Dana Blankenhorn

Bubbles Don’t Really Pop

History will record that the Trump Bubble burst on January 6, with a coup attempt organized by Donald Trump. (The picture is from Doc Searls' blog.)

I have seen many bubbles pop in my experience as a business reporter. The best-known was the dot-com bubble. It popped on January 10, 2000 when Time Warner announced it would “acquire” AOL.

The precise date of the popping is only remembered in retrospect. At the time, business went on. That spring I attended a trade show called ad:tech, on my employer’s dime. Even a year later I was able to take my wife on a trip to Hawaii because of an Internet commerce conference on the Big Island.

My most vivid memory of that ad:tech conference was on a bus, heading back to our hotel after a day spent on the water, sponsored by an Internet ad agency that eventually sank with the rest. A young entrepreneur was complaining that each new round of funding was requiring more equity from him and generating less cash. “It’s unfair,” he whined.

I’m a cruel man. I laughed until I cried. Later, at the event’s award show, a block “CNN” ad won awards for creativity. I laughed until I cried again. The people around me thought I’d gone crazy. It was just that I saw the handwriting on the wall.

The point is that even after a bubble pops, many people will remain unaware of it. They will continue to take the bubble as a real thing. They’ll go in even-deeper. They’ll consider falling prices an opportunity, telling folks to “buy the dip.”

The Big Tech Conspiracy That Wasn’t

Once you show you like something, I offer you more of it.

Is this a conspiracy?

Not unless I’m a scaled Web site. Because this is at the heart of the charge against “Big Tech,” the companies I call Cloud Czars.

• Show a preference for certain videos on YouTube and YouTube offers you more videos like them.
• “Like” things on Facebook or Instagram, and you will get more things like them.
• Follow certain celebrities on Twitter, you’re offered more like them.
• The same with Amazon Kindle books. When you buy something from Amazon, you’ll be followed for days by ads offering the same thing.

The algorithms follow human nature. Chances are that if you like a book about 12^th century monks who solve murders, you might like another one. If you like Henry Winkler, you’ll probably like Ron Howard.

The problem is that if you like crazy conspiracy theories on Instagram, or videos describing the terrors of the Illuminati on YouTube, you’ll get more of them. Like those, you’ll get more. And more and more.

The Caudillo Model

American ideas in governing have been dominating the world for nearly 250 years.

The Declaration of Independence was the first truly revolutionary document, its ideals a model for democracies ever since.

But other American governing inventions aren’t worth celebrating. Our genocide of the American Indian became a model for dictators worldwide. Our Constitution was designed to enshrine slavery. The idea of eugenics, that certain people were genetically inferior and deserved to be eliminated, became Hitler’s model for the Holocaust.

A later invention is now threatening to undo all the work of the Declaration. That’s the Monroe Doctrine.

On its face, the doctrine written by John Quincy Adams and pronounced by James Monroe is nothing but beneficial. It proclaimed that Europe should keep its hands off the Americas. But it didn’t promise that this country would keep its hands off.

Since the doctrine was first promulgated, in 1823, the United States has treated the rest of the hemisphere as its empire. We invaded Mexican, seizing the larger half of it. We created Panama to build the canal there. We acquired Puerto Rico in a war and still hold it.

The Common Good

Without an overwhelming victory for democracy on November 3, I’ll be glad to die.

Trump is the ultimate expression of a basic misperception, that private goods matter more than the public goods, that national well-being matters more than global well-being, that fences and borders can isolate and separate us.

This is especially true when it comes to the environment.

My children face a bleak future unless current climate trends are reversed. But the U.S. can’t change it alone. Every country must do its part.

The ice caps’ disappearance means many cities around the world are doomed. New Orleans is doomed. Miami is doomed. New York City is doomed. So are Calcutta, Mumbai, Shanghai, and Kuala Lumpur. Sea level rise means these places will soon be underwater.

Meanwhile, the methane of the Siberian tundra is bubbling to the surface. Fires in the Amazon and West mean the Earth can no longer breathe. The “habitable” part of the U.S. will be cut by two-thirds within 50 years. The oceans are warming so that, along with overfishing, all that’s left will be jellyfish.

In past bouts of global warming, when the ice caps disappeared, nature adjusted. Cooling trends returned and nature came back. With man-made global warming, there’s no natural reversal. It takes 80 grams of energy to melt a gram of ice. Once the ice is melted, 80 grams of energy take its temperature to 112.

The Great Panic of 2020

The 2020 campaign isn’t marked by much movement in the polls.

Joe Biden has been ahead all year by anywhere from 5-10 points. The margin has been increasing, as Trump has acted like every suburban housewife’s abusive ex-.

Yet to read Lefty Twitter, you would be certain Trump is going to be President this time next year.

Uh, no. My guess is he won’t even be alive. When he realizes he’s going to be held to account, I suspect, he’ll take the coward’s way out.

Trump wants to steal the election, and is threatening a coup, because he knows he has lost.

The Tides of History

Ignore the polls that claim there’s a close election going on. Use your own intuition. You can feel the tide under your feet.

2020 has been a shit show. The idea that no one has changed their political views as a result is crazy. Yet that’s what everyone in Washington thinks, including those whose job (or hobby) it is to analyze elections.

Truth is there’s a tsunami out there.

History is made by people who create these tides. Great men (and women) are those who ride them. Villains are those who defy them.

Defending Facebook

Let’s start with something that should seem obvious.

Facebook is no longer a social network. It’s the global telecommunications company.

It became this by offering free services on a global scale. This came about thanks to its investment in cloud, beginning early in the last decade. While AT&T sat on its assets, along with all the companies once known as PTTs (Postal, Telegraph and Telephone services), Facebook put $1 billion/quarter and up into a network of cloud data centers.

Facebook did it the same way Amazon did, with cash flow. It made its services free, like Google.

Creating Demand

Right now, the biggest problem for the U.S. economy is a lack of demand.

We didn’t go on vacation. We didn’t go out to restaurants. We’re not getting on planes, or trains. We’re not even using our automobiles much.

This service sector of the economy, where today’s unemployed were working before the pandemic, has been crushed. It remains crushed. It will remain crushed until the pandemic is over.

The only solution offered has been to subsidize spending. That subsidy ended in September. Trump’s people stole the money, and the Fed pumped trillions into Wall Street investors who didn’t need it. The result is the greatest transfer of wealth in history, from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy and, indeed, to the ultra-wealthy.

Trump-ism and the Overton Window

Here’s something I never wanted to write, and something it will pain you to read.

Donald Trump is the most consequential President of our lifetime.

He has done far more than Hillary Clinton ever could, ever would, or ever thought of.

Yes, it’s all terrible stuff. Consequential doesn’t mean good. It means significant. Adolf Hitler “won” Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” multiple times. That doesn’t mean he was good, or that Time liked him. But when it comes to the history of the 20^th century, he was consequential.

Like Hitler, Trump is doing truly terrible things. Constantly. There’s not enough time to list it all.

The Virus Wins Again

As I write this, Democrats are tearing their hair out, fearing Trump is going to steal the election, the country, and we’re all gonna die.

Well, we do die. But Trump is going to fail. No matter what he does, Trump is going to fail.

I know this because I know his opponent, and his opponent can’t fail.

His opponent is the virus.

The virus doesn’t do politics. The virus doesn’t care what you think about it. The virus only cares about whether it can find new hosts and reproduce. The virus may not even be alive, according to many scientists. It’s just a strand of RNA.