Today I see the last day of summer 2020. It is also the last time that I will wake up without having to go into a classroom filled with students since our school dismissed on 13 March 2020. It was like there was a fire in the far corner of our cafeteria when we evacuated. Now, most of the building is in flames and we've been equipped with a spritzer bottle to combat the inferno as we're called to return to our classrooms.
I am not happy about the returning school year, though I think such a bald statement misses what's happening here. I'm not happy because my children aren't getting the annual tradition of back to school shopping, the thrill of new backpacks and lunchboxes, the excitement of seeing their friends, the challenge of a new grade. I'm not happy because instead, my children will be stuck at their grandma's house, wearing masks and tooling around on Chromebooks for the majority of the day. I'm not happy because the hollow words of praise from society about what teachers were able to do in the spring quickly collapsed into criticisms for failures, many of which were far beyond a teacher's power to control. I'm not happy that there are people who are planning on using their children as a political statement and thereby endangering other people's lives when they send their kids to school without the mandated masks. I am not happy because I will not be a teacher this year. Oh, I still have a job. I'm still in the classroom. I'm still covering the same moments in history, the same literature of the time. I'm still doing a job, yes, but I'm not a teacher. For me, a teacher is someone who inspires, instructs, and involves students in the process of learning. It's someone who seeks out ways of connecting--emotionally and intellectually--to the students and curricula. It's a person who wishes to use the content to create better people. I'm none of that this year. In order to do that, there are a handful of things that I've come to expect, almost all of which are givens during normal times. I would expect to have a full classroom, a (sometimes beyond) critical mass of minds that come together daily to discuss the great things that I have in store. Instead, I'm getting half a class every other day. This is an excellent accommodation, given the circumstances, and I'm glad that there's at least that much attempt at allowing for social distancing. I would expect students to chat, have fun with friends, and share their thoughts in class-wide discussions as well as smaller groups and individual conversations. Instead, I have them physically separated (about four feet between desks on either side, but they're in rows front to back with only a few inches between seat and desk), will have to listen to their muffled voices, not see them smile (or frown), and keep them in the same spot throughout the year. I am glad that I have as much space as I do, since not everyone can get their classes down to a maximum of 14 kids (which is twice as many as the room would fit if following the guidelines fully). I would expect to see former students passing me in the hallway, eager to share a fun experience that happened to them over the summer, or maybe recollect an inside joke from our time together. Instead, I plan on arriving before the bell to rotate rings and keeping myself isolated in my classroom as much as I possibly can. I'm grateful that my admin allows for this sort of thing, as I know that other teachers aren't so lucky. Normally, I look forward to the recharge that comes during lunchtime, when I can sit and chat with other adults and build up those communal bonds that strengthen the school's spirit. Instead, I have a microwave in my classroom so that I don't have to go to the faculty room where maskless friends will be eating their lunches. I will sit behind my plexiglass partitioned desk and pretend that I'm not imprisoned by an invisible enemy. I'm glad, at least, that I have that small space in which to try to feel safe. A teacher should be a coach as well, and I am always excited to coach three drama students in Shakespearean monologues for our fall competition. Instead, I have to figure out how to walk someone through the intricacies of the Bard via online meetings and remote conversations. I recognize that many events are completely canceled, so even though the competition is just a video submission this year, we're lucky to even have that. I would have expected that our society would take seriously a clear and present threat to our children and their families, that safety would be paramount. But then I remember Sandy Hook and I realized that money will always be more important than human life, and there's no positive spin I can put on this. In a country where our solution to gun violence and global warning--one an immediate threat and one a larger, more abstract one--is to ignore or deny the problem, can I really be surprised that we exhausted ourselves with conspiracies and half-measures? To say that I feel abandoned and betrayed is to put it so mildly that it may as well not be said. Safety aside (as if that should be a thing), I have to keep reminding myself that these thefts of experience are only temporary, that there will come a time when I can return to the classroom with excitement and enthusiasm, that our competitions and assemblies may return, that the futures we hope to build for the students aren't mired by viral uncertainty and political errors. This reminder, however, always spins around when I push away from what I am losing and to what they will miss. I'm not so egotistical as to think that a student who doesn't attend my class will be permanently hamstrung in their future and that they missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from me. However, it isn't just my class that they're missing out on. It's the entirety of a learning experience that is being lost. I think of my own kids, and how my now-second grader struggled with school at first, but soon learned to really love his class and his school. His enthusiasm keeps twisting about, transforming from excitement into sadness that he can't return to where he wishes to be. Is there ever a year where it's "just fine" that they miss out on everything that year has planned? My now-fifth grader will not get to go on the exciting overnight campout that his grade always gets a chance to attend…I haven't reminded him about that, because why add to his sadness? My now-eighth grader was just starting to get the hang of the middle school experience when we dismissed; now he won't have middle school at all. He will be all online, learning via computer, and missing out on the interactions and friendships that he so desperately needs. As I roll over these realities in my mind, I get more and more frustrated. I don't blame the schools for wanting to be open--I want us to be open. Instead, I keep thinking about all of the missteps, the frittered away months where things could have gone differently but didn't, the energy wasted on pointless arguments and denials that have led to personal tragedies and a nation-wide catastrophe. I try not to look at other countries that sacrificed as needed to get their COVID response under control, mostly because it makes me feel jealous. That could've been us, but you playin'… In all honesty, I'm not surprised that we are in this situation. We are committed to the course we're on, apparently, and though there were offramps galore on this road we've taken, I don't see a lot of people in positions of power moving toward rectifying the situation as it stands. Is it possible to have prevented all of the deaths in the United States? No. Of course not. A novel viral outbreak is going to claim victims. Did we need to lose over 160,000--and be on track to lose maybe as many as 300,000 before year's end?--to say nothing of the untold and unknowable costs of COVID-related infections further down the line? No. Not even remotely. The frustration of people and the desire to seek out the normal we've lost is understandable. I recognize why parents want their kids to go to school--after all, many parents had the option to sign up for online-only schooling; most did not choose it--because of the many different realities that parents have gone through in their own individual journeys. For them, they don't see the risk as greater than the consequence; they likely also never saw their child embraced by cables and wires because that was the kind of hug that would keep them alive. I have. It's not worth saying goodbye to a loved one via Skype so that the soccer team can have a game. So while I understand where parents are coming from, in the end I have to say that what's being asked of me is not "my job"; it's asking for me to risk my life--or worse, my children's lives. I see no beauty in that cause, no desire to flout what's real in favor of hoping for something better. A new school year is supposed to be an opportunity to recommit toward personal growth and learning, to one's own education. All I can see is the potential for a grave, a breach in the ground where what I love has gone. That's not much of a vision for a new school year. And yet that is all I can see. Note: Mormonism is capable of sustaining a lot of different views and attitudes; what I have almost exclusive contact with is the Utah County variety, which is its own unique brand of the religion. Additionally, I'm speaking from personal, lived experience and perceptions that I have received. Others who've been a part of this religion as long--or longer--may remember and view things differently. Obviously, I'm speaking for myself and not for the Church itself, and there are plenty of people who feel differently than the mainstream Mormonism I'm painting here. Exceptions to what I'm discussing here are what give me hope.
I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--a Mormon--and I don't view politics the way the majority of my local congregants do. If I had to peg my personal concepts of Mormonism, they'd probably be closer to an LDS liberation theology than where many might expect a Mormon to land. Like any honest seeker of truth, my understandings of the world shift and change as new information comes in. My feelings and ideas also change--there was a time, for example, when I believed that global warming was a hoax, simply because I thought that I was a Republican, and Republicans denied the clear scientific evidence--and so I'm writing this not as an endpoint of my thoughts but rather one that's spurred by recent events and disappointments. It's part of my own journey. What I'm doing here is trying to answer the question that I found in comments to one of Pat Bagley's tweets (which is funny and, to only fuel the irony of this post, I'm linking to but not sharing outright because it has swears and, as a Mormon, I've issues with that). In it, Pat "translates" Evan McMullin's tweet which expresses his disgust at the police brutality against a senior citizen in the recent police riots. Within Bagley's comments is the one I have as the image at the top of the post, from @the_real_scott: "Speaking of Mormonese, I can't understand the Mormon ease in voting for something that is antithetical to everything they say they believe morally. I really don't get how they support Trump's lies, crimes, and overt racism." Good wordplay there, and it shoots straight at my own questions about how Mormons feel about the impeached president. First of all, the majority of Mormons seem to be okay with President Trump. Despite his bragging about sexual assault--revealed before the election happened--his impeachment, and any other catalogue of horrors and abuses, Mormons are poised to vote for him again in November, based upon polls taken at the end of May 2020. And though they've not loved him the way Mormons usually kowtow to Republican presidents, they still abide his presidency by almost two-thirds majority. (Admittedly, that particular stat comes from 2018, and opinions can change.) In short, the impeached president's bragging about murdering someone on 5th Avenue has, metaphorically, held true with the majority of members of the Church of Jesus Christ: Despite his clear disdain for religion--using it as a prop to shore up his Evangelical base--as well as his frequent maligning of Mormon-favorite Mitt Romney, President Donald Trump remains popular among the pious. It should be clear, if it weren't yet, that I view the impeached Donald Trump as a danger to our country and a "king of shreds and patches," to quote Shakespeare. He took a position he was not qualified for, put in office against the wishes of the majority of voters, and has done a worse job as president than I anticipated--which is really saying something. As a human, he's undignified, incapable of coherent thought, and an embarrassment. And, as much as it might pain him to hear it, for Mormons, I don't think it's about him. For some members of the Church, it wasn't about Trump; it was about his competition. To many Mormons, voting for Trump (which both Mormon-heavy Utah and Idaho did in 2016) was more about voting against Hillary Clinton, whom they viewed with suspicion (at best) and outright hostility (at worst…and at more normal levels, from my experience). It feels like much of the AM dial in Utah is dedicated to conservative talk-radio, and talk-radio notoriously despised Clinton, whom they viewed as an Obama-surrogate (among other things). Right or no, the perception of Clinton as somehow even worse than President Obama was definitely part of the milieu in Utah County circa 2016. The case against Clinton was manifold, but the one that I heard a student say that continues to haunt me is that she was "overqualified" to be the President of the United States. And, of course, the sarcastic catchphrase of the election: "But her emails!" was viewed, not as conspiracy-theory bleating, but a coup de grâce about voting red. Abortion is a flashpoint for a lot of members of the Church: The Church is opposed to at-will abortions, so voting for a candidate who embraced the continued legalization of abortion was a non-starter. Marriage, another bastion of Mormonism and an area where the Church feels constantly threatened, was brought up against Clinton. I saw people deride her for staying with the impeached Bill Clinton, despite his highly-public affair. I also heard people use the idea that Bill was a rapist, and therefore Hillary should not be president. (I haven't heard if these same people were distressed by the sixteen allegations of sexual misconduct against 45 has changed their opinions on the toupee-wearing jack-o-lantern.) Trump is on his third wife, and has admitted to extramarital affairs--including a large-scale scandal with a paid-off porn star--but I've not heard much among my conservative friends about whether that has changed any feelings. Despite all of this, Clinton is no longer running (though I hear enough about both Clinton and Obama from conservative defenders of the impeached president that I sometimes wonder) and so voters for Trump no longer have to be his supporters, right? Well, this is where it stops being about Donald Trump, at least from what I can understand. It's not his personality, but his politics where a lot of Mormons align with him. Yes, on the whole, Mormons are opposed to Trump's stance on refugees--consider Governor Herbert's request at the end of 2019--and they aren't a fan of his blatant sexism (I guess; Mormons have a really strong definition of gender roles, but they don't like it when people are mean about those sorts of things). Really, it's more of a "hate the sinner, love the sin" sort of an approach. The death of Antonin Scalia--and the Supreme Court Justice seat McConnell and other Republican senators held unfilled until after the election was over--appeared to me as one of the deciding factors for a number of people: Better to have a spray-tan afficionado in the Oval Office and a conservative Justice than a competent Commander-in-Chief who would put a liberal Justice in place. And so we hit the paydirt of what Mormonism as a political force means. I personally think that the politics of Mormonism is divorced from the theology--as I mentioned before, I lean toward a type of liberation theology, rather than the prosperity theology that has been a part of Mormonic politics/culture for as long as I can remember--and that can, in part, be laid at the feet of President (of the Church) Ezra Taft Benson. His cold-warrior approach to the way the world worked in his time gave a lot of grist to the conservative movement, including his proclamations that the Constitution is a "heavenly banner". (I personally don't know that I want a banner in heaven that enshrines slavery, 3/5 personhood to Blacks, or busies itself with letters permitting piracy…but to each his own, I guess.) Don't get me wrong: I'm a fan of the Constitution. But I'm not a fan of thinking it as some sort of extracanonical scripture (that's what Shakespeare's for) that makes it sacrosanct and above reproach. President Benson wasn't alone in this--we've a long-standing love-affair with conservativism in Mormon history. Heck, BYU's no-beard policy comes in response to counterculture activism in the 1960s and the overall association of hippies and communists to looking less well-groomed, including the wearing of facial hair. What better way to show we're anti-communist than by keeping our faces clean-shaven? The point is, that since at least the mid-twentieth century, Mormonism and conservativism have been growing together. That, however, doesn't explain all of it… From what I can tell, Mormons really want to be a part of the Christian name brand. I wrote about my own feelings on this (before the Church came out and made it a verbal taboo to use the nickname "Mormon"), which haven't changed very much. However, part of my argument is that, aside from a superficial dictionary definition of the term Christian, Mormons aren't Christians. And we're definitely different from the evangelical strains of American Christianity. We members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints won't be accepted as part of the body of Christ. Though old, this article from Michelle Vu at The Christian Post really puts a finger on the issue when she quotes Dr. Richard Land's analysis. We're considered a fourth Abrahamic religion: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism. However, going it alone is hard to do, especially when there are areas of commonality--a love of Jesus, a hope to do good, a desire for divinity and a blissful afterlife--that make Evangelists appear like natural allies in a world we've been taught to fear, reject, and help save. The marriage of so-called "conservative values" and the Evangelical Right, along with its fusion to the Republican party, has created a web of loyalties and assumptions that Mormonic politics has embraced almost wholesale. This is, to finally get to the answer from @the_real_scott's original question, why Mormons are at ease with Trump. It isn't Trump that they're at ease with: It's the initial next to his name. It's the Republican party that Mormons like. Sure, there are plenty of instances of disagreement--after all, Evan McMullan snagged almost 22% of the electoral vote in 2016, showing a very strong resistance to picking Trump. In fact, McMullan is an interesting case, because it shows that some (quite clearly not all) members did take issue with Trump, but still wanted their conservative views intact. For them, they felt that they were presented with two evils, and so decided to choose neither.* Had those who voted for McMullan instead picked Clinton, Utah would have gone to a Democratic candidate for the first time since LBJ.** Of course, they picked McMullan because they wanted an alternative to the personality, not necessarily to the politics, of the GOP and Trump. From what I can tell, the reason why Mormons will vote for Trump again in 2020--and, since it's 2020 and everything is topsy-turvy, it'll probably be in higher numbers than four years ago--is because they have long considered conservativism as a shibboleth for their religion. The broad strokes of Evangelical politics and right-wing thinking have enough religious parallels that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will go along with almost any candidate with an R next to his (almost always his***) name. --- * I get the idea of voting one's conscience: I would argue that people's conscience should be, before "smaller government, lower taxes!", the moral "Don't vote for fascists". But that's just me. ** What's interesting to me isn't the infrequency of Democratic votes, but when they happen. In Utah's whole history, they've voted for five Democratic nominees in a total of eight elections. The remaining twenty-three elections all went to the Republican. And who did they vote for? Well, in the twentieth century, they went with Wilson--who won because he "kept America out of the war" and then sent Americans to war shortly after his second inauguration--before going along with FDR all four times. They even voted for his vice president. Utah didn't even vote for JFK, yet they helped rehire his vice president. I wonder if it had something to do with their perception of how the wars were progressing. I'd have to do more research, but I think that's fascinating. Oh, and did you notice how safe Utah is for Trump? There's no doubt that the Beehive State is securely in the impeached president's pocket. No doubt at all. *** Obviously, there are plenty of females in the Republican party and in the Utah political system. But there's definitely a preponderance of males. Also, the curious case of Ben McAdams versus Mia Love deserves more digestion than a footnote can handle, but it is absolutely worth mentioning that there is a Democrat from Utah in the House of Representatives. It's also worth pointing out that he ended up there because he had 694 more votes than Mia Love. And, to be honest, I was positively gob-smacked when I heard that McAdams won. The world is filled with all sorts of exceptions and unexpected turns, isn't it? Hoo boy. Who could have foreseen putting a thin-skinned narcissist in charge of the country would cause all sorts of butterfly effects throughout our culture and society? To be fair, the leader of the United States is going to set the tone for discourse regardless of the particular (shall we be generous and say) eccentricities of the person in the Oval Office. One of the reasons that people look at things like gender or race when it comes to a candidate is because that can change how tone comes across. (Look at the way Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, reacted to an earthquake during an interview; also consider, perhaps, the way President Trump chose to behave when warned against looking directly at the sun.) Despite the hack D'Souza claiming he understands the roots of Obama's rage, the forty-forth president maintained a calm demeanor in almost all circumstances. (This early thinkpiece about the reasons for that might be worth your time; also recall how he was ridiculed for weeping over the staggering loss at Sandy Hook Elementary school.) My point is, what happens on Pennsylvania Avenue tends to have repercussions all over the place, including in the digital sphere. While Barack Obama utilized the nascent social media and digital domains to his advantage in 2008, the tech world morphed immensely during his tenure. By the time 2016 came along, Russian interference via Facebook and other social media platforms only exacerbated what was already the clear trajectory of subscription-free websites: Divisiveness makes money. By exploiting that concept, the businessman-turned-politician whose best skills lie in exploiting divisiveness rather unsurprisingly became the GOP nominee for the presidency. He lost the popular vote by over 3 million people and became president anyway, highlighting additional problems that I'm not getting into here. The point is that without the digital terrain of the mid 2010s, I don't know if we'd have the current political landscape. Trump owes social media his presidency as much as he owes Putin. So it's not surprising to me to learn that Trump, at the time of this writing, is poised to sign an executive order regarding social media sites, in effect regulating what they allow on their private platforms. There is an irony here that I've seen in other places, and though it's a qualified irony, it's worth pointing out: To many conservatives, governmental regulation is anathema. We all remember when Rick Perry couldn't remember which regulatory agency he would have scrapped had he gone on to the presidency. Reagan's poison is conservative doctrine now: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help." Conservatives have long run on the platform of smaller government (which has its merits) by insisting that they should be put in charge of the entity they have nothing but disdain for (which does not have its merits). Much like having teetotalers in charge of the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, there's something to be said about having those in charge who don't believe in the thing that they're in charge of--and it isn't a nice thing to be said, either. Hence this irony: A president who has promised to repeal two regulations for every new one instituted is insisting on additional regulation. Now, some people may agree with his move--that his executive order to the FTC on forcing social media platforms to moderate their content according to their guidelines better--is a good move. But its value isn't where the irony is, it's in the fact that there's a regulation being forwarded at all. I'm not going to waste time asking what two regulations Trump will strip to offset this new one--it'll probably be environmental or emission regulations--as I don't think there's a one-to-one (or, more accurately, a two-to-one) connection between these things. Here's a shoutout to 2015, when Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) said that he didn't mind it if Starbucks no longer expected its team members to wash their hands after using the restroom. Making a regulation to reduce a regulation is still a regulation. There's more going on here, though: The president's original tweets on the subject are filled with inaccuracies. Not only is mail-in voting successful, but though there are mistakes that might happen, there's no evidence that they are anything other than the right choice to make to ensure our democracy has a voice in November as COVID-19 continues to upset almost every aspect of our daily lives. More than that, however, is his claims that Twitter putting a "fact-check" link on his tweet is tantamount to violating free speech is honestly nauseatingly stupid. Not only is it a completely wrong sentiment, it beggars credulity in reality that the man who is in charge of the country--the highest office created by the Constitution--is so Constitutionally ignorant that he mistakes being corrected as "stifling" free speech. (Cue the Neil DeGrasse Tyson gif.) I'm not a Constitutional scholar, but I am a social studies teacher. I have had to spend time thinking about how the Constitution works, teaching the Bill of Rights to my students, reading history books that trace the way the Constitution has been seen, and studied how the country has run itself in the past. I'm not claiming an absolute authority on this--I'll leave that to Agent Orange--but I do claim that I've spent more time considering it than, say, a run-of-the-mill devotee of Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. And it's clear that though it may not be a popular way of viewing things, positive and negative rights are a great way of divvying up the Bill of Rights and some of the later amendments. (Recap: Positive rights are those things which the government is obligated to provide, and tend to be sparse in the US Constitution; negative rights are areas where the government is restrained in its power, and are more frequent, particularly in the Bill of Rights.) When it comes to the freedom of speech, the Constitution doesn't guarantee it unconditionally. In fact, it's a perfect example of a negative right: It is a restriction in governmental action in the face of the individual's expression. It is not, however, a ban on governmental action. We all know that you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater and walk away from any sort of legal prosecution for the action. There are times when speech can be infringed and censored by governments (local, state, or federal). Some of them, historically speaking, have been abuses of power (consider how the Alien and Sedition Acts influenced early in the country's history, or what happened to Robert Goldstein when he ran afoul of the Espionage Act by making The Spirit of '76 back in 1917). Other areas, however, indicate that the greater societal considerations outweigh the individual rights. (The yelling-fire example is the quick example of that.) The larger takeaway, however, is that the guarantee of governmental non-interference of speech is not something that exists inside of my house, for example. If someone came into my house so that he could gas on about how Trump really is making America great again, I would be within my rights to tell him to shut up. I could even excuse him from my home. I would not be violating his First Amendment rights because I'm not the government. I'm a private citizen. The First Amendment allows speech to happen, yes, but does not require anyone to listen. And, if my platform doesn't want to embrace that speech, I don't have to. Social media has made this trickier: Is this a public space, or a private one? If it's public, then maybe there are some other considerations to view. If it's private that everyone is allowed to see, what's the difference? Trump has flouted Twitter rules regularly, which should have seen him excused from the platform. If it's a private company, making rules about what can be discussed or said on its servers, then that's a digital domain tantamount to my living room: Follow the rules or exit the premises. But if Twitter is a public place, can it do the same? Can public places--parks, libraries, seats of government--be places where abuse, violence, or depravity are enacted without a reprisal from the people's representative government? I personally don't see Twitter as a digital version of a public place--not while it makes billions of dollars by selling ad-space. It's clearly a for-profit business, and though the service may be something the public benefits from (as I often do by using the product), I'm certainly not seeing any of that profit in my bank account. (I could, I suppose, if I invested in them.) Are Facebook and Twitter extensions of the digital commons? I would argue no, and Mark Zuckerberg agrees with me to an extent, despite his recent insipid comments about how Facebook isn't an "arbiter of truth" (which is obviously true; that he uses it to try to keep his hands clean when his platform is routinely abused demonstrates that he'd rather not reflect on how perverse his worldview is). There are things that get an account banned from Facebook and Twitter. There are community guidelines. There are lines in the sand (that can be so conveniently erased) that these platforms disallow people from crossing. It is more profitable for Facebook specifically (though Twitter is in a similar vein) to allow divisiveness than it is for them to enforce their own community rules and regulations. An untended garden doesn't flourish with flowers; it drowns in weeds. Though this is a nuanced and difficult topic, I don't think it's an impossible-to-understand foray into metaphysical ontology or pandisciplinary exegesis. It's something that takes some time to chew on, disagree with, change one's opinion about, and move around as the idea percolates. It is, in other words, far beyond the grasp of the current ambulatory, toupee-wearing traffic cone that will forever be called the 45th president. Honestly, it's hard for me to adapt to the intellectual whiplash between forty-four and forty-five. While his interpretation of the Constitution could be held up to scrutiny and criticism (and often was), no one could honestly say President Obama hadn't studied the document. (Plenty of people said it dishonestly, obviously.) He was, after all, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago. President Trump, however, has asserted that, "When somebody is President of the United states, the authority is total." He seems to view criticism as personal attacks, with an unwavering expectation of loyalty from those who've allied themselves with him. Early on, his administration was hammered for using the term "alternative facts" to describe the surprisingly belligerent Sean Spicer's assertion that Trump's inauguration was the best attended of all time. (A quick refresher and analysis can be found here.) Gaslighting happens on a regular basis from Trump and his cronies--do I even need to link to the injecting of disinfectant comment and his flimsy "it was sarcastic" excuse? The man is untrustworthy in almost every possible way, and yet he maintains a grip on power and domination over his party. This is not simply because his politics doesn't align with mine, though that absolutely informs how I view the situation. I had very few problems with President Obama--but his failure to close Gitmo, the increase in drone strikes that killed innocent children overseas, and his educational policies were a train-wreck (albeit better--barely--than Bush). Even when I disagreed with the politics or the decision, I at least was able to view him as a competent, capable leader. His ability to improve how America was viewed by other countries was an important indicator to me that he was on the right track. Now, even when I think Trump might be making the right decision--locking down the country in response to COVID-19 was the right choice…granted he did it far too late, has assumed no responsibility for the negative consequences his policies generated, and doesn't seem to care too much that we had 9/11-levels of dead Americans daily for a week or so--I consider his "good" moves as accidental spasms, rather than calculated moves. Have I benefited from the slight tax relief that came because of his tax breaks? I…guess? It's been so slight that I didn't really notice. Was the stimulus helpful? I suppose; though I'm still mystified that $2 trillion can so ineffectively be redistributed (another irony of both the Bush and Trump administrations: Redistribution of wealth during times of success is communism; redistribution to the wealthy during times of crisis is "the right thing to do"). Ultimately, this little rant doesn't do much. I've a right to say it*, of course, and you have a right to disagree. If you do, I encourage you to write your own 2,000+ word afternoon diatribe, complete with a footnote and twenty-three links to sundry articles that back up your position. I promise I have the right not to read it. --- * Though if it somehow violates the terms and conditions of Weebly, the company that hosts my website, I would fully expect it to be removed. I wouldn't be happy about it, but it couldn't possibly be censorship if I had broken their rules. Many years ago, I read The Great Gatsby. Which class and for what purpose is mysterious to me--maybe it was college, maybe it was high school. I honestly can't remember. I do recall thinking that The Great Gatsby was not my favorite thing. In fact, I couldn't really see why people liked it so much.
A year or two later, I reckon, I was asked to teach a junior Socratic Seminar class, which included reading The Great Gatsby. I don't have many memories of that experience, either, but I know that we stretched it out over nine days (because I still have my sticky notes with the schedule penciled into it) and surely talked about the green light on the other end of the harbor, or the eyes of Dr. Eckleburg. Had I the inclination, I could dig out my notes from the time and try to recreate what I did, assuming I was interested in wasting my time. It's been over a decade, and while I'm teaching The Great Gatsby now to my Concurrent Enrollment class, we're interested in gleaning something else from the text. And that's been hard. I wrote a few pages in my reading journal, but in the interest of thinking about something else, I decided to dedicate page-space to other pursuits. Still, there's always something more to say about The Great Gatsby, which is one of its indications of merit, and so I thought I'd toss out one idea that's specifically stuck in my mind's craw: The way in which heat is used to underscore bad ideas. This is not an idea that comes about simply from the text. Back in high school, I read Albert Camus' The Stranger, and I remember my teacher, Miss Bodily, emphasizing the way that Camus describes the temperature on the day that the narrator (whose name I can't remember) kills a man. The existentialism of that text is much clearer, but I think both The Great Gatsby and The Stranger utilize heat at crucial dramatic moments. Camus' novel is a generation later, written in the throes of the Second World War, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece is (in my mind) a direct response to the hedonism-as-solution response to the survival of the First. Still, The Great Gatsby's use of heat stood out to me enough that I was able to dredge up that similarity from my pre-9/11 life to now. That tells me that there may be something there. The heatwave is discussed in detail throughout chapter VII, particularly on page 115. The conductor on the train says, "'Hot! […] Some weather!...Hot!...Hot!...Hot!...Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it…?'", and Narrator Nick notes that the "commutation ticket came back to me with a dark stain from his hand. […] In this heat, every extra gesture was an affront to the common store of life". No one is willing to move, no one can handle the heat. It's in this milieu that we see the dissolving of the façades that have been carefully constructed--and, to a degree, believed in by those of the story, if only because they don't want to consider the alternative--around the entire Gatsby/Buchannan party. Almost as if their lies to each other can't handle the strain of the heat, Tom confronts Gatsby, who retorts all sorts of lies and truths. The "outing" of the affair between Gatsby and Daisy comes as a revelation to none (save, perhaps, Tom, who may or may not have actually wanted his suspicions confirmed). The metaphor we might think of as the heat of the adulterous passion--if that's even an appropriate way to describe it--turns into the literal heat of the day, where the cooling presence of mint julips, spiked with alcoholic heat, does little to douse the ardor of the proclaimed loves and wounded prides. This heat is disorienting; the text itself, mirage-like, starts to yield to the temperature: "'The master's body!' roared the butler into the mouthpiece. 'I'm sorry, madame, but we can't furnish it--it's far too hot to touch this noon!' What he really said was: 'Yes . . . yes . . . I'll see'" (115). What is actually being said? Can we trust either version that Nick gives? (My instinct says that Nick is an unreliable narrator in an unreliable narrative, which leads me to think that we rather ought not to give too much authority to Nick.) This disorientation leads toward uncomfortable conversations, to angry driving, to casual slaughters. It breaks the image of glamor that Gatsby, in particular, has striven for so long to maintain. If The Great Gatsby is a cautionary tale about the dissolution of an American Dream founded on hedonism, then I find it telling that the moment where America cracked is when the most amount of heat was applied. Our own political rhetoric and clamor is getting hotter than it's been for a quite some time--I listened to the proceedings in the House of Representatives as they began the process of moving forward with additional impeachment hearings, and there was much heat in the voices of those who'd defend the president via nitpicking procedure, much smoke in the representatives who sought only to hold up their Constitutional duty. If The Great Gatsby is a cautionary tale about the dissolution of an American Dream, then heat is the catalyst that brings about the fracture. What kind of heat can America truly take? Back in college, I had to take a handful of American literature as part of my English major. I didn't have any defined taste when it came to the large swaths of literature--British or American--and so, when I first took one of the classes, it was fine. Whatever. A class that wasn't math or science but just about reading and talking about books? No problem.
Part way through my survey course of American lit, though, I started resisting the texts that we had to read. There was some gnarly anthology that weighed down my backpack--it was one of the few books I sold back, mostly because I wanted the cash for my mission--and I distinctly remember not being too thrilled by what was inside of it. For the most part, the literature was from the 1800s, which is one of my least favorite times in the past seven hundred years*, particularly in American letters. At the time of college, if it wasn't fantasy related, I was scarcely interested, though science fiction was still a large fascination to me. And the 1800s--with the notable exception of Moby-Dick, which I didn't study until I was an upperclassman--saw, in my view, a lot of less-than-impressive writers whom we admire because there's no one else. Yes, yes, there are exceptions throughout, but I'm not kidding when I say that very little of American literature really scintillated me. As the years marched on and I took more classes about literature from both sides of the pond, I realized that I very much preferred the British approach to writing than the American. As I had yet to fall in love with Shakespeare, I can only read this as the result of enjoying the variety** of British writing that America has consistently failed to match. During an advanced section on American literature, I realized something: Almost all of America's masterpieces deal with adultery, murder, or both. And while Shakespeare does the same thing for a lot of his plays, he has other things that attract his attention. But few American novels do. Of Mice and Men? Both. The Awakening? Adultery. The Great Gatsby? Both. As I Lay Dying? Both. Pretty much anything by Hemingway? Both in spades. And I'm not saying that those topics aren't fit for literature. In fact, literature is a really important part of our understanding of those topics. It's just that there is more to the human experience than these two ideas. Because so much of American letters orbit around these topics, I quickly became fatigued with the "classics of American literature", if only because they told the same story but with a different skin. I didn't really feel a strong pull to explore the Great American Novels after a while, as I felt like the other important questions about being an American were left untouched. This is probably one of the greatest reasons why I don't teach American history, which my school has broken up as the curriculum for juniors and seniors. I stick with the sophomores because then I don't have to pretend that I like Hemingway (though, for my money, I'd say Steinbeck is the best of the top-tier American writers, followed by Fitzgerald; I've no interest in Faulkner, and the transcendentalists simply irritate me, so Whitman and his ilk have no allure). In my current course, I get to talk about Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo, Austen, Achebe, and some minor writers in between. All of that is much more interesting to my heart and soul than the tradition of my own country. I don't know how deeply to read into this. I've been frustrated and disillusioned with America for a long time--pretty much once I became politically aware, I realized that there was a massive disconnect between what I'd been led to believe about the country and how it really behaved. The relearning of this American mind was not a pleasant experience. When it comes to other countries, I'm more comfortable giving a balanced look--what they did right, what they did wrong; when they perpetuated violence and inhumanity and when they resisted it--without the attachment of having felt one way about the place and then learned how I was wrong. That detachment (if that's even the right word--it isn't, but it's all I've got right now) allows me to love the art that's been made without it necessarily saying something about the country whence it came. And maybe that's the biggest thing about American literature: Regardless of its topic (adultery, murder, both…or the rare "Other" option), it's always about America, too. I could say that it's the narcissistic vein that runs deeply which provides this impulse, but that's too superficial***. Everyone looks for themselves first in the yearbook, right? With two oceanic moats and only two neighbors to worry about, America has never had a strong reason to see others in the yearbook of history. We've always been quite content with our version, thank you very much, and that's reflected in our literature. While the great export of the American mythos in the form of superheroes is currently the pop culture mainstay, even that is so distinctly American that it's almost embarrassing. Just look at the first Iron Man movie to see how we view ourselves--embodied in Tony Stark--and you'll start to see that we're still telling ourselves the same stories over and over again. I guess it's just a story I got sick of a little bit faster than others. --- * The 1300s has Dante; the 1400s the Wars of the Roses and other Shakespeare-discussed eras; the 1500s has the Tudors and, of course, Shakespeare himself; the 1600s have Milton, plus the English Civil War; then there's the dearth of interesting to me 1700s and 1800s, with a couple of highlights thrown in--some revolutions and Jane Austen; then the 1900s have some fairly intriguing wars and, hey, that's the century in which I was born. Not coincidentally, it is this segment of time that I teach, so it's also the times I understand the best; pre-1300 anything is fuzzy to me. ** I guess it's worth pointing out that my taste heads toward British literature for a lot of reasons. They, too, fixate on certain themes--power structures and obedience are, unsurprisingly, more important to many of the kingdom's preoccupation over the centuries--and that, too, can be tiring. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be British, but that, I think, is a matter of taste. While that should go without saying, I figured I'd say it just to ensure there's no misreading of what I mean. *** Easily as superficial as saying that American literature is only concerned with adultery, murder, or both, perhaps--is it possible?--even more superficial. Stephen Greenblatt is the kind of guy I want to be when I grow up (except I want to keep the correct spelling of my name). He's a Bardolator of the top degree, having edited a couple of Complete Works of William Shakespeare during his time at Norton Publishing, to say nothing of having written a great many Shakespeare-related works, including a biography (the first one I read of the Bard) called Will in the World. His most recent take on Shakespeare is a book called Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics, and it's…quite the read.
First of all, the way I bumped into the book is its own little story: I was in Washington, D.C. for a training in the summer of '18 and I managed to swing by the Folger Shakespeare Library a couple of different times because of course I did. As I was buying my Shakespeare swag (my Swagspeare, if you will*), I glanced up and saw a red book that I'd noticed before but hadn't yet purchased: The new Greenblatt. To my surprise, there was a small sticker on it, saying "Author Signed Copy". I asked the retail clerk if the book was more because of that. "No," she said, looking kind of confused. "He was here a few months ago and left some signed copies." "I'll take it." Despite having purchased it in 2018, I didn't finish it until yesterday--though not for lack of trying. It's a slim volume--not even 200 pages--and eminently readable. It's just that…well, I have had other things on my plate. Nevertheless, I've been picking at it pretty steadily, and at last I finished the process. I think it's safe to say that if you love Shakespeare and hate Donald Trump, this is the book for you. If you love Shakespeare and love Donald Trump, you'll probably get sick of the not-so-subtle jabs at Agent-Orange-In-Chief. If you hate Shakespeare and love Donald Trump, then this book would be a waste of time for what I hope are obvious reasons. And if you hate both the Bard and the boorish, then…well, yeah, skip it, too. I guess if you're apathetic about Trump but curious how a 400 year old playwright could possibly have something germane to say about the present political field, then this is definitely worth picking up. I say all of that not to show my political leanings, but because Greenblatt so clearly is invoking the specter of Trump that not being aware of that might take a reader by surprise. And the thing is, Greenblatt doesn't bother naming the current resident of the White House: He's tightly focused on recapping the plays and showing how Shakespeare approaches tyranny--a topic that my boi Shakes tackles pretty frequently. However, Greenblatt deliberately uses phrases that are meant to draw one's attention to the phraseology and behavior of our current GOP and their master. Though he's talking about Richard III, for example, Greenblatt renders his analysis thus: "[Richard] can, he thinks, grab from any woman anything he wants" (87), a not-so-subtle allusion to the infamous (and, if we're being honest, what should have been a career-ending) Access Hollywood recording. Another example is during his chapters on Coriolanus, where he says, "Not so Coriolanus: here we are dealing instead with an overgrown child's narcissisms, insecurity, cruelty, and folly, all unchecked by any adult's supervision and restraint" (166). And another (while still speaking of Coriolanus): "With the city prosperous and at peace, they think that such fears are fake news, invented by certain patrician factions[…]" (179). All of these--and many others like them--give oblique (I suppose) reference to Trump, the sycophants that empower him, and the overall corruption that has been clearly festering over the past three years. Because I agree with Greenblatt's modern-day analysis, it makes it easier to buy into his Shakespearean analysis. However, catching all of these snide remarks does, after a time, get old--he's saying "anything but to the purpose", as Hamlet** would observe. Additionally, much of the book is a careful recap of the story of each play, whether it be popular (like Macbeth) or less so (like the rebellion of John Cade in 2 Henry VI). Because I'm familiar with the stories in everything he's discussing, there are parts of the book that dry out a bit for me; I want the analysis (and his proofs, via the texts) more than I want the summary. This isn't to say that it isn't worth it. Again, Greenblatt may be taking pot-shots at Trump throughout, but I think his analyses about what tyranny does, what it looks like, and why it matters are timeless. Indeed, the great conceit of the book is that Shakespeare comments on the very behaviors that we're seeing now--another stirring look at how pertinent the Bard is, four centuries of time notwithstanding. Should you read it? Well, yes. But you should probably also read the plays, too, if only because the more Shakespeare you read, the better of a person you are***. --- * Please don't. ** Speaking of Hamlet, Greenblatt is probably more obsessed with the character and the play than I am. It's funny to see how often (and uncited) his allusions to Hamlet crop up in his typical writing. The play has saturated his way of thinking, which I can only consider a great move. *** I have no way of proving what I just said there. In which I get political… There's a longstanding platitude--and who can challenge a platitude, save, perhaps, Plato, but then it's just platotudes on platitudes--about fishing. In its many iterations, it tends along these lines: "If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day; if you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime." I most often hear this idea expressed by devotees of supply-side economics and/or American conservatism/libertarianism. Its superficial meaning is, I think, pretty clear, but--like most aphorisms--its simplicity and superficiality overshadow the deep, inherent problems of the idea. Consider this poem by Kahlil Gibran, one of the most criminally underrated poets of the 20th century: Once there lived a man who had a valley-full of needles. And one Though less known as far as parables go, this one, I fear, more accurately represents the mindset of those who espouse the Fishing Proverb*. And, more than that, I think it comes from a misunderstanding of what's required of people within the Fishing Proverb. The premise is simply: A man comes to you and is hungry. "Teach him to fish" is not a bad idea--it is a useful skill that will sustain him, perhaps for the rest of his life. It's something that can benefit him and, provided he passes on the information to his children, subsequent generations. In many ways, that is literally what I've dedicated my life to doing: Teaching others so that they can benefit and pass on what they've learned.
The problem with using the platitude as a type of panacea for the problems many are faced with is in the first part of the premise: The man is hungry. Who can be bothered to learn to fish when one is about to expire? Using the Fishing Proverb as the response of a person to another's need gets us Gibran's poem, "On Giving and Taking". There's nothing inherently wrong with the man who lived in the "valley-full of needles" believing and giving a discourse on an important topic. That isn't his sin; it's that he gives her something that doesn't help her right now. Ought the mother of Jesus to learn about Giving and Taking? (Well, frankly, she has a better idea of sacrifice than almost any other human, I would argue, but let that go.) Sure. Timing, however, is rather important, and she needs something the man has. And not just what the man has, but what he has through no effort of his own, and an enormous abundance. The fact that he's awash with needles--so many more than he could ever truly need, and giving away one would in no way diminish what he has or could have in the future--is a crucial detail. The mother of Jesus doesn't go to one without and demand of her; she goes to one with bounty and requests a tiny boon. Though the broader principle of Giving and Taking is surely one from which she could learn, the mother of Jesus doesn't need an education at this juncture: She needs a needle. When pundits invoke the Fishing Proverb, it's often as a rationale against handouts and government subsidies. While there's plenty of room to figure out who (and, perhaps, to a certain extent, what) should receive governmental assistance in whatever form, I most often hear the Fishing Proverb used as a closing argument against welfare for the laboring class. (I never, incidentally, hear those same pundits argue against welfare for the corporate class; indeed, they often seem quite vociferous about tax cuts at the top somehow magically benefitting the remaining people below.) The idea, of course, is if you "incentivize laziness", then people will rely on governmental assistance ad infinitum and then where will we be? The thing about the Fishing Proverb is, even if it's only taken at face value, it is not the abnegation of responsibility for the "you" in the proverb to take no action. In fact, it insists on something quite different: The "you" in this is supposed to teach "the man" how to fish. It presupposes that you not only know how to fish, but that you will also take the time to impart that knowledge. In other words, it insists that the person petitioned devote time and energy to imparting skills to those without. Though less explicit than "On Giving and Taking", the Fishing Proverb is still a call to action. In our modern day, money has become the shorthand for almost every interaction. Karl Marx: "The bourgeoisie…has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'." Be that as it may, ours is a world wherein labor's value is entirely monetized, and the greater potential for monetization, the greater we value that labor. Intrinsic value is ignored--there's a reason people tease humanities majors--because worth has become tied to capital. (The current president was, by some, regarded worthy of the office on the sole qualification that he was a businessman--as if running a business and running a country are somehow comparable.) If this is the way in which we communicate, if economics is the new lingua franca of the modern/post-modern society, then money is the way to provide the "time and energy" component of the Fishing Proverb. Through money, then, we can teach hungry men and women "how to fish". (Additionally, it is through money that we can help feed a man for a day…long enough, in other words, that he can learn to fish.) And that's my job. As a teacher, I am in charge of a very small sliver of my students' overall education. I recognize that--I am one of six or seven teachers that they have each day, during one school year. In the grand scheme of things, I've very little chance to make a difference in the students' lives. That realization--for me, at least--is part of what inspires me to continue to teach as well as I possibly can: I've a limited window of opportunity that I** don't want to waste. Teaching is the potential remedy to the Fishing Proverb's problem, but what of "On Giving and Taking"? In this, we see a clear condemnation of the objectivist's creed that greed is a virtue. The man in the valley has much, much, much more than he could ever worry about consuming or using. He is asked to share a very small piece of his unearned bounty with another; instead, he bloviates about why others should think hard about giving and taking. Lest the comparison I'm drawing is too subtle here, I'm arguing that the American concept of economics is morally debased and men like the man in the valley should not be allowed to act in this way. I'm arguing that a more socialistic approach to the economy is morally superior to the supply-side economics that is currently destroying*** the lives of so many. And this leads me to my final excoriation: The Utah legislature, following the example of Rep. Christ Stewart (R - Utah), has recently made a more deliberate and clear push against socialism (and, because the idea of nuance in American politics is, apparently, impossible, communism as well). In the case of Stewart, he has made an Anti-Socialism Caucus to show…well, I'm not entirely sure. Ostensibly, the "marketplace of ideas"**** should allow the free intercourse of ideas, much like a "free market" should allow the buying and selling of goods without a lot of governmental intervention. Stewart's hypocrisy is hardly the point: Socialism as practiced in the United States is very mild, and is pretty much seen as using taxes to pay for public services…including his paycheck as a representative. I, as a teacher, get my money through taxes--and, as a worker in the state, I pay taxes, too. Like, 30% or so--percentage-wise, twice as much as a person like Utah Senator Mitt Romney did back in the 2012 election (remember when presidential candidates released their tax returns so that we could see if there was any pecuniary conflicts of interest?). I own a house, so my property taxes go toward, eventually, paying me. (It's weird, frankly.) How does this tie into needles and fish? The requirement of the Fishing Proverb is that we help teach those who do not know how to take care of themselves. This idea is not radical, but it does require money. Teachers in particular are in demand for this very thing, as well as being very poorly paid for it. Especially in Utah, we have a continual growth segment of the population: Children. As the linked article points out, one in five Utahns is a child. These are those who need to learn how to fish. But, more strikingly, is the fact that one third of those come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. (and if you don't think that economic disparity is damaging, you have some research to do). These are the ones who are--sometimes literally--hungry. If we are to take the Fishing Proverb seriously, then being dead last in per-student spending needs to end. Yes, Governor Herbert has proposed an increase--one that translates into a 4% increase on the WPU (how much the state spends on each student). That pushes Utah out of 51st place and into 50th (D.C. is on the list) place, assuming that the extra $280 Utah is adding per student isn't matched by Idaho--the current penultimate place on the list of per-student spending. Granted, the numbers are from 2016, and a lot can change between those numbers and what we actually see implemented. But the point, mixed metaphor though it may be, stands: Utah is more interested in being the man in the valley-full of needles rejecting the mother of Jesus than in truly teaching hungry children how to fish. --- * There are worthwhile distinctions between parables, proverbs, aphorisms, and platitudes, but I'm eager to explore the broader idea and will use them all interchangeably. ** Admittedly, not all teachers feel the same way, but that's their problem…and their students', actually. So, yeah, that's a bit of a problem. There are solutions--imperfect, as almost all solutions are--but they're not the point of this essay. *** I know what I wrote. I certainly wouldn't claim that socialism is perfect. I'm also not such a lackluster student of history as to assume that the crimes of capitalism and the crimes of communism are somehow comparable. Both systems have led to indescribable suffering and misery; both systems have furthered people's lives in positive and fulfilling ways. I reject the idea that capitalism's only alternative is communism, and I assert that there are ways to improve the lives of more people than capitalism can provide. **** A poor way to derive truth, honestly: The popularity of an idea does not equate with the validity of the idea. Just ask Socrates. Of all of Shakespeare's "underappreciated" plays--the flawed-but-still-remarkable bunch that tend to slip under popular recognition and, perhaps, even some scholarly approaches--Richard II would be high on the list of those which I consider inexcusably underappreciated. Richard II is part murder mystery, part power play, and most thoroughly enjoyable. Its lack of recognition probably has much to do with how Richard III steals the show in his eponymous play--a play that, chronologically, ends eighty-five years after the events of Richard II--and, perhaps, the realization that Richard II is a far cry from III makes a difference. I genuinely don't know; that's a supposition from my ignorance. The ending of Richard II is a powerful thing--not as powerful as the deposition scene, which continually breaks my heart and stirs my soul; some of Shakespeare's greatest writing this side of Hamlet is in that scene--and it's a troubling one. Here's the briefest, most crucial components of the plot that we need to remember: Richard II has been deposed by his cousin, Bolingbroke, who is the new Henry IV. Because Richard gave up his throne and crown, he is no longer the monarch of England and has been imprisoned. Henry IV is dealing with traitors in his midst--a rather understandable problem, as not everyone is happy with the implications of a deposed king--and is anxious to weed out the problem. In an off-stage speech around a man named Exton (a character who doesn't show up until the fourth scene of Act 5), Henry IV says, "Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?" We as an audience are not privy to this declaration--Exton quotes him and his "First Man" (a servant) says, "Those were his very words." In fact, here's the scene in its entirety: EXTON In the next scene, which opens in Pomfret, we see a broken Richard II trying to understand his new reality. It's…stunning, the entire soliloquy is stunning and I encourage anyone to read it with the understanding that Richard is trying to figure out how a man who was supposed to be a king could no longer be one. But this essay isn't about Richard. It's about Exton. Because here's what happens next: Exton, having heard something implied in the king's speech that an assassin of Richard II would be loved by the new king, decides to take matters into his own hands. Exton sends a jailer to the imprisoned Richard with a meal, which Richard asks the keeper (basically the jail guard) to sample first--ensuring that it isn't poisoned--but the keeper immediately refuses. He says that "Sir Piers of Exton,/Who lately came from the King, command the contrary." Richard II strikes the keeper, fearing that the meal is actually poisoned. The keeper cries out, Exton rushes in, and "strikes [Richard II] down". Richard delivers some poetry before shuffling off this mortal coil, and Exton frets over what he's done: As full of valour as of royal blood: Though Exton is worried he may have made a mistake, he does indeed bring the body in front of the new king. He invokes what Henry IV had said about wanting someone to rid him of his fears, saying, "Within this coffin I present/Thy buried fear" (5.6.30-31).
Henry IV is flabbergasted--and though a director might choose that he act differently, my instinct in the text is that Henry IV is truly grieved for the death of his cousin. "Exton," says the king, "I thank thee not." Exton, shocked--perhaps as much that his own prophetic soul might truly have spoken as the words of the king himself--declares, "From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed." The king immediately banishes Exton, then turns to his assembled court and ends the play with a rhyming octave about how he did not, in reality wish this. To make up for the death of his cousin, Henry IV promises to head to the Holy Land "To wash this blood off from my guilty hand." The curtain drops over the face of a pensive and ill-secured king. *** Why am I going through this? Well, this week has seen an Exton in America. One is named Cesar Sayoc who attempted to explode Democratic leadership, including former presidents and vice presidents of the country. And, when I woke up this morning, a man--at the time of this writing, unidentified but in custody--attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. A lot of people are keen to put this type of behavior on the rhetoric of the commander-in-chief, and I'm reminded of Exton. I think of times when the president encouraged violence on his perceived opponents, and I'm reminded of Exton. I think of President Obama's comments the day after the 2016 election, saying that we're "actually on one team. This is an intramural scrimmage," and I'm reminded of Exton. I think of the dismissal of victims of sexual abuse by the president and his party, most notably (and, personally, disgustingly) by my own senator, Orrin Hatch. I see despicable behavior of the GOP, wonder at their audacity, and I'm reminded of Exton. Maybe King Henry IV really did say those words. Maybe he really did want Richard II dead. Maybe he didn't. But he blew a dog whistle and then was surprised when a mongrel showed up. People in positions of leadership take with the mantle of power a responsibility* to own the words they say. They have to: That's the point of a leader. The president is supposed to say things that encourage people to behave a particular way. That's why they go on the stump for candidates they endorse. That's why they address the nation in speeches. That's why they are frequently interviewed. Their leadership is supposed to, well, lead. Our modern day Extons are looking for excuses to act on violence. The pattern is clear for any willing to set aside partisan impulses. The danger is also clear: So long as the 45th president of the United States of America chuckles at the idea of locking up his political rivals, of encouraging violence against the press, of declaring the media an "enemy of the people", the president is saying things that Extons will hear and act on. Perhaps President Trump is genuinely appalled by the deaths and bomb-threats. Perhaps. But so long as he blows on his dog whistles, those ravenous for flesh will hear. And they will act. --- * Surely there's some quote somewhere that I can dredge up that demonstrates a connection between power and responsibility. It's tickling the back of my mind, like a spider's web that's brushed the back of my neck… ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! I voted today. I've been registered for by-mail voting since I moved to New Place back in '016, in part because it was the presidential election that year and I didn't want something to happen on that Tuesday that would prevent me from getting to the polls. Though I have some memories about that dark day, I'm not going to focus on November 2016, looking instead at the process I just went through. See, for me voting is a civic duty, a symbolic gesture, and a futile attempt at being in some measure of control of my government. Recognizing that these are all different--and, in some ways, incompatible--impulses, I felt that trying to sort these feelings out on paper may help me understand why I did something that feels so hopeless. The first is my civic duty. As a self-confessed deontologist, I think there are a lot of things to which I have a duty. The egotistical "What has ________ ever done for me?" doesn't hold a lot of water with me: Part of the concept of privilege is that those with it don't know they have it and often fail to recognize the sacrifices that build the tower on which they stand. Yes, there are things that I have been obligated to accomplish, not because of a request or a personal affirmation of that duty, but because I have (sometimes de facto) benefited from a society that is built upon the presumed duty of its members. To honestly believe that a society from which one has, in countless ways, benefited is tantamount to Satan's assertion in Book 5 of Paradise Lost: We know no time when we were not as now; One's success is never "self-begot", a person is never "self-raised". There are too many systems, too many givens in our society for that to ever be true. And I believe that there's a payment due for that sort of boon. Voting is a way of discharging that.
The second is the symbolism of the gesture. Voting isn't useful individually. Only one voice rarely makes a tangible difference. I highly doubt that any of the people on my ballot would win (or lose) because I didn't do my part. But I believe in symbols--I have to, as language is impossible without them. Simply because they are generated via our syntactical symbol-work and are, therefore, artificial doesn't mean they are powerless. Grades are an absolute train-wreck of broken symbols, but if I don't award my students grades, the system that runs on them will crush the possibilities of those students. The same goes for voting. It's important because we say it's important, and because we all agree (for the most part) that it's important, it is important. In this case, it's Hamlet's idea: "Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so." Though I normally take issue with that argument, I think it does apply here: We think voting is good, so therefore it is good. And I should do good things. The third part, however, is the most complicated and nuanced and I don't know if I even understand why I feel this way. Voting is, from what I can see, an individually futile expression of my involvement with my government. The power of the ballot box is a cumulative thing, and I live in a place where my thinking is out of step with the moneyed and religious interests that keep the status quo humming along. Mitt "Mittens" (I'm assuming that's his nickname) Romney isn't challenged by Jenny Wilson. He certainly isn't threatened by her. At this point, Romney's merely waiting on the formality of counting the ballots before relocating to Washington. (And, though few probably care to hear my opinion, I don't think that Romney is going to be any better at stemming the tide of abuses and outrages perpetrated by Agent Orange than any other Republican, though I can at least relish that the ambulatory sack of disdain and arrogance that is Orrin Hatch will disappear from the Congress come January 2019.) I say this not because I think that Jenny Wilson isn't a good candidate--she's perfectly adequate and quite conservative compared to most other Democrats--or that there aren't people who agree with me that Mittlock (I'm guessing) Romney isn't really an advocate of good ideas for worthwhile government. There are plenty of people who, with me, will be voting against Mittador (maybe?) Romney in the thin hope that he'll somehow be defeated. And that's what I mean by the futility. Yeah, I voted against Mia Love--against whom I voted two years ago, though her opponent was so similar to her in so many ways it ended up being a matter of "out with the incumbents" justification for the vote--this year, too. There's been some scandal about the way she's handled finances, but in an age where a toupee-wearing traffic cone can be elected president, it's abundantly clear that scandals don't matter if there's an elephant on the ticket: A corrupt Republican is better than any sort of Democrat. (There may be some races where it actually moves the needle, but I've lost any faith I may have had about the way the Republican party runs itself to think it'll be enough to matter.) Some of you may be thinking I'm being too harsh on the GOP or not scathing enough on the Democrats. You might be right…but I kind of doubt it. I don't buy into a "both sides" argument either, as not only is it often vacuous, but it creates a sense of false-equivalency that isn't just bad logic but actually dangerously harmful. "Whatabout-ism" and "both sides" and "centrism is the way to go" all operate on an assumption that the actions of politicians can be rendered on a comparative spectrum. That's no way to run a political system--shifting goalposts may be the name of the game, but that game is also called "This Is A Load of Crap"--and I refuse to buy into it. Some things that the Democrats do is bad, yes. Some things that the Republicans endorse are good, yes. That doesn't change the fact that the Republicans, who are entirely in control of every aspect of the federal government and a hefty portion of the state level offices (especially here in Utah), have failed to hold the president accountable with even the easiest and trivial of things--revealing his tax returns, vetting those with security clearance, or (as was just reported today) ensuring that the president uses secured phone lines so that his conversations can't be eavesdropped on by foreign entities--are, it too often feels, positively gleeful to allow much larger breaches of conduct and ethics to get a free pass. That's nothing to do with Democrats: It's all on the head of the GOP establishment. That's where my sense of futility comes from, I think. I'm unaffiliated--there's no way I'm paying a political party money, I'm not going to register to be a part of their club--but I long ago left the Republican's method of thinking. I think their fundamental assertions and assumptions are cracked and flawed. However, I always assumed that they were well-intentioned if wrongly directed in their thinking. My, but how 2016 changed that. I realized then that there actually isn't a morality of Republicanism (and this is speaking of the party as a single entity, rather than bothering with the gratifying-but-usually-pointless acknowledgment that "not all Republicans" are that way) that doesn't begin, travel, and end with the Machiavellian impulse of getting and maintaining power. All of politics is about power, of course. It's frustrating to see that the Republicans, for all of their unholy alliances with the language of God and worship, of Christianity and free-market exploitation, of their claims to being a voice for the Moral Majority, have only used these thin veneers to attempt to mask their greed and naked lust for power. Republicans have always been the better salespeople--that's why they have so many people voting for their candidates and belonging to their party. Sadly, it's always only ever been snake oil that they peddle. Writing that makes me sound angry and petty--which is accurate. This is a maddening thing for me, to be surrounded by people who, statistically, think that Tr*mp is doing a good job, of people who would and will vote for 45 despite all of the active harm that he is doing to immigrant families, political discourse, and decades of presidential precedent. It's hard to use my vote to say, "No, this is not right. The politics on the ballot is not right. These ideas are not right," and yet fully know that, in a county and a state as red as mine, it makes no tangible difference. It's as futile as opposing a war that's already over…but I do that, too. So maybe voting isn't so out of character for me after all. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! An article from The New York Times came out ("Should Art Be A Social Battleground?") in which the author, Wesley Morris, makes an argument/observation about the Morality Wars--the next step in the Culture Wars of the past two or three decades. Morris gave me some things to think about--stuff I agree with and others that I don't--which I wanted to jot down here. I'm not going to give a lot of context to his arguments, as I recommend you use one of your free articles to read on the Times' website to read what he has to say. He begins with his argument that "culture is being evaluated for its moral correctness more than for its quality," but I don't get the sense that he sets down any parameters for what "quality" may mean. This is not an unfamiliar experience for me: At my school, we're a liberal arts, classical school in a lot of ways. We talk about (much more often than we read) the Classics (capital C) and as I teach World Civilizations from the High Middle Ages to current affairs, that focus on the classics is something that I have to wrestle with all of the time. As an unabashed Bardolator and Miltonite, I am perfectly comfortable claiming those two dead, white, British males as the dead center of the English canon. Part of it is the undeniable quality of their writing--which, as a native English speaker, I can appreciate in a more fundamental and satisfying way than I can anything in translation (sorry, Homer and Dante)--that continues to keep it firmly planted. The universality of some of the thoughts, feelings, and problems (not in the superficial way that "Shakespeare in the Bush" would make you think, but in important, fundamental ways) of this aspect of the canon make them indispensable. At the outset, I have to recognize that bias inside of me. I don't think it's a subjective-only claim, and I'm not talking about popularity, either (most people don't know anything about Milton or Paradise Lost, though they've used the word pandemonium, a word that Milton coined). Provided one is willing to invest the time and can understand the language these men are speaking, there is something for everyone inside of this part of the canon. If you want to talk about quality, then that's where we land. Moving out from there, however, things rapidly become murky and additional criteria are necessary. In part because of the continuing growth of art, we gain more and more potential voices. Which ought to be selected? Which studied? Which embraced? Which ignored? Which reconsidered? I bump against this problem in choosing my curricula, which focus on the European side of history more than any other section (though I have been criticized by a student for not teaching more American history in my World History class). This is where the question of quality begins to be begged, I feel. There is no equivalent to Shakespeare. There's nothing like Bach. They are, so far as we can see, unique to their time and place, rare instances of fortunately-timed preservation of genius. There are other beauties of the world from every culture. Many--perhaps most--will be forever forgotten and unknown, preserved (or not) in a way that prevents us from knowing about them. The idea, however, that quality is exclusively found within the Western Canon is the problem area: The story of a creation myth from Igboland isn't comparable to Paradise Lost in terms of its raw, poetic power--but it also isn't supposed to be. Judging a piece of art for areas of deficiency is not the best way to criticize that art. Or, to repurpose Neal A. Maxwell, it would be like faulting a phonebook for lack of a plot. The Igbo version of creation isn't supposed to compete with Paradise Lost (or the Bible, for that matter); it's part of the same genre and that's about it. The purpose, delivery, and quality of it are contextualized in ways that don't apply to Western cosmogonies. My thinking is that there is a lot of art out there that is of excellent quality and part of the process of living is to find, learn from, and enjoy it. So when Morris makes that opening claim, it immediately makes me question. Now, I can easily take a "for the sake of argument, let's operate on an intuitive level" approach to Morris' paper, and that is for the better, as it allows me to get into some of the other things that he brings up. For instance, he brings up this idea that societal pressures are increasing on not what is said, but who gets to say it. Morris says, "We're talking less about whether a work is good art but simply whether it's good--good for us, good for the culture, good for the world." He says that in a way--as I took it, anyway--that bemoans that loss of addressing the quality of the art, focusing instead on the way that the art's effects are felt. On one hand, I get that: Is Wonder Woman a good movie? For the most part, yes, though it fails to stick the landing with a rickety third act and a couple of other strange choices throughout. That can be debated, by the way, and there have been some people who have put forth some worthwhile critiques of the film whose points are solid, even if I disagree that the flaws disqualify the movie from being "good". However, part of what made Wonder Woman so popular and important is the way in which it operates in the broader cultural milieu. Without a reliable rubric for what makes a film good to base any other judgments on, the greater contribution to the conversation of superhero movies, female representation, and acknowledgment of previously unheard voices means that Wonder Woman has more purpose to it than whether or not the cinematography is well done or the editing competent. Though what I just described is Morris' point--we're no longer appreciating art in a vacuum--I have another hand I want to gesture with. Removed from that cultural moment, Wonder Woman absolutely loses power. In terms of raw filmmaking, it is well done. I'd say that the editing and color palate are more dynamic and intriguing than, say, Batman Begins, but it can't compete with the filmmaking mastery that Nolan demonstrated in The Dark Knight. In that sense, Wonder Woman isn't as good of a movie as TDK. So is that a satisfying analysis? Do we strip out the context of the world--with everything that has happened to America in the past two years--and allow the caliber of moviemaking dictate the worth of the film? I'm sure some people would say yes, thinking that a reliance on a supposedly objective rubric can demonstrate the quality of a piece, as if criticism is algorithmic. To a certain extent, that is worthwhile, but I don't think that extent goes to the extent that Morris is implying in his text. One of the things that Morris mentions that I agree with fully is the consequence of the type of criticism we have at our disposal. "The goal," he writes, "is to protect and condemn work, not for its quality, per se, but for its values." Morris believes that this makes sense and he celebrates those who were once marginalized now have a voice, though he acknowledges that such stretching does "start to take a toll". Morris pushes this idea further (after a quick recap of social history from the past three decades that is quite interesting. Here's a taste: "The culture wars back then [in the previous 30 years] always seemed to be about keeping culture from kids. Now the moral panic appears to flow in the opposite direction. The moralizers are young people, not their parents. And the fit is no longer over what we once called family values. It's for representation…") when he gets into his final quarter of the essay. Morris explains his difficulty with The Cosby Show in light of the decades of abuse that Bill Cosby has been convicted of. After exploring the impact of having Cosby's true nature come to light, Morris notes that the corporations erased "it from all platforms", a kind of cancellation of the art that a (monstrous) man made. But, Morris argues, "the show is innocent of Cosby's crimes". Yes…and no… Morris' claims about the quality--something he never gives us as a rubric, so we're again running on the intuitive feeling of what that means here--is what he's after. The show was well done. The man who made it was a monster. They aren't the same thing and ought to be judged separately--that, at least, is what I got out of Morris' argument. The twist is that Morris argued against that position earlier when he asks "Why not keep those things [historical context, the history of the author, cultural norms of the time] in mind as you consume it?" Like me, Morris was trained in a Barthesian approach to textual analysis: The death of the author. That is, he was trained to rely on textual evidences for interpretation, rather than for diving into the past of the writer/artist in order to extrapolate (or, sometimes, infer) the meaning of a text. Since college, I've eased up on the absolute use of this technique, but I think it's a mistake to turn every interpretive exercise into a biographical research (even if it is just a quick look up on Wikipedia). Sometimes, it can be helpful: I was better able to understand 10 Books that Screwed Up The World when I learned the author was a Roman Catholic apologist. "Methough I Saw My Late Espoused Saint" by John Milton gains exponential value when you learn about his rough marriage and the fact that he was blind. I think the danger of relying too heavily on the biography is that it can "botch the words up fit to their own thoughts", as the Gentleman warns Gertrude in Hamlet 4.5. It's from trying to read biography into Shakespeare, after all, that we get the nonsense from antistratfordian "scholarship". With modern art, however, the risk is lower: In some cases, we can simply ask an artist what she meant by a piece. (Whether or not she answers is up to her, of course, and provides its own type of interpretation.) Maybe it's the fact that there is an attempt at monopolizing meaning that such reliance on authorial intent engenders that has me pushing against some of Morris' piece. I think particularly of the (and this is a subjective judgment on my part) laughably bad artwork of Jon McNaughton. I first learned about him during the Obama years during which time he painted "The Forgotten Man" (and, yeah, the Forgotten Man is a white guy, so there I go, justifying exactly what Morris was describing in his paper). What makes this piece particularly egregious, I would argue, is the copious amount of writing that McNaughton does to explain his artwork. I think it's elsewhere on his site where a person can mouse over any part of the picture and have McNaughton explain that section of the painting to you. That, to me, smacks of 1) a failure to trust in the artistic ability to communicate within its own medium, and 2) a desire to dictate what's received. Both of those possibilities--and there are more--strike me as a "have my cake and eat it, too" mentality that, frankly, isn't possible. Interpretation is a personal act, and being told what to think or what a thing means by virtue of appealing to the author(ity) is unconvincing. If "correct" interpretations were simply a matter of an artist's explanation, then we wouldn't need the art in the first place. Let McNaughton write an essay about how he hates Obama's policies--why bother with his "fine art" at all? I think there's something about art that is different, and perhaps it's that democratization of meaning that I find so crucial. I don't think McNaughton is the sole arbiter of meaning of his piece, and the fact that he interprets it is fine. But there's so much more going on with the art than what's on the canvas. And that's the tension: Sometimes we want to strip things of context (e.g. Wonder Woman as a "bad" movie), but not others. Morris is guilty of this paradox, as am I: I want to add in McNaughton's comments, his politics, his other artwork to better understand "The Forgotten Man", but I don't think it's fitting to squeeze Edward DeVere into Shakespeare's plays simply because Oxford stabbed someone behind a curtain. I had this issue a few years back when people were bagging on Cars 2. It's not a particularly memorable film, but the issue was that we were judging it by the other work that Pixar has done. In comparison to the entire Pixar catalogue up to that point, Cars 2 was a bit of a wreck (lol, pun). Should Cars 2 be judged simply on its merit? That was the argument I was trying to make. But its merit isn't found in just that film alone; it's packaged up as a single part of a much greater whole. And that leads back to the Cosby connection. I've been struggling with this concept for some time--not the Cosby side, as I didn't watch his show and he wasn't much of a presence in my mind as an entertainer--because I don't know how to parse the problem. Back when I was a kid, my dad got really upset at my brother because my bro had bought a Nu-Metal album with a parental advisory sticker. Dad was mad because the purchase of the album showed the support of what was on the disc, regardless of whether or not my brother listened to the songs with bad words in them or not. That has stuck with me for a long time, as has this Mormonad* from many years back. Since I write some things that might be considered objectionable (my characters are violent and swear, among other things), I've often wondered if that ad is accurate. If there's something bad inside, doesn't that affect the whole?
When it comes to art, I'm sad about the misogyny that's easy to find in Shakespeare and Paradise Lost. It's hard to really venerate the Founding Fathers when some of my brothers and sisters of the human family were viewed by them as subhuman (three-fifths human, as a matter of fact) and enslaved. The failure of the Catholic Church (specifically, though others can be put in) to stop clerical abuses likewise shatters conceptions about the holiness of an institution. So do I stop enjoying or appreciating the contributions of those entities? I know that we're all human and we all have foibles. The issues here are deeper than just "We all make mistakes," though. What Cosby did wasn't a "mistake", it was calculated and abusive. Same with the Founding Fathers. They didn't accidentally import humans. And Shakespeare's progressiveness is all a comparative thing anyway: He says some pretty horrible things about women in his plays and that wasn't by accident. Ah, but the times change, yes? So that's why! We can excuse the past for being more benighted because it was more benighted. Except…the culture accepting the horrible things has changed, but the horrible things are still horrible. Sometimes, moral relativism will try to insert itself as meaning that everyone feels differently, so therefore there's nothing to worry about. I disagree: I think that morals are the same, but our willingness--societal and personal--to allow their breakage shifts. Women have been saying for centuries that the way men treat women is inappropriate and illogical. The stories brought up in the #MeToo movement aren't a sudden uprising--they're long-embedded realities from generations of our past. They weren't talked about, maybe, but they were still wrong "back then". Societally, we've started to say, "It's wrong now, too." So, does that mean that art's quality is being lost? Well, again, I don't know where Morris was looking for his definition of quality, so I can't answer that. I do know that I don't disagree with much of his stuff. That shows me that I still have more to think about, more to process. I don't know what to do about liking a piece of art whose artist is "problematic". I don't watch Louis C.K. stuff anymore, despite having previously enjoyed many of his routines. I don't know if that's the right choice. One thing is certain, though: Morris definitely gave me a lot to think about. I liked his approach and I wish that I had more answers. Of course, if I did, we'd be able to move past this problem, wouldn't we? --- * For those not in the know, a Mormonad is a pithy piece of advertising that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would put into its monthly youth magazine. They were popular when I was growing up, though I don't know if their popularity has remained these days. I guess I could ask someone. Maybe I will. |
AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
July 2022
Categories
All
|