-between,” because as CEO of Occidental Petroleum he was a business executive welcome on both sides of the Iron Curtain. While The New York Times called him a “riddle” in 1981, a more accurate term from Epstein’s work is traitor.

I believe we have another Armand Hammer in our midst, which is why I bring his name up.