Dana Blankenhorn

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.

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. 

No More Mr. Nice Liberal

I have led a charmed life.

When I moved into our present house, in 1983, we were in the lower middle class.

I had just lost my job at a weekly newspaper. My wife had just gotten work and, with her employer’s help, was going to grad school. We could barely afford the interest on the $44,500 we borrowed. Her dad gave us $5,000 down, but grudgingly. He thought we were wasting our money.

My new neighbors changed me.

Moore’s Law of Politics

Moore’s Law does many things. It is deflationary, and it accelerates the pace of change. It has given us longer lifespans, with more ease, than any generation before.

Moore’s Law was originally a prediction that chip densities could double, every year or two, as far out as Gordon Moore, later co-founder of Intel, could foresee, at least in 1965. But it is much more. Moore’s Law infects every technology, and everything technology touches, accelerating the pace of change in every direction.

For example.

I should be dead by now, or infirm, as my father was at my age. But the discovery of statins and ARBs keep my cholesterol, measured at 373 in 2000, and resulting hypertension under control. (My dad had his first heart attack at age 47.) My dear wife should be crippled, or dying, but advances in treating cancer and implanting artificial joints mean she still walks ahead of me.

This is Moore’s Law in action. Call it Moore’s Law of Health. We live longer because of the technology created by Moore’s Law, and for those who can afford it, an active life to age 100 is within reach.

But there is no Moore’s Law of Software. Software only improves as new tools are created and implemented.

There is no Moore’s Law of Education. You learn only as fast as you learn.

There is also no Moore’s Law of Politics. If there is one, it acts in reverse, against change. We don’t change our political beliefs in reaction to technology. Our assumptions remain those we started with. Very few people change political sides.

The Math

The question most asked by liberals is this.
How did Trump win? “There can’t be more of them than us, there can’t be more.” 
Well, first, as news networks and good prosecutors have been learning for two years now, he cheated. He used the Russians to scare people who were willing to be scared. He used money to hide things he needed hidden. That got him a few percentage points in key states. It may be responsible for 3% of the 46% he got. Remember we’re talking about 75,000 votes in four states for the margin.
But what about the rest. What about the base? Could there possibly be 43% of America that identifies with this SOB?
Yes. But it’s a good story. You might even say it's based on Moore's Law of Politics. 

Peak Trump, Peak Carter II: The Health Care Rebellion

Only old reporters and historians now remember the Sagebrush Rebellion, which may have been more decisive in setting our current political course than any other event of the late 1970s.

The Sagebrush Rebellion was a rural revolt on behalf of private property, against the government that still controls most of the land. Before it got going the West was represented by people like Frank Church in Idaho, a liberal firebrand whose name lives today in a 1973 amendment against the Vietnam War.  Mike Mansfield, a Montana Democrat, was the Senate Majority Leader in the 1970s, and even Alaska was represented by Democrat Mike Gravel.

Today, the only Democrats in the Intermountain West and High Plains are “yeah-but” Democrats, people like Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who generally agrees with the principles of the rebellion but argues that, sometimes, like in her election, the Republican is just a little too radical for local tastes.

The modern equivalent of the Sagebrush Rebellion is health care. Democrats use the shorthand Medicare for All.