Dana Blankenhorn

Ghosts of Our Fathers, Angels of Our Nature

When someone says of the Fascists, oligarchs, religious bigots, and racists of today’s Republican Party “that’s not us,” I shake my head.

That is us. I’m a history major. America has always been a battle between our ghosts and our better angels. There’s nothing Russia or China can teach us in that regard.

• Slavery? We perfected it, in the American South.
• Genocide? We perfected it, in the American West.
• Eugenics? We invented it, in American cities.

The Taliban have been here since the Puritans. Nearly all Christianity’s craziest cults were American-born. The Great Awakening of the 19^th century was just an appetizer.

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 Ukraine

We’re now in the most dangerous and (for outsiders) nerve-racking portion of what I’m going to call Ukraine’s War for Independence.

It’s the siege.

Having spent most of the arsenal they came in with, Russia is trying to destroy Ukrainian cities and starve out the people, wrecking utilities, food supplies and safe gathering places. It won’t work. If you can’t take the people (and they can’t) you can’t take the place. That’s the lesson of Iraq, the lesson of Afghanistan, the lesson of Vietnam and nearly every other war since the Second World one. The only wars that work are wars of extermination. Ukraine is as big as Texas, with a population like California.

When Will This War End?

An Army travels on its stomach. It’s not generals who win wars. It’s economies.

This is the lesson of the Civil War and World War II. It’s the lesson of Ukraine.

War “experts” like to ignore this. They assume dictators can always get more of what they need from somewhere. Thus, they over-estimate America’s foes and under-estimate America itself.

Putin is all-in on the Ukraine invasion. He can’t put in more people without risking civil strife in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Georgia or even Russia itself. He can’t get more of anything, and his people are getting hungry. Money no longer works. Russia hasn’t had much manufacturing capacity since the Soviet era. The population was already falling due to vodka and COVID.

What’s needed to end the war is a way out of it. That’s why the President’s moves to re-supply Ukraine are all covert. The Congressional anger at Biden helps our cause. It lets him play the good cop.

Dawn is Coming

We’re approaching one of the biggest snap back rallies Wall Street has ever seen.

Once Putin’s War is over, everything’s going up. How much depends on the result.

Right now, signs are good. Israel has joined the sanctions regime. China is only going to sell stuff to Putin for cash. But China is in worse trouble than we are. They’re still fighting COVID with lockdowns. Their stock market is a mess. Their property magnates are collapsing. Hong Kong has created a brain drain. Shared prosperity is becoming shared misery. I expect a slow policy readjustment.

Once the war is over inflation will decline. Not magically. Prices are always sticky downward. You don’t cut your price based on costs. You do it when your rival cuts theirs.

Technology remains our best weapon against inflation. My long-term concern remains deflation, and how the gains of technology are apportioned. Fortunately, all those forces who sided with Russia, including our worst oligarchs, are being discredited by events. No one in Washington can see this because they only see today.

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.

OPIC

My one fault with the Biden Administration so far has been its leniency toward its enemies.

Republicans aren’t the loyal opposition anymore. Vladimir Putin isn’t just an adversary. Those who still support Putin are domestic enemies, and it’s there in the oath of office, that you protect against both foreign AND domestic enemies.

The spike in oil prices may be another opportunity lost.

The opportunity is to create what I call an Organization of Petroleum IMPORTING Countries (OPIC). While the U.S. is nominally an exporter, we are the natural leader of this group, which could include India, Japan, Europe, South America, most of Africa and even China.

The first task of OPIC would be to account for the elimination of Russian supply from the market. Each member would agree to a specified reduction in imports, or an import maximum. Each member government would deal with this shortfall however it saw fit. But if no one breaks the agreement, then you can go toe-to-toe with OPEC in the oil markets, searching for price stability.

Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members want price stability. They like price spikes, but they know they’re a short-term thing. Over time, over the next 10 years, they know that their net production will rise, while demand will fall. The Sun shines, the wind blows, rivers, and tides, roll, we live on a molten rock, and there’s also efficiency. Today’s cars, trucks, appliances, and computers all use much less energy than they did before. The increase in time between charges for your phones is all due to their becoming more efficient. The batteries are the same.

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.