Dana Blankenhorn

We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us

History does not repeat, but it rhymes.

I have learned that in my own studies here over the last decade. It’s our ability to learn from history, and so step back from the brink, that is the secret of America’s success.

The present political conflict has elements of the Civil War and World War II in it. Like the Civil War it’s primarily a sectional struggle, this time between cities and suburbs, and also (so far) primarily a political struggle. At the same time it’s also a global struggle over values, with people around the world wanting to tear apart the post-war order and so make war upon one another. It will be America’s job, over the next four years, to offer a credible alternative.

Also, as with previous crises, this one has roots going back a generation. The Civil War followed a generation of compromises between North and South, brokered by the West. World War II followed the harsh peace of World War I, and the rise of Empires (including, thanks to Teddy Roosevelt, our own).

Similarly, everything we’re seeing now is an outgrowth of what I have called the Nixon Thesis of Conflict. 

Let’s remember what that was about.

Donald Trump Dies for Your Sins

Over the last decade I have learned that America has four different types of elections:

• Crisis elections, where the assumptions of a generation are proven to be past their sell-by date and are overthrown.
• Validation elections, in which the new assumptions are overwhelmingly ratified.
• Anti-Thesis elections, in which a new coalition arises to challenge the assumptions and eventually breaks through.
• Excess elections, in which the anti-thesis is defeated, narrowly, by the knees jerking on the old assumptions.

America works on a generational cycle, tied to economic trends, so there are some elections that wind up fitting midway between these assumptions. Sometimes events do overturn the apple cart, like Watergate, which delivered Jimmy Carter (narrowly). These are the exceptions that keep people guessing, although I really do think Watergate itself drew extensive press coverage.

The point is that 2016 is a Validation Election. It has a lot in common with 1980, or 1948, or 1908, or 1868. In all those cases, the leader who led the nation through the crisis is off the stage, and the political movement they birthed – its assumptions or ideology, its media, its industry – must find a way forward without him.

The Asphalt Jungle is Trumpistan

Political reporters were caught off-guard by the rise of Donald Trump because it’s not a political story.

It’s an economic story.

The story would be easy to understand if pundits just left their offices and drove into any American exurb. Jobs and whole professions that once gave life to these places have disappeared.

Think for a moment about what people who live in suburban cul de sacs are most likely doing for a living. 

Law schools are closing  Doctors have been hauled out of their office towers and have become wage slaves in street corner shops. 

These are the lucky ones.

Insurance agents have been replaced by apps. Travel agents disappeared long ago, replaced by sites owned by Priceline and Expedia. Teachers have lost their jobs and seniority to charter schools, retailers to Amazon.Com. Sell cars?  You’re an order taker. Same if you’re in real estate.

The skills you spent a lifetime learning are becoming worthless. 

The Fourth Riding of the Ku Klux Klan

Every advance of minority rights in this country has been marked by violence. The Civil War never really ended, as Barbara Fields said. It can still be lost.

We were taught in history class that the Civil War ended in 1865, but the violence continued, as white southerners including Nathan Bedford Forrest formed the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1860s, the specific aim of this First Riding being to put blacks back “in their place,” under heel, through murder.

That effort was successful, as Union troops abandoned the field in 1877, after a disputed election where southern electors became crucial. The “war” won, the overt violence died down and lynching took on its aspect of ritual.

Tourism is a Mug’s Game

I love to travel. I dream of doing what my father-in-law did, retiring to a life of seeing the world.

But after spending my working lifetime as a business reporter I also know one thing for certain. Tourism, as an economic activity, is a mug’s game.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the business of being a gracious host. There just aren’t many high-paying jobs in it. Most jobs in tourism are things like taking tickets, waiting tables, cleaning hotel rooms, maybe acting as a docent or guide. These are not jobs that can feed a family in modern America.

Tourism is the original “gig economy,”  a game rigged by the undeserving rich aimed at creating a poor, and complacent lower class by the mid-21^st century in place of the middle class that built America in the mid-20^th century.

Revenge of the Cities

Think of this as Volume 18, Number 20 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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The big story of this decade is the revenge of the central city.

A lot of people will tell you it's about gas prices, or slow household formation. But it's a trend that has been building for decades, and the economic change it represents is permanent. As permanent as such change can ever be, as you'll see.

That change is in the locus of economic growth. During the “Mad Men” decade, that locus was moving from the factory floor to the office tower. You can see it in the background of the show. Agencies that were struggling with print ads early in the decade were prospering with TV and computers by its end. Men in Gray Flannel Suits from 1960 had become wealthy and filled with ennui by 1969.

The Crisis is Upon Us

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 39 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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A hundred and fifty years ago the fate of the nation hung in the balance.

History tells us that the results at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, which came in July, sealed the South's fate. But that wasn't the way people looked at it at the time.

That's because the South believed so strongly in their general, Robert E. “Bobby” Lee. They believed he could keep the North bleeding until it cried uncle, until a new leader like George McClellan took over and sued for peace. They saw the draft riots in New York as a sign of things to come.

History shows they were wrong about the North and it should show they were wrong about Lee. The same Lee who won at Chancellorsville by dividing his army multiple times in the face of superior force threw George Pickett's division into the fire at Gettysburg. That should have ended the war, except Union general George Meade refused to follow-up, which is why Lincoln eventually called for U.S. Grant. Grant and his chief lieutenant, William Tecumseh Sherman, gave Lee the war of attrition he could not answer.

The Riding Goes Deep

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 28 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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Back in April I wrote about the 4^th Riding of the KKK mainly in terms of the Republican leadership.

But leaders don't go where their followers won't. This riding of the Klan, like all previous ridings, is based in the grassroots.

The first riding was based on a real fear that blacks were taking over the government. Reconstruction made white voters ineligible to vote in the 1860s, so blacks did take over, and the purpose of the riding was to put blacks back in “their place,” a virtual slavery to replace what was now illegal.

The second riding, which coincided with the fall of populism early in the last century, was designed to enforce Jim Crow laws, and pushed millions of blacks into the new industrial ghettoes of the north, which had a brief golden age in the 1920s.

The third riding, starting in the 1950s, was in reaction to the Civil Rights movement, and was designed to minimize the gains of Dr. King and his followers. That movement eventually metastacized into an uneasy racial peace, with whites becoming Republican and suburban while blacks were given the crumbling cities.

Tribalism

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 22 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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The greatest danger to democracy comes from tribalism.

In most of the world, democracy usually fails as a direct result of tribalism. People divide up into tribes based on ethnicity, or religion, and vote exclusively along tribal lines.

The result is it doesn't matter what the issues are, or who the candidates are. The result is foreordained.

Tribalism allows enormous corruption to exist, because there's nothing to stop the leaders of the largest tribe from stealing. From the other tribe and from their fellow tribesmen.

Gun Owners Anonymous

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 19 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The people who attended last week's NRA convention, and the people who support them politically, engender a wide range of emotions in those of us who don't share their ideology.

Fear. Loathing. Anger. In my case, rage and ridicule come quickly to mind.

But the most important, most effective emotion is not being deployed. It's the emotion that led Gandhi and Dr. King and even Jesus Christ to change humanity. It's almost never deployed against the greatest threat to life in our time.