Frederick Douglass and freedom

As I reflect, today, on the challenges to freedom, the waste laid by the stubborn unwillingness of those desperately rationalizing power, and the burdens that has created for my own life, as a teacher, I thought about the American slave turned civil rights leader, Frederick Douglass.

I thought about Douglass because he was a man who also passionately sought his own freedom and failed escape from slavery twice for seeking it (once from a brutal slavemaster, Edward Covey, whom Douglas was rented to for a year to break his spirit as a young teenager and undoubtedly offered up brutal abuse when Douglass was returned to him).

Douglass had this to say about the question of what whites in America should do with African Americans, that I think applies just as well to what any person should treat any other person:

"Everybody has asked the question. . .'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!"

There are exceptions to that principle, obviously. We can and should protect one another when we are facing imminent violence and look after one another when we face harm. There is much common sense on such questions.

But controlling one another is hardly noble. And doing so and claiming to celebrate freedom is a lie. And it is not a noble lie. It is the oldest and most pernicious ignoble lie, in fact.

And Frederick Douglass knew the fact of that lie in his life better than most of us alive today.

Big fuckin' joke

That pretty much sums up the stupidity of the political class, right now.

This process is a big fuckin' joke. And at least John Stewart is funny.

Getting honest

Andrew Sullivan points me in the direction of an excellent discussion of media and politics by James Fallows, of the Atlantic Monthly, from 1996.

Why Americans Hate the Media.

So many good highlights from this article:

"The discussion shows that are supposed to enhance public understanding may actually reduce it, by hammering home the message that issues don't matter except as items for politicians to fight over. Some politicians in Washington may indeed view all issues as mere tools to use against their opponents. But far from offsetting this view of public life, the national press often encourages it. As Washington-based talk shows have become more popular in the past decade, they have had a trickle-down effect in cities across the country. In Seattle, in Los Angeles, in Boston, in Atlanta, journalists gain notice and influence by appearing regularly on talk shows--and during those appearances they mainly talk about the game of politics.

...When ordinary citizens have a chance to pose questions to political leaders, they rarely ask about the game of politics. They want to know how the reality of politics will affect them--through taxes, programs, scholarship funds, wars. Journalists justify their intrusiveness and excesses by claiming that they are the public's representatives, asking the questions their fellow citizens would ask if they had the privilege of meeting with Presidents and senators. In fact they ask questions that only their fellow political professionals care about. And they often do so--as at the typical White House news conference--with a discourtesy and rancor that represent the public's views much less than they reflect the modern journalist's belief that being independent boils down to acting hostile.

The limited curiosity that elite reporters display in their questions is also evident in the stories they write once they have received answers. They are interested mainly in pure politics and can be coerced into examining the substance of an issue only as a last resort. The subtle but sure result is a stream of daily messages that the real meaning of public life is the struggle of Bob Dole against Newt Gingrich against Bill Clinton, rather than our collective efforts to solve collective problems.

The natural instinct of newspapers and TV is to present every public issue as if its 'real' meaning were political in the meanest and narrowest sense of that term--the attempt by parties and candidates to gain an advantage over their rivals. Reporters do, of course, write stories about political life in the broader sense and about the substance of issues--the pluses and minuses of diplomatic recognition for Vietnam, the difficulties of holding down the Medicare budget, whether immigrants help or hurt the nation's economic base. But when there is a chance to use these issues as props or raw material for a story about political tactics, most reporters leap at it. It is more fun--and easier--to write about Bill Clinton's 'positioning' on the Vietnam issue, or how Newt Gingrich is 'handling' the need to cut Medicare, than it is to look into the issues themselves."

Fallows' takes reporters to task for their pettiness and their focus on power at the expense of resolving critical public problems, which they deserve in a serious way, if that ABC News Democratic Debate illustrates anything at all.

But the truth is that Fallows lets citizens off the hook. The truth is that citizens not only consume politics like it is entertainment, they encourage this kind of behavior among journalist and among politicians, because it is easier for everyone, not just journalists, to play politics like a game than it is to engage the serious questions of what directions on serious issues will actually get us somewhere other than on-going power battles that go nowhere.

The same could be said of teachers. And students. And parents. Almost all of the citizens I have contact with, at some level. People are constantly trying to avoid the substance of life in favor of its cheaper alternatives. Schools have a million different ways that they undermine the substance of education. Terry Moe and John Chubb fault, rightly, I think, district bureaucracies for this tendency. But the truth is that it isn't just the district bureaucracy. It's everyone. Teachers and students, both, often avoid sustantive learning in favor of less substantive alternatives, at the university level as much as at the K-12 level. It's the single biggest fact of school life and political life that drives me up a fuckin' wall. And exactly why I'm seriously considering doing something else for a living.

Obviously we can do better than all of this.

What has really floored me and what I was not, in the least, prepared for before I left grad school, was how little people are willing or interested in engaging serious discussions about issues, engagement that takes differences seriously and considers them honestly as well as their alternatives, and thoughtfully reflecting on pathes that transcend our endless political and culture wars.

Most people are not terribly interested in such discussions, I am concerned and in my experience, often, because the discussions seem too difficult, the honesty is too much for them to handle, the thought too complex, and the obsession with power is too tempting an alternative to such engagement, no matter how much and how long throughout humanity's history it has always failed to resolve much of anything at all.

Humanity obviously has it in us. The truth is that most people don't really want to be better and engage more honestly much of the time, sadly, because they feel like its too hard, it's too much for them to handle, it's just not the expectation they want to have for themselves or for one another.

It could be. It needs to be. Because the alternatives are so fuckin' shitty and clearly counterproductive, if we'd just get honest about that fact.

But getting honest is what everyone is avoiding.

And yet that is the only way that any genuine progress lies.

We can do it. The question is will we do it, not can we do it.

And the verdict on that question is still out.

I sure as hell hope we make the right choice.

I think I see the problem

I'd like to see a world where we don't treat each other like such shit.

That's what Maslow and most psychologists mean when they talk about reducing aggression, dealing with control issues, stronger communication, deeper connection, etc.

The goal, obviously, everywhere, should be that we're treating each other better. And talking more honestly. And being more decent to one another.

Most people want the ability to treat others however the fuck they want to. Especially people they don't like or don't identify with or have demonized. And most people are always bottoming out their expectations for their lives, for how they get treated, and for how they treat others.

And every time I want to raise those expectations, I've got to deal with someone, somewhere, trying to find the problem with me having too high of expectations rather than being honest about those low expectations of themselves and of others.

And I have no interest in making people or trying to manipulate people into expecting more for themselves and from others. If we don't want to do that, if we want to settle for the shitty ways that we treat one another, today, and how we get treated, today, I say so be it. Leave me out of it. But so be it. You go on being treated like shit and treating others like shit, as long as you don't fuck with me.

I want better than that. My vision is of a world where people don't treat each other like such shit. And where they honestly clean it up when they do.

But I'm just not convinced, anymore, that that is the life that people want.

And so maybe I need to move on to a life where I just look out for myself, more, and stop concerning myself so much with other people and their needs. I'm a good guy, so it's not like I'm going to start treating people like shit. It's just that I can take all these good guy qualities and translate them into some effort that makes me more money or gets me more things that I want and not have to spend my entire fucking life trying to convince other people that they have more in them than they want to believe that they do or that we can expect more of ourselves and of one another than most people seem interested in or willing to do.

If people want to have a world where most people are kind of dumb, where they treat each other like shit and pretend like that is the best we can do, and where we keep pretending that none of this matters anyway, then there's not much I can do about that unless people want to change that. If people want to settle for being treated like shit - like so many of the teachers at my school seem willing to settle for - then far be it from me to convince them different, I suppose. It's a pain in my fuckin' ass, is what it is. And it certainly doesn't pay the way many more lucrative fields might pay.

And I'm fuckin' tired, is the truth, of trying to convince people, all the time, that they can and that it's worth their time being thoughtful, being more decent, being more honest, being better than they are today.

If people don't want to be those things, which they generally don't really seem to want to be, then so fuckin' be it, I say. We could develop more constructive, more rational, more decent, and more intelligent policies for how to handle such situations. But why the fuck would I waste my life trying to convince people of such things if the truth is they really just don't want to be better people? I have no clue.

So I'm thinking, I teach out my scholarship, I write my book, I put it all out there, and then I go do something, like Warren Buffet, where I just be the example of how virtue pays and if you don't want a piece of that action, then so fuckin' be it.

I'm tired of being the world's bitch. I wanted to contribute. I made my effort. My efforts in that domain, I am completely convinced, will never be good enough. Because the truth is that everyone is just rationalizing why they don't want to be better. That's why you had all those discussions about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Everyone knows that King was the better man. People just didn't want to be held to that standard. Malcolm looked like lower hanging fruit. He was easier for people to identify with because he was about as shitty as they were. His tactics were shitty, and counterproductive. He was always in King's fuckin' way. So many radicals long after King's death still trying to take credit for King's work and use Malcolm as a foil in that effort.

All because they just don't have the courage to admit to themselves that King was the better man. He wasn't perfect. He was wrong about a lot. Everyone is. But he was the better man. Better than all of them. And he did the really heavy lifting on that movement. And Malcolm X was an angry black man who figured out late in life that maybe King was right.

Why do I still engage in these debates? I don't know why.

I need to do something in my life that is not dependent on the validation of others. Something that rewards me because I do the right things and not because someone else says so.

I'm tired of people being so stupid and shitty. But just about as tired of trying to persuade people to stop being both, as well.

I need a shower. I got a lot of work to do. And thinking to do about my life.