Changing America
My grandfather was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, and died there in 1967. He was a sports editor for the Cincinnati Post; an expert on horse racing. Being an expert, by the way, didn’t mean that he got rich “betting the ponies”, but he did help “set the odds” with his expertise.
One of the marvels of Ben Dahlman’s life, was that he was born when the United States was waging war against the Native Americans in the West. The fastest means of transportation was the railroad, and long distance communication was by letter, or, for shorter messages, telegraph. The telephone was invented four years before he was born, but wasn’t in use yet.
He lived to see the horse drawn trollies down Mitchell Avenue (with strategically placed water troughs – see photo – throughout the city) become gas powered, then electric. Whole industries like livery stables, “Icemen” delivering for iceboxes, and “Milkmen” delivering daily, disappeared. The telegraph was replaced by the telephone, then the radio, then the television. Passenger trains were on the way out when he died in 1967, air transportation and interstate highways took their place.
His lifetime was full of dramatic change. And so is ours.
1920’s Policy
Today we have a White House that would have been very familiar in my Grandfather’s “hey-day” in the 1920’s. Current US immigration policy is modeled after the one used post-World War I, when the US was highly restrictive of immigration from anywhere except Northern Europe. (Of course, we would let folks in from Norway then, too!!). American foreign policy ignored Europe. We were secure in the belief that the Atlantic and Pacific provided a wall of security against foreign incursions. They called it “Fortress America”.
US foreign policy in the twenties was almost constantly engaged with Central and South America, a continuation of the “Banana Wars”. US military forces were engaged in Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Honduras. In addition, the US continued to have border issues with Mexico. We actually launched an invasion of Mexico in 1914, led by General John “Blackjack” Pershing. In the 1920’s, those problems continued, often involving immigration.
So it shouldn’t be such a surprise that the US military is now nearing a full-on war with Venezuela. Trump is trying to return to the era when Standard Oil drilled in the Venezuelan jungle, back in 1921. The President has threatened direct military intervention in Mexico against “narco-terrorism”. And, of course, over ninety men are dead from US attacks on boats supposedly smuggling drugs, perhaps even headed to the United States. As far as Europe is concerned, the Trump Policy has a familiar name: “America First”. That’s the same name taken by those who opposed involvement in Europe before both World War I and World War II.
Industrial Life
Like my grandfather’s era, we are looking at dramatic changes in industry. The current tariff policies, targeted to bring companies back to the United States; will take decades to, maybe, be successful. (And only if future administrations continue it). But even if many industries do return to US soil, they won’t bring the “good old factory” jobs back. Like a lot of our society, much of the industrialization, from building cars to making tires, is now automated. But Trump replicates the tariff policies of the 1920’s, with stiff “protective” tariffs against foreign competition. Those tariffs helped slow European recovery from World War I, making it more vulnerable to the economic disaster of the Great Depression.
In fact, the next big change in our lives will be the impact of artificial intelligence on employment. Think of it this way: right now, I could “assign” an artificial intelligence program to write this essay comparing the foreign policies of the 1920’s and the 2020’s. It might do a better job. Last week, I ran into a former teacher who left the classroom to write learning objectives for an educational software developer. She lost her new job this past year: AI can do it, without a paycheck.
The loss of industrial jobs in the 1970’s and 1980’s had a tremendous impact on American society. What used to be jobs that paid for a middle class lifestyle, were gone overseas. Those same jobs are not coming back. And, with Artificial Intelligence, a whole new class of jobs will go the way of the livery stable, the iceman, the telephone operator or the gas station attendant. Huge swaths of jobs: copy writing, developing educational lesson plans, advertising, basic design and structural development, almost all kinds of information entry and processing; will become an “AI” problem. The “nurse” from your doctor’s office will no longer call with information. It will be the computer, that doesn’t require health insurance, or weekends.
Harding and Coolidge
This is the implicit promise of the Trump White House: we will bring back the “hey-days” of the 1950’s, with industrial jobs, and an “idyllic” way of life symbolized by the suburban TV lives of “Ozzie and Harriet” and “Leave it to Beaver”. The path he follows is one blazed by Presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. They are the “authors” of the historic actions that Trump finds so promising.
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”. And the current “rhyme” with the 1920’s ended with the 1930’s: the Great Depression, the rise of Fascism, and World War II. We can see the signs already. America needs to change the rhyme, the pattern, the rhythm. Otherwise Trump’s “hey-days” risk repeating historic tragedy.
