The principal and the girlfriend

I have finally had an experience that once and for all puts my ill-fated romance with Brandi Fisher behind me. All because I had a principal who was just like her.

Freda Ogburn and Brandi Fisher are very much alike. They are both smart, very charming, committed, idealistic in their own way, and completely full of themselves. You don't achieve the way that Freda or Brandi achieve and be completely self-centered. The most self-centered members of the human race are frequently in jail or terrorists or gangsters or the prevailing despot in some sad country likely romanticizing their authoritarian ruler. Freda and Brandi are not despotic rulers, thankfully, because they would be the most intolerable despots, always wanting people to like them even as they ran roughshot over them.

Freda and Brandi are both relatively smart women with lots of charm who are too tied to what people think about them. I've always said this about Brandi. And the same is definitely true of Freda. They are smart, charming people - people better suited for politics - who are far too concerned with what people around them think about them. It is only with some distance from that that it is easier to see what a powerful and yet somewhat dangerous position that is for people. Bill Clinton very much had that quality. I've said in the past that Bill was the likely the best President of the 20th century. I don't know if that is true with some distance from my stronger identification as a liberal, but there is certainly a strong argument to be made, I think, that he had many of the qualities of a stronger quality President at the end of the 20th century that other Presidents have lacked. Clinton's remarkable intelligence and more genuine heart were his two strongest qualities, I think.

George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan each had qualities that were unique to them that I appreciated. Reagan's willingness to speak honestly and unequivocally about the need for Communism to give way to democratic norms was a very important quality he brought to the Presidency, as was his commitment to smaller government and a free market, even as he and Democratic Congress' repeatedly enlarged the government in all of their favored arenas. Knowing Reagan's charm and his level of intelligence, he likely too, among conservative Presidents, had this quality of being very sensitive to popular notions, good and bad, and sticking closely to popular winds. I would want to spend more time with studying Reagan to say that with more confidence.

But Freda and Brandi are most definitely of this ilk.

And I realize, after a year of it with Freda Ogburn, there is no way that I could have stayed in love with someone like that. Freda and Brandi are both very likeable. But, over time, I would become skeptical and disappointed with the tendency to use charm to keep pace with popular winds and constantly worrying about what others think about them rather than acting out of conscience. Bill and Hillary Clinton seem subject to this temptation, right now. It's a very disappointing spectacle to watch, frankly.

It was Freda's and my most serious disagreement. I believe and said that conscience should be our more serious guide. And Freda, reacting to and reflecting the political moment, which just so happens to be a liberal moment, argued that it was the law and not conscience which should guide us most seriously. And over the course of a year of that conversation it became much clearer to me just how Hitler was able to do all that he was able to do in Germany. Because people will get lost in the zeitgeist and inevitably confuse it with something more substantial.

It is an argument, of course. Just as Communism versus democracy was an argument, Nazism versus democracy was an argument, slavery as moral or immoral is an argument, and every single important moral question that we have faced is an argument. It is also an argument with serious consequences that seriously hurts and disrupts the lives of others for the sake of argument. It is the heart of serious wealth inequities, as political and economic zeitgeist's lead to people treating one another as pawns in a game of maximizing profits (even as real profits are maximized with more attention to the sounder fundamentals and integrity of businesses, meeting customer needs and satisfying customer desires, and using profits to reinvest and pay dividends to investors). It is an argument with serious consequences for our culture, as baser, more popular, more aggressive and less intellectually taxing insticts get rewarded in a culture that appeals to the lowest common denominator, as Mike Judge powerfully lampoons in Idiocracy. And it was an argument at the beginning of the 20th century which Nazis won for a period of time that allowed them to murder 6 million Jews and countless Europeans and Americans and other foes. And it was an argument during the course of the 20th century that Communists were winning in many countries which allowed them to murder and imprison millions of Soviet citizens and people all over the world in the name of revolution.

And the truth is that I could not live my life with someone who would perpetually rationalize the political moment for her own or her own ideology's gain and treat people like me like shit and sacrafice people like me in the process. I have given up on defending any ideology that rationalizes this way. And I could never live the rest of my life with someone who would perpetually rationalize their way through life, this way. I don't care how much money they make or how much political clout they achieve this way. It's meanspirited and its bullshit and there is no way in hell that I could stay in love with someone who operated this way. And I could never stay in love with someone who believed that she could find happiness in that kind of situation and without more accountability to more substantial integrity in life.

I like people like Brandi and Freda. But I don't respect that way of thinking. And I can't respect the cowardice in the choices that each of them have engaged during this period.

I need someone in my life with more courage. I've not met her yet. I don't know many women or men, for that matter, with the kind of courage that I've found in myself during this period. But I very much want to find that woman and learn from her and for her to learn from me and to develop a relationship of love that can last long past the initial romance.

I had that kind of love for Brandi. But like my love for poor people and public schools and modestly funded schools, in particular, it was blind. Blind love isn't mature love. And mature love is the kind of love that I want to have myself, my wife, my life, and for everyone, poor or not.

This period of my life has finally put Brandi behind me. Because I realize that as sweet and beautiful our little college romance was, the kind of love I'm looking for is one that can and will stand the tests of time, independent of my or her fortunes or fears. I want to love someone and be loved for real, in good times and in bad, with eyes wide open to our flaws as well as our strengths.

Freda and Brandi both have other important qualities in common. Their charm creates loyalty that can be a bit blind. And neither of them likes criticism.

I inspire loyalty. But I am happy to say that it is rarely blind. I actively solicit people's thinking about my flaws. Because I want to know about them. So I can address them. I'm sure I'm still blind to many of my own flaws. Aren't all of us. But I try to face them actively. So I can do a better job of addressing peoples' concerns.

But neither of those qualities are ones that can substitute for an acknowledgement of each of these woman's most important flaw: neither takes intelligent thought nor engagement nearly serious enough and both of them think sticking close with what others think is the right thing to do is some kind of substitute.

Both could be aggressive. Brandi was aggressive, though had no power over me in any serious way. Our aggression was between two equals, and we both gave as well as we took. Freda is the most aggressive boss/administrator I have ever dealt with, though I think largely because of a romanticized aggressive liberal political period that she, like so many liberals, are caught up in the zeitgeist around. She didn't start out that way. She started out like Brandi. Charming, sweet, supportive. But she grew more aggressive as my first full year unfolded. And it was one of the single-most miserable and counterproductive experiences of my life. And I have not once heard an apology for her behavior. And for that she and the liberals and aggressive teachers who egged her on can fuck off, as far as I am concerned.

I am finally over Brandi. And I have absolutely zero romantic attachment to schools in poor and middle class neighborhoods, anymore. Like Palestine, if you want progress in your schools and neighborhoods, then liberalize and build that progress. You want to muscle your way to progress, good fuckin' luck and you can do it without me.

And anyone who puts power or money or ambition or any of those things above being decent in the world could never ever be the person that I would want to work for nor spend a life with.

I need more substance than that. I need someone who impresses me because she knows how to have life that is ambitious and independent and thoughtful and not dependent on what others think of her. I need someone more like me, and someone who can nicely help me see when I'm full of shit when I need to see it. I need someone I can genuinely count on and not just someone who counts on the popular winds to guide her and me. I need someone who I can trust.

Love,
Ben