Fox in the Henhouse

I would like to get Mr. Trump's head on Renard's body, but you'll get the point. I don't really have anything against Mr. Trump--I think he's an intellectually challenged upper-class narcissist. He loves money and the power it gives him to grab pussy, kind of a classic four-inch dick imaging he has twelve. 

But here we are: the new regime. He's going to make a few billion off this--using my and your taxes (I pay more than he pays). This is  a classic rip-off. But for those who imagine themselves as socially responsible (like working for equity): what do we do? I'm open for all ideas. I encourage all to sign up for the women's march in DC (link), but we also have to move beyond that. Really, we clearly need to energize the progressive wing of the Democratic/Green party. I'm open for suggestions. Deep sigh. I do know that we need to get active. But I don't know how. Here's a link for DC:  http://rallybus.net/womens-march-on-washington/

Please sign up and let's meet in DC.

Post-election Coversation between Peckham and God

Peckham: (praying)

God:

Peckham: (praying)

God:

Peckham: (pra . . .) Oh, I get it—it’s a joke right?

God:

Tomorrow

The TV journalists and pundits are busily ventriloquating their "insights" about how the American people are tired of this campaign, that they just want it over. They are not, however, speaking for me. I do not look forward to seeing this election end. I have perversely enjoyed it. I can't help but wonder whether there are other political perverts like me.

I have read these campaigns as an index of American culture. It has been like an iceberg: the campaigns are what we see, but the culture is what is below, floating the visible index of itself.

Like others, I suppose, I have been fascinated by Trump's bald narcissism (see previous post) and by how social class issues have more or less been turned upside down, by the way in which he, a privileged member of the elite class, has lately framed himself as a champion of the working class. Who would ever have imagined the Republican party as champions of the working classes???

I could note the irony--but more important, Trump has gone beyond the more common refrain about the so-called middle class. His populist pose is a clear con-game, but it has caught on. His has really been a fascinating performance, which is perhaps why we like to watch him; it's like watching something obscene, which is perhaps why it's fascinating.

Although it has taken me time to embrace HRC, I am fully behind her now. I have learned to respect her by reading more about her. I wish that like Trump, she could break through the rap about the middle-class, but nevertheless, I think she will prove herself as president, and I'm really excited about the possibility that she'll win. Most readers of this blog are probably Clinton/Sanders supporters, so I won't belabor Clinton's qualifications for being our first woman president. Jonathan Cohen has made the case more coherently than I ever could.

Also unlike the majority of TV journalists, I think we are headed for more good times. Barack Obama has been extraordinary. I regret that his terms are over, but I trust that Clinton, pushed by the Sanders progressive faction, will carry his good work forward. She will also pay attention to the social discontent (and social-class based) Trump's populism has catalyzed. I believe she is uniquely qualified to bring the seemingly contradictory factions of our country together, leading us to understand ourselves by understanding each other.

That's why I am so hopeful and feel excited about this election and its consequences. Although I don't want this electoral phenomenon to end, I can't wait for tomorrow.

Trump: Cognitive Dissonance

Apologies for a political post. I can't help myself. We are in a defining moment. I've almost forgotten about teaching.
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Psychologists are trying to explain Trump's "cognitive dissonance." But they are ignoring classic studies in stratification theory--Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction, being the classic. Bourdieu characterizes the elite class (of which Trump is one--born into it rather than as he imagines having made his way into it) as having (paraphrase) an overwhelming belief in consonance between the way they see the world and the way the world is.

Basically, the lower classes don't contradict them. In addition, the lower classes (this is classic Freire) emulate the upper classes, want the see themselves as overseers. They rescue their diminished sense of themselves by identifying with those who are the "boss," who see themselves as always right. Bourdieu says the elites are born into a world that trains them into ways of making their projections of themselves be reality; the way they see themselves is the way the underclasses see them. They are born into what could be called this kingly privilege and simply can't understand others who don't see the world the way they do. We might look to social class theorists like Bourdieu to understand how Trump has duped (he probably   doesn't know he is doing that) nearly half of America to see what he sees and the way in which he sees it.

Freire writes about some related concepts that help explain the trump phenomenon (and it is a phenomenon): three of which I won't go into, are 1. lateral violence; 2. divide and conquer; 3. necrophilia. The latter is fascinating--the "boss" entering into the head of the subservient, eating out, as it were, the subservient's concept of self and replacing it with how the "boss" sees him or her. The consequence is that the subservient engages in activities and ways of seeing "through" the boss's eyes and thus in some sense  gets to see him or herself as the boss. Just thought I would put this out there.
[Sidenote I am trying to imagine the U.S. being led by Trump (like compared to Obama!!). Whew!

Being Wrong

I'm going to make a detour. I usually write only about educational issues--well, in a sense, this is an educational issue. We are teachers. How have we uneducated so many people who would vote for president Donald Trump? This is a serious question. I don't want to make this post too long, but let me suggest a return to Dewey's hope for education (Experience and Education).

I have read tweets (me as a recent tweeter) on the debates. The general logic in these tweets should make any educator shudder--as might the discourse level of the conversation in the debates.

Let me address one issue: the class-based ontology of Trump. He was born into the upper-class. Stratification (class) research documents (Bourdieu) social-class characteristics. These aren't determined; but they are general, established by wide-ranging surveys and interviews. Upper-class people/children are taught that what they say is true, is true. They expect the lower--classes to accept the claims, they, the members of the upper class make. There is a religious link to this claim that I won't go into (who is closest to God).

Trump is displaying his class. If he says something is true, it's true. Because he has been born into wealth, he has been conditioned to believe in his infallibility. And he expects everyone to fall in line with his claims. If they don't, he goes into some kind of kingly rage.

The political conversation--well, really, I can't fathom it. I try, but I can't. It has something to do with anger, race, class warfare, divide and conquer. As a working-class academic, I do not respond well to Trump's upper-class ethos. I also have my problems with Clinton--she should have known better than to vote for that Iraq war amendment. But I have made my mistakes, too.

I am disheartened by the mudslinging tenor of this presidential campaign conversation. But I think at the end, voters should consider the tenor and temperament of their president. I don't want a president who can't imagine he or she on occasion has been wrong.

We are born; with luck, we fall in love; with luck, we stay in love; we have children and pass on that love; we have grandchildren; we die.

Chatter

I have  been communicating with some first-rate teachers, most of whom are—as I was—a non-traditional graduate student. Generally, that means we were first-generation and didn’t transition smoothly from undergraduate to graduate school. So we were late-arrivals. I won’t go into all the complications involved in being a late-arrival (linked to James Paul Gee’s notion of being true first-learners), but they often involve marriage, careers, locations, geographical dependency, children.

[An aside: I recently had a conversation with a close friend, born to wealth, who had no idea of what a first-generation student meant.]

I have been wondering how being a first-generation PhD (much less baccalaureate) shapes the new professor’s attitude toward academic discourse and the resistance or capitulation to it. This is just a question. I would assume first-generation PhDs might resist, for obvious reasons, more than old family PhDs, the genuflect to academic discourse (Gary Tate was a revealing exception).

I realize that by saying “genuflect,” I betrayed myself. Still, my suspicion might be worth considering. I have a deep-seated resistance to “academic discourse,” a discourse than announces itself as being other—exalted.

I remarked in a political diatribe elsewhere how people are basically monkeys. We hear chatter that seems to work, and we ventriloquate the chatter so that others will mark us. We of course love to imagine that our chatter is new, but it’s mostly chatter.

I wonder whether the more privileged classes intuitively know the secret of chatter and whether first-generation professors don’t.

Lost Voice

I haven't written about teaching writing lately-I think because I'm not teaching this year. Maybe I'll post a few thoughts about what it's like to have been teaching for forty-five years--and then not.

I'll focus on the social complications of teaching. I'm writing a book about my experiences and have come up against this contradiction: literacy is clearly a way of maintaining social class structures. This claim seems so self-evident that I don't want to argue it. It also seems self-evident that most of our protocols for teaching in our required writing programs reinforce social-class reproduction. How could they not?

But learning how to engage in dominant class literacy is also the way in for those who were born out. Again, this claim seems self-evident. People born into the lower social rankings have to adopt the discourse habits of the ruling classes to gain entrance into Burke's parlor.

I recently wrote a response to a dissertation chapter of an intelligent graduate student. Her message was smart: she was identifying the ways in which teaching practices reify social class privileges. I have written too much about this, so I can only say, duh? Professors are privileged, and we find ways of supporting our claims of privilege (think WaW). I will have to say this is more the case for the privileged classes in our field than in the oppressed classes: the ones who teach two classes a semester versus those who teach four or five.

My friend's chapter wasn't bad writing; it was just the writing one does to assert that he or she had done the required (documented) reading. By inserting these references, my friend lost her voice. She was, in fact, producing a dissertation.

Well, there it is. That's the way it goes. I hate to add the obvious: We change as a consequence of learning how to write a dissertation (see Jeff Schmidt, Disciplined Minds). And we change as we learn how to write articles that will get published and move us toward tenure and full professorship. Somewhere toward the end of our careers, we might look back to reflect on where we were and where we ended. But as a consequence of where we ended, we no longer understand where we were.

I should stop here. I wrote to my friend that I hoped (and I think she would) get her PhD and a good position. I think she will. But I don't want her to lose her voice. But . . .