Dana Blankenhorn

Loyalty

Loyalty is one of the most powerful forces in human nature.

But it can be broken, as anyone whose spouse has cheated on them knows.

Abandoning loyalty is painful. We avoid it even after it’s proven worth less. We defend it even when it’s proven worthless. Usually, we abandon it privately. Whoever or whatever abused our loyalty is often the last to know.

Getting and keeping loyalty is a big topic in business schools. So is getting it back. Not enough study is devoted to losing it. We just know it when it’s happened, when sales at Kmart, or Blackberry, fall off a cliff. When that happens, we usually look at Walmart, or Apple. We don’t study the loss of loyalty. In retrospect, it’s obvious.

While it’s happening, however, it’s not obvious. Loyalty dissipates slowly, then all at once.

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.

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 Siege of America

Americans have felt under siege for over 13 years now.

The present era of history, the backlash against President Obama and all Americans who supported him, began within days of his election.

It has only accelerated since.

First, Obama himself was declared illegitimate, other, a foreigner. This lie made it easy to define Obama’s supporters in the same way.

Vladimir Putin used this hatred to make Donald Trump President. There is no longer any serious question. Trump was Putin’s man.

Trump created the conditions for a Second American Civil War. It began his first year in office. It only grew hotter after the murder of George Floyd.

Every American, even the most fervent Trump supporters, learned in 2020 that they were a minority among Americans. This broke their faith in the American Constitution, as the Confederacy broke faith with it in 1861. As was true then, government “of the people, by the people, for the people” was redefined to mean only some people.

Many Republicans still support Russia over Ukraine. Others seek to drop their own past into a memory hole, while retaining the essence of Putinism. They believe only those loyal to their twisted, anti-American ideals has a right to rule. They believe women should be slave to a man’s sperm, that blacks should be slaves to whites, that gays should be slave to straights, and that only history reflecting this may be taught. Anyone sympathizing with Obama’s America deserves to be oppressed, forced to repeat lies and made to shut up, forever.

This is what makes Ukraine the real turning point of history. The war in Ukraine is revealing the Civil War within America. The minority is as armed and angry as the South was in 1860.

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.

Cry Treason

My biggest problem with the State of the Union speech was the President’s refusal to directly tackle the elephant in the room.

It’s now clear that a substantial portion of the Republican Party was on Putin’s side, right up to the war.

Putin’s operation to co-opt the party, through Donald Trump, succeeded. Trump was elected. Trump was impeached but not convicted. Trump nearly won re-election. Many of those duped by Putin (through Trump) remain under his thrall.

Even the non-Putin party, at the state level, has adopted a Putinesque policy and a Putinesque stance toward political opponents. It’s treason against our democratic system to call the other party treasonous. I realize I’m doing this now.

That doesn’t mean Republicans haven’t committed overt acts of treason, directly benefitting Vladimir Putin, at his direct or indirect instigation.

All this starts, as I wrote earlier, with Fox News and its owner, Rupert Murdoch.. Any reckoning of Putinism begins by reckoning with Murdoch, just as any reckoning with Bill Cosby starts with his sexual assaults. I think the President should have gone after this more directly.

Anyone involved in the events of January 6 participated in a coup against the U.S. government, instigated by Donald Trump and benefitting Vladimir Putin. The entire Trump Administration was a kleptocratic wet dream. All of it must be exposed. All the thieves must be brought to justice.

Maybe this can’t start until Putin has fallen. As I write this, the war in Ukraine continues. But each day Russian oligarchs, and the Russian people, grow poorer. Each day Putin becomes more isolated. Nuclear disaster is still on the table. But the crisis will end, one way or the other. The only questions now are when and at what cost.

What happens after? Republicans think they can go from being appeasers to being war hawks on a dime. This took four years after Pearl Harbor, as they switched from appeasing Hitler to opposing Stalin, and attacking Democrats as fellow travelers.

Will we let them get away with it again? Will we ever learn from our own history?

There must be a reckoning.

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.

Turning Point

Assuming there’s no nuclear war, the Ukraine conflict is a global political turning point.

Democracy has found its voice. Autocracy has found its limits. Dictators can act while democracies dither, but there’s no constraint on the dictator.

We know the price of that now. Not just in America, but everywhere.

The implications of this realization will spread like the concussive wave of the Tongan volcano. This will leave a mark on the world like that of WWII.

Trump and all his little Trumpkins are now discredited. That’s most of the Republican party, gone. TV is trying to resurrect Mitt Romney, who called Russia our enemy in 2012, as the new face of the party. But it’s a greatly diminished party.

Dictatorship has also been discredited globally. We can now see the dangers inherent in the political systems of Arabia and of China. Unchecked power leads to madness. Dictators also flock together, each endorsing the madness of the others. It’s bad for business. It needs to change.

None of this will happen all at once. We all want things to happen all at once. But the tone of global debate will slowly change. We have seen the strength of democracy. We have seen how people will die for liberty and unite against dictators.

We won’t forget.

I Know Things Look Bleak Now But…

I didn’t think Vladimir Putin was stupid enough to invade Ukraine.

I was wrong.

He’s just that stupid.

While most of the Internet (and all of Ukraine) is either fighting or cowering in fear right now, I want to offer some reasons for hope.