Dana Blankenhorn

Generation Gap

When David Bowie died last week, age 69, many wrote that he was “gone too soon.”

The point illustrates something important about our society today, and our politics.

Because David Bowie was never too old to rock and roll, and he was too young to die. (Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, who wrote that lyric, is 68 and currently on tour – we have tickets.) Paul McCartney is still rocking at 73. Bob Dylan is 75 and still writing songs. I guess 70 is the new 60. (Which is good because I turned 61 last week.)

When older players refuse the leave the stage, it can be hard for a younger one to shine. That may not be true in arenas like music or sports, but it is definitely true in politics. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is only a few months younger than Bowie. Her opponent, Bernie Sanders, is 74. Republicans can’t complain because their front-runner, Donald Trump, is 70. For those old enough to remember the issue of Ronald Reagan’s health in 1980, it’s a sea change.

It’s not entirely welcome, either. One thing a generational crisis should do is wipe previous history off the political map. Lincoln and Douglas didn’t debate the War of 1812. But 1968 is just as far removed from 2016 as 1812 was from 1860. Clinton and Trump could well try to re-legislate Vietnam. Both were active way back then.

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.

Winning the Oil War

Vietnam was said to be “a Cold War activity,” part of a larger struggle for global supremacy between the U.S. and the late Soviet Union.

The description overlooked millions of deaths, and immense human suffering, dismissing it as a byproduct of something larger, a proxy war. Veterans of the conflict remain insulted by the characterization, but in historical terms it was accurate.

History will record Syria, then, as an “oil war activity,” just as 9-11 was an “oil war activity.” It is part of a larger struggle for global supremacy among the producers of oil and gas. The tragedy is that it’s not recognized as one.

Understanding that Syria is just one piece of a larger struggle, and understanding what that struggle is really all about, would give us a chance to win that struggle, but so far no one in power, not even President Obama, has made that connection publicly, and with sufficient urgency.

The 1940 Game

What would Democrats have done in 1940 had FDR been term-limited?

Every generation of American politics has some things in common with generations that came before. But the period that comes to mind now is that which came after the Crisis of 1932, which evolved into World War II.

As was the case then, the economic crisis and previous military conflict brought with it blowback. It created enemies who threatened the very foundations of the Republic. The difference is that while FDR faced a consensus against military conflict he had to reverse, this President faces a consensus in favor of military conflict that must be reversed.

As was the case in FDR’s time, when those against his Thesis of Unity misread the past, trying to make history repeat when the opposite tack was called for, so the case against Obama’s Thesis of Consensus is based on a misreading of history.

Back then, of course, Republicans were isolationist. Many even found Mr. Hitler compelling. These people did not want America re-arming, and their control of Congress made it difficult for Roosevelt to coax the build-up of fear and passion necessary to face the challenge.

National Security and the War Against Oil

The attacks in Paris are a reminder that, 82 years after Texas aligned America with the Saudis’ Arabia, trading technology for oil, things are getting no better.

It’s a chain of mutual dependence. They have oil. We need oil. They sell oil to buy guns. We make guns to buy oil.

It no longer has to be this way.

In just the last five years, the cost of renewables has become cost-competitive with that of grid energy. Warren Buffett buys solar power plants to assure Berkshire-Hathaway with regular electricity supplies. 

At peak times Texas gets 30% of its electricity from wind. Once, due to the peculiarities of its regulatory system, wind suppliers were actually paying customers to take that electricity, it was so plentiful. 

The Silent Majority Needs to Run

Conservatives love a parade. Liberals all want to lead one.

It’s an old political saw which speaks a profound truth. People are always more ready to fight in defense of what they have than on behalf of an unknown future.

The basic political equation I learned over 40 years ago remains M x V = P. Myths times values equals power. Old values are understood more easily than new ones. Myths are more easily created around old ideas than new ones.

America has, on the whole, been a liberal nation because our leaders have been able to wrap new values in the colors of old myths in order to achieve power.

The Founders wrapped the ideas of the Declaration of Independence around English common law, drawing a clear line from the Magna Carta of 1215 to their own struggle, and relying on contemporary philosophers like Locke, Burke and Montesquieu to explain them. The Constitution was negotiated, then explained in terms of democratic frameworks dating to Greek and Roman antiquity.

My Theory of Generational Change

Over the last decade, on this blog, I’ve done a lot of writing which resulted in my generational view of history.

For those new to these pages, a review. It’s history as seen through the eyes of business, because that’s where political power comes from in this country. The business of America has always been business. It’s our Hamiltonian heritage. And it’s still true.

Because America has developed, politically, in relative isolation, since 1788, what happens here is mostly based on what happens here. Europe and Asia had to re-set after both World Wars. Africa still doesn’t rule its own destiny. Most of what happens in Latin America remains a reaction to what we (in our blundering way) have just decided to think, do, or imagine there.

But this country is different. We are less a place than an idea, that idea being that if you accept what we stand for, raise your hand, and take an oath, you’re one of us. This allows America to continually evolve, and to renew itself.

Our Founding generation split politically within 12 years of the Constitution, then ruled for 28 more before the divisions they had papered over required plastering. Theirs was a mostly agrarian society, which fought its political fights over whether it would build the infrastructure needed to industrialize.

A Brief Political History of the Internet

This is the sixth general election since the Web was spun, and the turning point in this history came with Howard Dean.

The Dean campaign was the first in the history of the Web that was based in and on the Web. Its blog, in 2003, was a mind-opening affair, one which allowed ordinary people the chance to actually have influence on a Presidential campaign for the first time.

That summer, around the time I visited their offices in South Burlington, campaign manager Joe Trippi hired a couple of political bloggers to advise him on what to do next.

Why We Are Going Left

Ignorant of longer-term patterns, beholden to their owners, every political reporter on the planet has missed the political story of the year.

The wind that for a generation was blowing from the right now blows from the left.

Whether you’re talking about Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Labour in England, the Pope in Rome or Democrats in the U.S., ordinary people have grown tired of conflict, tired of feudalism, and tired of excuses for prosperity failing to improve their lives while elites play zero-sum games in order to grab more-and-more power.

This wave has been building for a long time and it’s based on an economic fact. The age of oil is ending. The age of technology is here.

For technology to fulfill its potential takes an enormous amount of cooperation. Technology flattens hierarchies, and broadens bases. Technology demands liberty.

I have made my living covering technology since 1982. These trends are not new. What is new is that technology is now at the center of everything. It’s how we move money, it’s how we do science and art, it’s essential to participation in the modern world.

The Death of Nixonism

People usually die suddenly. Political movements die slowly.

The resignation of House Speaker John Boehner represents the death of Nixonism.

Nixonism was, in retrospect, one of the most important political movements of the American 20^th century. It was as important, and long-lasting, as Rooseveltism, which began with Theodore Roosevelt but didn’t really die until decades after FDR’s death, when his party sought new directions through a “liberal” south which finally resulted, after fits-and-starts, in the election of Bill Clinton, whose political legacy was to be an anti-thesis to Nixonism, to lean against it, yeah-but it, adapt to it, and put something of a liberal gloss on it.

The effort failed, as all anti-thesis efforts fail in America. Grover Cleveland, the Democratic anti-thesis to Civil War Republicanism, failed. So did Woodrow Wilson, and Dwight Eisenhower. So, eventually, did Clinton. All were succeeded by men who represented an “excess” of the old Thesis, extending it beyond all reason, making the knees jerk until the assumptions broke down under the weight of new history and required wholesale replacement.