Counting Blessings

I awakened late on Friday morning with an odd sense of unease. 

Looking at the clock, it read 9:15…a quarter past noon on the East Coast.  Then, the realization came: The new President had been sworn in a few minutes earlier.

In a time of uncertainty, one should count one’s blessings.   The new semester starts tomorrow.  Rather than dwell on things such as the low enrollment in a particular section or the unfamiliarity of the new course I’ve been assigned to teach, I can look back on a fall term that wasn’t half bad.

Oh, I complained enough at the time, commiserating with colleagues as weary as I.  My 9:30 section lacked enthusiasm, while attendance lagged in my 12:30.  I felt in October the way I usually felt in March.  Stuff like that.

On the other hand, the semester lacked a lot of the usual irritants.  Not a single student complained about their final grade.  Not one.  That by itself borders on a miracle.  Good things happened, too: I had an article accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal (my first!).  I slept well for the most part, and the vague sense of malaise I’ve felt for the past year and a half has lifted somewhat.

I can’t say I’m fully charged for the spring term, but there is hope nonetheless.  Let’s face the days ahead with a similar sense of hopefulness.

Taking It All In

The weeks since November 8^th have had a surreal aspect.  The impending Trump presidency is something which, on some days, I can’t believe is happening, and on others I face with mingled resignation and dread.

When I met with my 4 p.m. section on Election Day, the idea that Trump would win still seemed farfetched.  So farfetched that I played the clip from The Daily Show in which Trevor Noah reflects back on Trump’s first term on Election Day 2020.  The class laughed knowing such a thing was unthinkable.

I spent the first part of the evening working on an online course I’m scheduled to teach in the spring (which is a whole other source of aggravation I won’t get into right now).  Around 8 p.m., I took a break from my academic toils and clicked on the POLITICO website to check up on the election returns…and felt my stomach tighten.

I leaned  out my office door into the hallway and saw one of my students, an activist, chatting with a group of people.  I urgently waved her into my office, and she and the others clustered around my desk.  For the next hour, as students filtered in and out, we watched disbelievingly as Clinton fell farther and farther behind in the electoral vote count, at which point I decided I couldn’t watch any more.

Not having eaten since breakfast I dropped by a Mexican place on my way home.  Dining alone, I grabbed a seat at the bar. 

Naturally, the TV was on, and several of the patrons were weighing in on the news.  At one end of the bar, a paunchy middle aged white guy, three sheets to the wind, loudly proclaimed he was glad Trump won because he’d send all the illegals back to Mexico.  (Given that half the folks in the room were Latino/a, the fact no one took a swing at the jerk said volumes about them.  At least they were civil.) 

At the other end of the bar a woman, equally inebriated, was weeping and shouting that Trump was going to take away her right to choose.  I made a point of leaving after hastily finishing my dinner.

The next day, I felt fine.  Then I remembered the day before.  At work I was hard pressed to explain the result.  After all, like a lot of people, I found it unlikely a year ago that Trump would ever attain the Republican nomination let alone the Presidency.  Asked by a colleague at a holiday function what I thought of The Donald, I scornfully answered, “He’s a buffoon!”  When a student last fall kidded me about leaving the country if Trump was elected I borrowed a line from the movie Office Space and said, “Why should I leave?  He’s the one who sucks!”  It seemed funny at the time.

Eleven, twelve months later my institution’s mental health counselors were announcing their office was open for drop-in visits by students overwhelmed by the election results.  At first I thought this was a bit of an overreaction, but reconsidered when I remembered that those people who had borne the rhetorical brunt of Trump’s campaign rhetoric—immigrants, women, gays and lesbians—might feel a trifle vulnerable right about now.

Still, some of the student antics I heard about from my fellow proffies did make me shake my head at how they took advantage of the climate of worry.  My favorite was that of the student who asked his professor for credit on a missed assignment.  The reason?  The student had to marry his boyfriend before President Trump ended same-sex marriage.  He offered cell phone photos of the nuptials as evidence.  I found this example amusing, because nothing short of a constitutional amendment could overturn the Obergefell decision and I doubt SCOTUS would reverse itself.  It was even more amusing when I learned the student was a poli sci major and should have known better.

For my part, I told my students the same thing I’ve been telling everyone else who has asked me how best to get through the next four years.  Don’t sit back and let circumstances get you down.  Get involved in those causes you may feel are threatened by a Trump presidency.  If women’s reproductive rights are at stake for you, volunteer with Planned Parenthood or similar organizations.  If it’s immigrant rights, work with groups seeking to protect them.  Contribute to the ACLU.  Just…do…something.  This is not a time for sitting on your hands.  Remember that you have agency.

There’s not much more I can add to this advice.  Please consider acting upon it.  And for God’s sake be vigilant after January 19^th.  Let’s hope our fears prove unfounded, but be prepared for the worst.

© 2016 The Unassuming Scholar 

End of an Era

The passing of Fidel Castro has evoked mixed feelings for me.  Initially I felt a sense of disbelief, as if he might last forever as a living, breathing museum piece legacy of the Cold War.  Fidel was a presence on the world stage for my whole life, and so his death struck me in the manner that, say, the demise of Queen Elizabeth undoubtedly will when that time comes. 

Before Americans were taught by their leaders to fear and hate Muslims, they feared and hated Communists.  Cuba, so close to the United States, was a particular source of unease.  Our mainstream news media played up the Castro regime’s repressiveness, enthusiastically echoed by politicians and the exile community.  That Fidel did not go the way of the leaders of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, that it was not until after he stepped aside in favor of brother Raul that Cuba began the first tentative steps on the road toward capitalism already trod by China and Vietnam, caused consternation among American leaders.

On the other hand, Fidel’s death has elicited laudatory retrospectives of his life, thought, and work among progressives.  I tend to view him in terms of his whole record.  By his own admission he was a dictator, albeit a “sui generis dictator.” His regime had an abysmal record on civil liberties.  It repressed and persecuted the LGBT community.  Castro was perfectly willing to foment nuclear war between the U.S. and Soviet Union.  His emptying the jails of Cuba’s worst criminals during the Mariel boatlift was hardly a laudable gesture, either.

Notwithstanding all this, the Cuban Revolution was a net gain for Cuba.  For the first time, Cuba was a fully sovereign nation.  The revolution broke the grip of American corporations and American organized crime on the economy.  It brought about a fair distribution of wealth.  It placed agriculture in the hands of the people who worked the land.  It led to Cuba having the highest literacy rate in the Caribbean as well as having its best educated populace.  Most importantly, it made quality healthcare universally available, an endeavor at which the United States has failed miserably.

The fall of the Soviet Union and the ensuing “Special Period” did result in some dents in the revolution’s edifice.  Raul Castro’s willingness to make concessions to the neoliberal order is worrisome though inevitable.  As the country reopens to American investment and tourism one sees the specter of pre-1959 Cuba slowly rising like a miasma.  (Ironically, during the era when the CIA toyed with a number of novel ways to assassinate Fidel, he shrugged off the threat by saying that if he were to die the United States would then have to contend with Raul and “he’s even more radical than I am!”)  I wonder what Fidel may have thought of the first signs of his work being undone.  Did he acquiesce to this process?  This seems unthinkable to the point of cognitive dissonance.

And so, Fidel’s death represents a further loss of hope of preserving the gains of the Cuban Revolution.   I suppose all there’s left is the prospect of playing roulette and blackjack at the Havana Hilton for the first time in generations.  Bring on the Yanqui tourists!

© 2016 The Unassuming Scholar

The New Reality (Show)

In the age-old struggle between the Yahoos and Houyhnhnms, bet on the Yahoos. 

For once, I am at a loss for words even though I’m not quite surprised.  The next four years will be interesting, to say the least.

Home of the Brave

I almost missed this story.  I only found out about it from a New York magazine piece linked on Longform.

There was a mass panic at New York’s JFK airport last week which led to stampedes in Terminal 8.  It appears to have been instigated by waiting passengers cheering Usain Bolt’s Olympic gold medal win in the 100-meter dash.  Their applause echoed in the terminal, which sounded like gunfire to people further down. 

When a woman reportedly shouted that she saw a gun, passengers began running for their lives.  In their panic some dropped objects such as their phones; the resulting clatters sounded like more gunfire.  One group ran out a door and onto the tarmac outside.  Another hid in an unused jet bridge.  TSA workers at one inspection line fled their posts.  Misinformation and panic were undoubtedly amplified by flurries of texts and tweets.

It took several hours for Port Authority police to restore order and for normal operations in Terminal 8 to resume.  Other terminals had been evacuated, adding to the confusion.  And yet, hours after the incident happened, news outlets had moved on to other stories, which is why I learned of it via Longform.

It’s a sign of the times.  Elements of story were all too familiar.  When a terrified woman in a hijab, separated from her family by the unreasoning herd fleeing for safety, cried out in fear and reached out her arms to her child it caused one gaggle of passengers to erupt in a renewed paroxysm of panic.  Because everybody knows all Muslims are terrorists, all of them.  I'm a bit surprised that the Second Amendment crowd didn't take to the airwaves afterwards claiming the stampede was still another reason we need an armed public (even though anyone with the merest shred of sanity would see it as still another reason why an armed public would be a terrible idea).  Considering that the incident took place in NYC, I'm even more surprised that Donald Trump didn't tweet or soundbite about how we have to restrict Muslim immigration to the United States.

I can only imagine what would have happened if the panic had occurred in Texas, let’s say, rather than cosmopolitan, multicultural New York City.  The mom in the hijab might well have been set upon by the crowd, perhaps thinking themselves the earthbound equivalent of the heroic passengers of Flight 93.  Incidents like these make me want to barricade myself in my house with a month’s supply of essentials not to venture out unless absolutely necessary.  Not from fear of Middle Eastern terrorists, but from fear of my own people whenever I venture out in public.

We are a greedy, superstitious, and paranoid lot sorely lacking in self-awareness.  Once I was asked by a Canadian acquaintance to describe my compatriots in a single word, completing the sentence “An American is ___________.”  With scarcely a thought I replied, “Oblivious.”  And in few areas are my people more oblivious than in their understanding of the world.

Nearly fifteen years since 9/11 and the declaration of a Global War on Terror, after two disastrous incursions into the Muslim world with a third in progress, we live perpetually on edge.  Despite this we still believe that despite our hostility toward whole faiths and entire peoples we will someday succeed in making ourselves absolutely safe.  This is a false hope.  Even if we prevail against Islamist terrorism, we will still experience acts of terror by perpetrators with different motives.  Terrorism is a political tactic, and it is as old as politics itself. 

So why do we still cling to the delusion we can one day be safe for good?

One reason is the emergence of security theater since the September 11^th attacks.  Aside from the Boston Marathon bombings there haven’t been any major incidents involving a non-firearm mass casualty device in the U.S. since 2001.   Notwithstanding this we’re constantly on edge.  It was understandably worse in the first years following 9/11.  Eight weeks after the attacks on New York and Washington, an American Airlines flight departing JFK crashed in Queens shortly after takeoff.  While the cause was later found to be rudder failure brought on by an overreaction by the pilot to wake turbulence, media speculation immediately centered on terrorism.  (It didn’t help that a Palestinian militant group claimed credit for the crash immediately afterward.)

The 2001 anthrax attacks took place around the same time.  Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to the offices of two U.S. Senators and several news outlets killing five people and sickening 17 others.  (It would be nearly a decade before it became known that a researcher at Fort Detrick, Maryland, was responsible and that his motives were personal.)   Throughout the fall of ’01 and into the following year the media ran stories of people trying to obtain military gas masks and creating so-called “safe rooms” in their homes.  At one point I read an article on this topic in which the quoted expert’s sole credential was that she had been a producer of the 1995 film Outbreak, which portrayed a fictional epidemic caused by a military bioweapon.   

It was in this atmosphere that Congress and the Bush administration created that bureaucratic Frankenstein’s monster known as the Department of Homeland Security.  A mishmash of formerly independent executive branch agencies and agencies formerly belonging to other cabinet departments, DHS is a model of bureaucratic inertia.  (One need only consider FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina to recognize this.)  It is also a font of questionable policies, particularly in the arena of air travel.

Remember the color codes?  You know, the ones depicting the terrorist threat levels.  It was called the Homeland Security Advisory System.  There were five levels, running from Low Risk (green) all the way to Severe (red).  We were only at red once for a few weeks in 2006, and it only applied to incoming flights from the UK.  The level reached High (orange) several times between 2002 and 2004 though never again on a general basis after that.  (There were a few partial oranges after that.)  The default state, as the advisory at the airport’s entrance would inform travelers most days prior to the demise of the advisory system in 2011, was Elevated (yellow).  Never during the system’s existence was the country ever at Guarded (blue) or Low Risk status.

I don’t think anyone really knew exactly what any of these states actually meant.  In fact, that’s why the system was eventually abandoned.  It was just a meaningless way to reassure an anxious public.  Fox News Channel, which practically held itself out as an arm of the government during the War on Terror’s first years, was the color system’s most assertive proponent, ostentatiously displaying the day’s threat level at the bottom of the screen just above the crawl and near the FNC hologram superimposed over the American flag in the lower right corner.  (My antipathy toward Fox hardened into its present state in those days.) 

The climate of fear simmers in the background of our lives, stoked by a cynical desire for ratings on the part of major news outlets, only to boil over suddenly into mindless fright.  That is what I find intriguing about the American character.  We love to beat our chests, hold our index fingers aloft and proclaim, “We’re Number One,” and moronically chant “USA! USA!”  (This last was a fixture on The Jerry Springer Show, often chanted by the studio audience whenever the menagerie of cretins guesting on the program that day would suddenly erupt into violence.)   Yet when danger approaches we scatter blindly and helplessly.

It doesn't help that Americans seem to suffer, individually and collectively, from the Dunning-Kruger effect.  It's especially strong in conservatives.  Registering Republican apparently makes one an automatic expert on national security even when the person is an insurance salesman or dentist who never served with the armed forces or been part of an intelligence agency.  Believing we are in the loop, that we are active participants in this epic struggle against the terrorists and other boogeymen who lurk in the shadows reinforces our sense of control.  Again, this is particularly the case with xenophobic conservatives who already have strong authoritarian tendencies.  

In some respects the tenor of the War on Terror’s beginnings remains.  “Security moms” are a quotidian feature of American life in 2016 in the way “cocooning” at home with the family and driving them around in an SUV to ensure their safety were in the early 2000s.  We idolize Navy SEALS the way we did first responders a decade ago.  We still tear up and sing along with Lee Greenwood.  And still we are as skittish as a kindergartner on her first day of school.

Just watch the news coverage of the JFK incident if you don’t believe me.

© 2016 The Unassuming Scholar

And So It Begins...

You’re checking your email.  It’s the week before the semester begins, and you’ve neglected your messages as of late.  It’s summer break, after all.

Buried in the middle of your unread messages is one from a student in your summer class last month at Verdant Meadows Community College.  The subject, predictably, is “Grade?”

From: Lindy (annoyedstudent@me.com)

Sent: Friday, August 5, 2016 3:21 am

To: Unassuming Scholar

Subject: Grade???

Mr. Scholar,

I’m emailing you directly because you haven’t answered my Whiteboard messages.  Why haven’t you lowered the points possible on Whiteboard for homework and participation like you promised?  Checking my grades, my percentage is 89.2%.  You said you’d round up the points and you didn’t!

Please get back to me ASAP.

Lindy Smith

Ah, the sense of entitlement is strong in this one, you think.   You’re not sure which to curse first—the Whiteboard feature which renders student grades as percentages and cannot be disabled by the instructor, or the grade-grubbing student.  ASAP?  You kick yourself, having once more forgotten the new rules of the higher ed game.  In a time when students slip off to Cancun or the Bahamas midsemester with nary a word to their profs only to rematerialize weeks later wanting to know if they missed anything, no faculty member dare take time off or be unavailable ever.

However, you know there really isn’t a problem.  Perhaps the young princess has seen her final grade report in the intervening two weeks and has discovered everything’s okay after all.

You dash off a short reply:

From: Unassuming Scholar (scholar@vmcc.edu)

Sent: Friday, August 19, 2016 12:15 pm

To: Lindy

Subject: Re: Grade???

           Lindy,

As I said in class, count the points and ignore the percentages.  With the extra credit you submitted, you finished with an A.

Prof. Scholar

You figure this should be the end of it.  But it never is.  The response pops up within minutes.

From: Lindy (annoyedstudent@me.com)

Sent: Friday, August 19, 2016 12:24 pm

To: Unassuming Scholar

Subject: RE: Re: Grade???

           Mr. Scholar,

I’ve been waiting for your answer.  Why did you take so long?  I don’t understand your explanation.

Just so you know, I posted a review of your class at [That Website Which Shall Not Be Named].  People need to know how unfair you are.

Lindy

Now you are simply flabbergasted.  Positively gobsmacked.  You marvel at your ability to inspire ingratitude.  While you couldn’t care less about the bad review she said she wrote, since as a professional you are accountable to your colleagues and institution and not to the personal opinions of the “customers” in the classroom, you do wonder how such allegedly intelligent people cannot understand a simple arithmetic concept you’ve explained time and again to every section each semester.

On the other hand, you would be most interested if this particular student lodged a complaint with your department.  “I got an A, and I’m outraged!”  That would be one for the books.

But you wouldn’t be surprised one bit if she did.  The new academic year is upon us.  You can only wonder what new horrors it will bring. 

© 2016 The Unassuming Scholar

No Good Deed

You checked your messages after arriving home from a week out of town.  The first one hit you like a sucker punch to the solar plexus.

The message was from the dean’s administrative assistant at Snowflake College.  Specifically, it was from the executive dean’s office at the Quartz City campus.  Quartz City up until now had been the unblemished bright spot in your teaching itinerary.  The students are bright and inquisitive, and you get along great with your teaching colleagues and the classified staff. 

You are informed that Dean Stacy would like to meet with you in person to discuss an “incident” involving you several weeks ago while you were an evaluator at the Quartz City early college high school’s senior project presentations.  One of the other judges, a local community member, had made an allegation about you.  Please call back at your earliest convenience to schedule an appointment.

While you were expecting this, your heart sank nonetheless.  It has become the inevitable cost of doing business.  You’re good at your job, and although you are maybe a touch unconventional in your presentation most of your students like or are at least accepting of your teaching style.  You also are well aware that not everyone finds your personality appealing.  It even elicits hostility from a few individuals from time to time.  Your openness tends to leave you vulnerable to those whom you politely refer to as jerks and to people with issues.

Your accuser appears to straddle both categories.  You know what the charges are, since he pulled you aside after the first day’s presentations and told you what he thought.  (You are thankful that at least what he accused you of did not involve a student.)  Unnerved, you got away from the guy as quickly as possible and lay awake in bed most of that night trying to figure out what the hell had happened.  Before leaving campus that day, you made sure the school secretary scheduled you for a panel other than the one this son of a bitch would be participating in during the next day’s session.

You return to Quartz City the next day to find yourself beckoned into the principal’s office.  The principal, a dark, serious young man, informed you that an allegation had been made.  You deny it as a matter of course, a trifle annoyed by the principal’s condescending demeanor.   You have found through experience with your sons’ schoolteachers that many of them not only talk down to kids, but tend to do so with adults as well.  This gentleman seemed to have lost sight of the fact that you and your fellow college instructors are supposed to be the value added by an early college high school. 

The principal stiffly thanked you for volunteering your time after informing you ominously that he had to inform Dean Stacy of the allegation.  The rest of the day went mercifully well in spite of its awkward beginning.  Several of your former students shook your hand afterward, and introduced you to their parents.  They had heard great things about you and were glad to finally meet you.  One mom even told you her son had chosen your field as his major after taking your class. 

All this notwithstanding, the next couple of weeks were clouded by the accusation against you as you wait for the other shoe to drop.  Naturally, as all bad news seems to in your life, it fell when you were not quite at your emotional best.  In this case, the news arrived after you got home near midnight, jetlagged and facing the glum prospect of waiting all the next day for the airline to recover your inevitably lost baggage.

You call Quartz City the following morning, schedule your appointment with Stacy, and then spend the next couple of days rehashing events in your head trying to make sense of it all.  You consider yourself a man of integrity, and you become rattled and indignant whenever someone calls your character into question.  Your task now is to avoid appearing rattled and indignant.  However, your resentment festers.  Your family has had some degree of association with Snowflake College for nearly forty years.  You’ve taught for them for more than ten.  You gave your time freely and this is what happens?  You seriously consider never giving Snowflake another unpaid second of your time again.  You have already resolved privately to exclude the college foundation as a beneficiary of your will when you found out it had taken money from a certain real estate developer who has lobbied and worked to run public schools like private businesses.   Maybe you should just show up and just teach your scheduled classes from now on.

The distraction of your resentment notwithstanding when the day of the meeting arrives, you’re as ready as you’ll ever be.

Stacy, a tall, rather elegant woman around your own age, smiles warmly when you walk into her office, motioning you to a seat at a conference table.  You’ve never had a discussion with her beyond ordinary small talk, so you don’t know quite what to expect.

Stacy opens the discussion by coming right to the point: “So, tell me in your own words what happened.”

You take a deep breath and tell the story as calmly and clearly as you can.  You relate how you were seated next to your accuser at the first day’s panel.  You describe how, upon finding out the man was a former Marine you mentioned you were a veteran yourself.

“Oh, you’re a veteran!” Stacy exclaims.  “Thank you for your service.”  You smile awkwardly in reply. 

You never know how to respond to this, because thanking vets profusely for their service and describing them as “heroes” even if they were cooks or truck drivers or personnel clerks has become a social obligation of late.  You pride yourself on not having become what you call a “professional vet,” someone whose whole existence, like that of the high school football hero who never is able to recapture his past glories, centers upon that one fact in their lives.

Your accuser is just such a guy.  You’re all too familiar with the breed: overfed, loud mouthed, and jockeying constantly to be the alpha male in every situation.   He regaled you during the breaks between presentations with tales of his storied career as GI Joe with a kung fu grip, before his back gave out on him.  (If it isn't their knees, it’s their back.)  He tells you he’s active in the American Legion, AMVETS, the VFW, the DAV, and the rest of the alphabet soup of veteran’s organizations.  He tells you he served on the county veteran’s affairs commission.  He offers to help you upgrade your disability rating, a result that you know is between unlikely and impossible to achieve.  All the while your eyes are darting across the room looking for someone to catch your eye and rescue you from this blowhard’s narcissistic monologue.

Wincing slightly at the unpleasant memory, you continue your account.  You also point out your unblemished teaching record and your excellent classroom evaluations. 

Stacy, her head attentively tilted slightly to one side, pauses a beat before speaking.  “I see.  You know we have to take these allegations seriously, even if they’re unfounded.  Principal Nathan investigated and could not find any evidence against you.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Yes, and when I called the man—”  Stacy laughs slightly, then continues, “and I don’t even remember his name—“

“That’s all right.  I do,” you reply with a wintry smile.

Stacy goes on, “Anyway, he wasn’t very convincing and some of what he said contradicted what Nathan had told me.”

“That’s because it didn’t happen.”

“I’m sorry about all this.  In any case, since it occurred while you were off contract no mention of this incident will go into your personnel file.”

“That’s a relief.”

“You know, we really value the efforts of adjuncts like you.  Did you know I started out as an adjunct?”  Yes, you know.

The conversation wends on for a few more minutes before petering out.  At the end comes something you don’t expect.  As Stacy shakes your hand before you leave, she thanks you for coming in.  Then she says,

“Please don’t let this incident discourage you from volunteering with Snowflake College in the future.”

While you reply with a smile and a nod, a solitary thought runs through your mind:

Never again.  No fucking way.

© 2016 The Unassuming Scholar