Why I may not make friends in grad school

I'm fortunate to have made some really cool friends. Friends who really have enriched my life and for whom I am very thankful. I look up to them because they are all quite passionate about something and pursue their passions. I respect them because they're all smart. They are among the smartest people I could imagine. My friendships mean a lot to me, even if there are long stretches between birthdays or holidays where I might not talk to them. Somehow we pick back up right where we left off. There's some kind of real bond there. All of my friend were made in school: middle through grad school.

I'm worried I am not going to make any new friends going back to grad school. It's not that I'm not going to be around smart, driven, passionate people. I'm absolutely sure that I will. Last week I attended an admitted students day and heard some impressive things being thrown around. My soon-to-be compatriots were running non-profits in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro or had just finished some time at Facebook and felt like they needed to give back by going into education. They'd been part of the first roller derby team in some back alley of Prague and that was just to pass the time while they ran a startup to connect refugees to host families. Several stated they spent the last year "With Her" and that they needed to find something new to do with their lives. I can only hope that none of these people are in my specific Literacy Specialist program because I'm clearly not of the same caliber.

Beyond the kinds of lives lived by these movers and shakers trotted out by Teacher's College to wow any admitted but undecided students, I'm also expecting to be a disruptive presence in classes. During a breakout session specific to my program I mentioned that I wanted to "end the supremacy of New York representations in texts and educational literature." So, I think it went well.

In all seriousness, I do want to change that. I can still recall going through my MA at Ga State and sitting through discussions about how to pick culturally relevant texts. You have to know I'm totally on board with this, right? I mostly hate the classics, the cannon, and the "new" cannon (which is the same as the old cannon). I'm they guy who wants to find stories that are relevant to my students. I want stories that have representations of my students, of their experiences, and of their cultures. I believe this really does help build buy-in for classroom activities and perpetuates a culture of belonging. But then the books recommendations started flowing in.

Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York is supposed to connect with students who are immigrants or from immigrant families. It's a large picture book and we're meant to use it to introduce or complement an instructional unit with a immigration theme. To me this seems superficial at best. Hey, you're an immigrant so let's read stories and look at pictures about immigrants who look nothing like you, whose journey doesn't resemble yours, and who live in a place that looks and acts nothing like Atlanta.

In the Literature for Younger Children course we're treated to I Hate English, a book about an immigrant child who moves from Hong Kong to Chinatown, New York.

Memoirs are popular and we had When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir. Esmeralda Santiago's childhood in rural Puerto Rico is upended when her mother moves she and her sisters to New York.

The list goes on and on. A few stand out like The House On Mango Street about growing up Latina in urban Chicago or Esperanza Rising, a personal favorite, which runs as a kind of parallel to Grapes of Wrath. Instead of Okies we learn the story of Mexican Farm workers during the Great Depression. These are, at least to my recollection, the standouts of a bunch that otherwise seemed to paint the lives of urban youth and immigrants in a light of sameness. Namely, New York.

And as I explained this to the room full of random strangers who were just now realizing they had to spend the next year with me, I realized I might not make very many friends. Most of them looked like they were thinking "who the hell is this guy" except the one associate professor who jumped in. She is from Pakistan and remarked that she, too, had trouble finding literature that related to her own experiences as a non-Arab muslim, non-Indian brown person, non-New York immigrant (she moved to the city later) who moved to suburban Detroit. I have signed up for her class, which is, funnily enough, titled "Finding Literature for Older Readers."

But it worries me a little bit that rather than jump in and spend an hour talking shop, the nine other soon-to-be-classmates and one professor just kind of stared at me in shock, horror, or some other unknowable emotion. Maybe it's because they were all from New York or New Jersey? (There is also one who currently lives in Chapel Hill and can't wait to get back to the city.) I know it's a stereotype that New Yorkers are obsessed with being from New York but maybe there's some truth to it? Maybe I should save discussion time for actual classes and not 90 minute breakout sessions on an admitted student day?

Anyway, it's going to be an interesting year. I haven't even brought out the larger critique of ignoring student's language needs to focus on their cultural needs. If anything, the complaint about so many books being from or about New York is a minor one. It's a problem of discovery that will, I think, be fun to try and remedy. But how will these people react when I present a challenging and critical voice? How will they handle someone calling BS on their pedagogy? Those are the things which really do provoke some anxiety in me. I don't expect to disagree with their approaches all that much but I do expect them to be so much more focused on culture, race, class, and gender that they let the nuts and bolts of language slip by. I'm worried about this because those are the selling points on the website, on the emails, and at the admitted student day. I'm worried because those were the approaches from my prior teaching program which I felt left me unprepared to actually teach reading and teach writing. In moving up several tiers from Ga State to Columbia, am I really going anywhere at all? I think pointing this out means I'm not going to make any friends.

"Live" blogging going back to school again.

I'm not a consistent writer. This blog is probably the best I've done and the last time I posted on a regular schedule was 2015. The idea of writing and being a writer has always been an appealing one even if I'm not really sure where I got that from. My family doesn't care much for academics. They've never attended a graduation of mine or celebrated any academic success. It's probably no coincidence that high school was mostly a game for me; I wanted to get through with as little effort as possible. Not once was I ever under the impression that education was the key to my success.

Yet I'm a teacher. (Yes, I still tell myself that despite going on four years since I last taught in a classroom setting.) I love school. I like the idea of writing and talking about ideas and being a person who values thinking and analysing above just about everything else. As far as self images go, I couldn't do better than academic.

So there I was about a year ago coming out of an isolated small town and moving somewhere with access to top-notch universities. Of course I did something stupid like try to get certified in the most difficult state to seek certification in. Of course I didn't pursue the thing which drove me most passionately when I last taught, literacy. Of course I thought the prudent thing to do was to bang my head against the education system and try to teach in New York public schools.

That's what I did last time too, by the way. When I graduated college and knew, absolutely knew, I wanted to get a teaching graduate degree I still tried to find work first. It's a mistake I've resolved not to make again. When you know you want to do something, you should do that first. While it seems self apparent, I'm a dense individual with endless capacity for mild self sabotage. I've internalized that feeling of indifference from my family about teaching, learning, and education and made it into this weird drive to appear practical. Sure, I might think, I'm a loser academic but at least I'm finding work and not wasting time in school! I would deploy this weird circular reasoning to justify not getting the training and skills I desired. I still want to be a teacher. I believe school is valuable. But I don't want to go to school? That's some fine reasoning there!

I'll cut to the chase: I'm going back to school to earn another master's degree. I'll begin at Columbia University this May in a 1 year accelerated program to become a Literacy Specialist. I had considered going the SLP route but I'd need at least three semesters of science and math courses which I'd avoided as an English major and I'm not eager to go back and take undergraduate chemistry or neuro. Beyond that, I really do value the classroom as an environment for learning. I always wanted to stay a classroom teacher and not a "pull out" teacher. I don't want a student one-on-one. I just don't think that is a realistic or scalable model in the our public schools. I'd even argue we're moving more toward massive blended learning courses with 50+ students in a section and break-out groups a bit like you'd find in introductory college courses.

If I'm going to be a teacher, I want to be functioning in the typical environments that most students face. I have some pretty deep feelings about this from my time at Centennial High School where I felt like I was identifying a large number of students with significant gaps in reading and writing in both the special education and general education setting. No school system, certainly not public schools, will be giving each kid individual literacy instruction. Especially not at a high school level where those resources are least allocated. If you're interested in some of what I was thinking about back then, look at 2011-2013 blog posts. I especially recommend On Constructivism because I think it's closest to where my thinking is right now.

As an aside, I ended that post by saying:

As I'll begin presenting later, modern science is quickly discovering how our brains function and how learning really works. It's shining new light on old methods of teaching which probably seem ore[sic] familiar to the baby boomer generation than to ours.

I never wrote that follow up post. I'm sorry for that because I still think about these issues all the time. I'm also sorry that I don't reply to comments. I wish I got an email or a notification that somebody posted a comment because I don't think I go back to my posts much after hitting publish. In fact, just email me!

My plan for this blog is to use it as a space for reflection on my new learning adventures. One thing I think I will really enjoy about Columbia is their focus on literacy work in classrooms and with classes of students instead of a more clinical setting. I'm going to be riding the train every day for two hours each way and I intend to use that time to read and plan my blog posts. Ambitiously, I would like to blog after each class. For the summer that would only be twice weekly but it would pick up in the fall.

Hopefully, I am good about this and can use it as a kind of open ended discussion with my past self and with the new ideas I'm encountering. Keep your fingers crossed.

Two Links and My Ramblings

First: This is the best thing I've read this week.

Scott Alexander's post is worth a read in its entirety. The idea of cost disease is, to be simplistic, that stuff costs more for no good reason. Economists differentiate this from easily understood reasons for price increases. The idea originated in the 1960s as an attempt to understand why salaries in some fields were going up even though productivity was flat. Labor was costing more but not producing more therefore generating costs to the company. 

Alexander looks primarily at two fields which are near and dear to my heart, education and medicine. He notes repeated examples about increases in spending not translating to increases in outcomes. He also puts some analysis on transportation spending and rent costs. What I find refreshing and insightful is how he departs from both the left and right orthodoxy in his evaluation of the problem. Typically the right doesn't like to compare US outcomes to other developed countries because it explodes ideas of American exceptionalism and anti-socialism yet Alexander doesn't shy away. 

So, to summarize: in the past fifty years, education costs have doubled, college costs have dectupled, health insurance costs have dectupled, subway costs have at least dectupled, and housing costs have increased by about fifty percent. US health care costs about four times as much as equivalent health care in other First World countries; US subways cost about eight times as much as equivalent subways in other First World countries

He is not, however, ready to find fault with the government, with regulations, with unions, or with the typical right boogeymen. One area he zooms in on is worker salaries in education and healthcare. 

The overall pictures[sic] is that health care and education costs have managed to increase by ten times without a single cent of the gains going to teachers, doctors, or nurses. Indeed these professions seem to have lost ground salary-wise relative to others.

The piece is heavily linked throughout with charts and graphs and all the goodies that good analytical blogging should have. He considers at least eight different causes but finds them all lacking and explains why. 

But here's the part I thought was best:

I don’t know why more people don’t just come out and say “LOOK, REALLY OUR MAIN PROBLEM IS THAT ALL THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS COST TEN TIMES AS MUCH AS THEY USED TO FOR NO REASON, PLUS THEY SEEM TO BE GOING DOWN IN QUALITY, AND NOBODY KNOWS WHY, AND WE’RE MOSTLY JUST DESPERATELY FLAILING AROUND LOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS HERE.” State that clearly, and a lot of political debates take on a different light.

Alexander later remarks that framing the issues facing our nation in this way helps us see the current policy debates as arguments about how to distribute the losses. When more money is spent but less and less come out of your hospitals, schools, public transit, and housing, then somebody is going to be left out. Somebody faces a shortage. The debate Alexander says we're having is about picking who gets left out instead of trying to understand why we have a system which is prone to leaving people out.

For example: some people promote free universal college education, remembering a time when it was easy for middle class people to afford college if they wanted it. Other people oppose the policy, remembering a time when people didn’t depend on government handouts. Both are true! My uncle paid for his tuition at a really good college just by working a pretty easy summer job – not so hard when college cost a tenth of what it did now. The modern conflict between opponents and proponents of free college education is over how to distribute our losses. In the old days, we could combine low taxes with widely available education. Now we can’t, and we have to argue about which value to sacrifice.

I hadn't been thinking about our economy in this way. Indeed, I haven't read anyone who has. Go check the post out because I think Alexander has a very good point here. 

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Second: The Skynet that elected Trump is watching you. 

If ever you needed a reason to quit social media, this is it. A taste:

By leveraging automated emotional manipulation alongside swarms of bots, Facebook dark posts, A/B testing, and fake news networks, a company called Cambridge Analytica has activated an invisible machine that preys on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in public opinion. Many of these technologies have been used individually to some effect before, but together they make up a nearly impenetrable voter manipulation machine that is quickly becoming the new deciding factor in elections around the world.

Most recently, Analytica helped elect U.S. President Donald Trump, secured a win for the Brexit Leave campaign, and led Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign surge, shepherding him from the back of the GOP primary pack to the front.

Propaganda has entered the 21st century and the combination of big data, psychographic modeling, and neural networks is making it more effective than ever. Twitter, Facebook, and other forms or media are being used to promote political ideologies. That much is not news. But Analytica works. That's worth knowing about.

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Third: Intersectional Conservatism

This is the rambling part I mentioned at the top. I was thinking while listening to NPR on the ride home that republicans became a "big tent" party following Nixon's southern strategy and culminating in the complete coopting of evangelical christianity by republicans in during the Bush era. In some sense this is still the same base that elected Donald Trump. It's white, religious, racist, and economically bifurcated. Then I thought to myself, isn't that intersectional?

It may be really controversial to suggest such a thing. Thankfully I'm not an academic writer or I might be tempted to publish such an idea just to start a firestorm. But let's tease this out. I write, after all, to find out what I think.

Intersectionality came into being to address a critical problem in the social sciences and humanities. We had Feminism. We had African-American Studies. We had Gender Studies. We had Class issues sitting across several areas of study. Despite all these and more existing in academia and increasingly becoming part of public discourse, they all existed in somewhat separate arenas. If you want to understand exactly why intersectionality needs to exist, I think this now famous image from the Women's March on Washington captures it perfectly.

Intersectionality was coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 in her article Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. She was very critical of how modern Feminism dismissed and marginalized other marginalized people and their equally valid struggles. She singles out how black women were mostly excluded from mainstream antiracist and feminist theory. It's a controversial article to this day and generates a lot of debate. This debate spilled over into the Women's March as seen above. It has been criticized as a march for wealthy white women who are privileged enough to take a day or two off work and spend money traveling. I'm not arguing that these are valid or true criticisms. Instead, I want to point out that this is exactly the kind of debate that intersectionality demands of the public. Issues of race, culture, gender, sex, and class all require solutions and all need to be addressed. We need intersectionality because it is a framework for thinking through equitable solutions to complex problems.

You may notice, however, that these are basically issues and ideas dominated by the political left. The right wing of American politics is famously ignorant of its own use of identity politics and rejects acknowledging fundamental differences between people as a grounds for broad kinds of  social and political inclusiveness. How, then, can I say that there is Intersectional Conservatism.

My thesis, if you could call it that, is that Donald Trump was able to create intersectional conservatism. He more or less identified all the disparate ideologies and movements within conservatism and created a movement (intersectionalism) built to support all of them. As noted above, intersectionality is a framework for managing social and political issues. A framework like that is not exclusive to ideas which are comfortable for the left.

Trump united the racists and nationalists with his overtly anti-immigrant and anti-muslim rhetoric. He united the libertarians and the christian wings of the republican party with his anti-regulation and anti-1st Amendment stance. He united the suburban mom and the Wall St. billionaire by promising to focus on jobs and reduced taxes.

Now, before you point out, rightly, that none of these groups are truly marginalized and therefore don't need the nuanced advocacy that intersectionality seeks to provide, think about their self-image. How do these groups see themselves fitting into America's fabric?

Christianity is basically a gigantic persecution complex and it is obvious that the Christian right in the US thinks it is under attack and being marginalized. Racists and White Nationalists argue that an inclusive America will bring an end to the white race. They further argue that trying to say such a thing makes them marginalized. Other facets of right wing racism in the US include a belief that minorities have an easier time getting jobs because of affirmative action, getting housing because of HUD, getting food and medicine because of welfare and medicaid, and numerous other supposed advantages bestowed by the government on minorities to damage whites. (Never mind that the majority of recipients of government aid are white!) The anti-government attitudes are natural stances to be adopted by the pro-business and libertarian right. Libertarians are constantly complaining that the government tramples their rights and taxes them to death. Indeed, many libertarians act as though taxation is the gravest form of oppression. Suburban soccer moms? They want their kids to go to good schools with the white right kind of children. They want their communities to feel safe (feel, you know, because they are safer but they don't feel safer).

The point is, these groups may not actually be marginalized but they see themselves as such. Trump's entire campaign and presidency is built on the support of all these groups. These are not groups that normally agree on much but Trump's genius is making a platform to appease all of these groups.

Here's another thing. Intersectional Conservatism plays off some very real malaise facing all Americans. There are more than 30,000 annual deaths from opiate overdoses in the US. Many of these deaths are concentrated in areas that heavily favored Trump. It's a blight on the community and is something which contributes heavily to to the perception that America is in decline. Add to that the multi-decade loss of jobs in the midwest. Add to that the rising healthcare costs, premiums, co-pays, and out of pocket maximums faced by many Americans. (Sure, the medicaid expansion rejected my most red states would have helped alleviate many of these problems, but that's not how Obamacare played out.)

At some point it became clear to a large number of Americans that the standard republican party was not addressing their needs. Trump, by creating an emotive platform addressing all these groups' concerns, effectively created intersectional conservatism. He is going to bring jobs back by being racist. He is going to cut regulations on small business by pursuing anti-environmentalist policy. Trump will destroy Obamacare but somehow also stop runaway costs. He's giving people whatever they want to hear because he's selling them the idea that all of their struggles are related. They're all on the same team just like how Feminism, Antiracism, LGBTQ rights, and class struggle are all allied by intersectionality. Trump has created intersectional conservatism.

I am right about everything all the time

Am I overstating the case a little bit in my title? Probably. I think I've made plenty of mistakes and been wrong quite a bit but I've been thinking about writing a post like this since Trump's election.

You see, I called it. Maybe I did not predict the election itself, though I was much more willing to believe it possible than many. Instead, I noticed a core thread of the right-wing tapestry that is the Trump administration. At the time it was going by the name "neoreactionary" and was a fringe movement with a surprisingly vibrant following in Silicon Valley. Here's a bit what I wrote about it almost exactly three years ago:

Neo-reactionaries hold that democracy can't ultimately provide a high degree of freedom for its citizens. Any time freedoms do exist under democracy, it's a temporary state of affairs at best. Indeed, the old adage, often misattributed to Tocqueville, that democracy will survive until the people discover they can vote themselves money is a great summation of the neo-reactionary view of democracy.

Instead of a democracy, the neoreactionaries seemed to prefer a monarchy or tight knit aristocracy run by the "smartest" which was mostly a way of saying successful white men in the tech industry. The idea that men should run things is central and obviously recognisable in the current incarnation of the right. You may also recognize another feature of nerractionary thought, The Cathedral

Neoreactionaries believe “The Cathedral,” is a meta-institution that consists largely of Harvard and other Ivy League schools, The New York Times and various civil servants. Anissimov calls it a “self-organizing consensus.” Sometimes the term is used synonymously with political correctness. The fundamental idea is that the Cathedral regulates our discussions enforces a set of norms as to what sorts of ideas are acceptable and how we view history...

The Cathedral is a central idea of neoreactionary thought and was coined by one Mencius Moldbug, a pseudonym for the author who is considered the philosophical godfather of the movement. Major tech industry players like Peter Thiel were interested in Moldbug's thoughts about creating a "dark enlightenment" in which a technologically advanced patriarchy tore down modern liberal democracy. Destruction of The Cathedral appears to be a major aspect of Trump's governing strategy.

At the time I was connecting the movement with misogyny found online. Now we know that misogyny is a major component of the alt-right and one of the primary ways they politicize the disaffected who come across their path.

I concluded my short discussion like this:

Neo-reactionism is quite a rabbit hole but I think it sits at a unique moment in our culture and nation. It's rhetoric is attractive and it shares much with anti-Wall St. populism and anti-government libertarianism. This isn't the last we've heard from these guys.

Imagine my surprise today when Moldbug's name popped up in my reading list. You see, Steve Bannon seems to be a fan of neoreactionary thought. Politico:

Before he emerged on the political scene, an obscure Silicon Valley computer programmer with ties to Trump backer and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel was explaining his behavior. Curtis Yarvin, the self-proclaimed “neoreactionary” who blogs under the name “Mencius Moldbug,” attracted a following in 2008 when he published a wordy treatise asserting, among other things, that “nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth.” When the organizer of a computer science conference canceled Yarvin’s appearance following an outcry over his blogging under his nom de web, Bannon took note: Breitbart News decried the act of censorship in an article about the programmer-blogger’s dismissal.

and

Moldbug, who does not do interviews and could not be reached for this story, has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary, according to a source. Yarvin said he has never spoken with Bannon. During the transition, he made clear his deep skepticism that the Russians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the source said—a message that Trump himself reiterated several times.

Trumpism seemed so wildly different and yet radically familiar all at once. Perhaps this is why? These are not new ideas. Trump's political strategy seem to have come from a Silicon Valley political philosophy outlined a decade ago and supported by people essential to Trump's success.

Do read the Politico article. It is very disheartening. If you're interesting in reading more about neoreactionary thought, check out my post from three years ago for links to a lot of other coverage.

So, I am right about everything all the time. Remember when I presaged Snowden's revelations and warned about the possibility of our government one day turning into a horrid Orwellian nightmare? Fine. Enough gloating. We can talk about that another time.

How's that Triumvirate thingy going?

I posted a few weeks ago about how our new government is best thought of as a ruling Triumvirate split between the Trump administration, the GOP, and the right-wing base. The tensions between these three and the way in which they seek to gain each other's favor seemed particularly useful when trying to think through how our government is going to function.

How is that working out? I'd say good. While we haven't seen much movement yet on the three areas I identified, (education, infrastructure, and health care) the Triumvirate has been active in regulatory reforms and immigration. In both of these areas the Triumvirate framework works.

Immigration reforms by the Trump admin took two forms. The biggest and most covered is the ban on travel from 7 majority muslim nations which were set aside as being terrorist havens. Now, this is really stupid for a number or reasons and basically aids our terrorist enemies in the recruitment of a new generation of extremists. It's a shit policy top to bottom. However, the Triumvirate makes clear that having an effective policy was never the goal. Security was never the goal. Enhanced vetting of potential refugees was never the goal. Instead, this was the latest in what is sure to be a long line of executive orders designed to appeal to the right-wing base that elected Trump.

His latest approval ratings are only 44%. That's the lowest of any new president yet that's a measure of support across the entire public. As I said before, Trump does not care one single bit about the public that did not vote for him. Not only does he question their existence (3-5 million illegal immigrant votes) but he actively pursues policy to piss them off. He does this because it appeals to the millions of voters who got Trump elected. If you single out immigration, 42% approve. If you single out this specific ban, 47% favor it.

You don't have to dig deep to realize that his executive orders on the border wall and muslim bans are meant to build the perception that he is keeping his campaign promises. The people who elected Trump like these policies. Keeping the public that elected Trump happy with and engaged in the White House's activities is absolutely key to Trump's strategy. The public supporting him is the bludgeon he needs to keep the GOP Congress under control. The only dissent that's been seen so far from the Republicans is on his education secretary and even then it's mostly meaningless. Congress fears being voted out of office for appearing unsupportive of the president. They also stand to gain several Senate seats in two years as there are Democratic senators up for reelection in places that flipped from Obama to Trump. Trump knows this and will use it as leverage.

In addition to pleasing his base, we saw Trump sign executive orders to move against environmental and financial regulation. The base is, at best, ambivalent about the specific regulations he is seeking to undo, the Republican Congress on the other hand loves it. Obviously repealing regulations is a Republican wet-dream but executive orders are limited in that scope. The president can't undo laws. What congress loves is that Trump is outlining a direction for them to use the power of Congressional Review.

Congressional Review gives congress the power to pass resolutions of disapproval to effectively nullify laws, sections of laws, or updated enforcement practices of older laws passed 60 "legislative days" before the end of a president's term of office. In this case 60 "legislative days" means anything president Obama did after June 3rd, 2016. The areas Trump identified in his executive orders this week are pointers to congress for where they will not see any pushback from the executive should they disapprove. Dodd-Frank's scope was expanded, for example, to include a new Fiduciary rule which can be removed by Congressional Review. Others include the stream buffer rule, methane waste rule, the extraction rule, the blacklisting rule for federal contractors, and a restriction on giving guns to the mentally ill.

The base is happy. Congress is happy. Trump remains large and in charge. The Triumvirate is, for the moment, stable. Coming up this week, we'll see the Trump admin promoting the Christian right. We received a preview of his plans at the National Prayer Breakfast this week.

Our republic was formed on the basis that freedom is not a gift from government, but that freedom is a gift from God. It was the great Thomas Jefferson who said the God who gave us life gave us liberty. Jefferson asked, “Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own beliefs. That is why I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I will do that. Remember.

The Triumvirate implications ought to be clear. Buckle in for another week!

Thoughts on Education and Politics. I'm getting back in the groove.

While I'm not up to blogging again regularly and semi-regularly, I do feel like the pace at which events are happening is pushing me toward more frequent posts.

I want to draw your attention to something my friend Jason has written about the the difference between teachers and college professors when it comes to discussing their own political beliefs. It originates with a tweet that's been getting attention from the right and left.

High school teachers: I'm not going to share my political beliefs, it's unprofessional
College Profs: what is the square root of fuck trump

— ↟ jessi ↟ (@queentrash__) January 26, 2017

I think Jason's discussion is more illuminating than what is bouncing around on Facebook and twitter. Most importantly he notes that in the age of Trump, fake news, and alternative facts:

The very act of education, which is predicated on the belief that things can be known is no longer a value neutral thing.  Asserting objective reality is a political action.

Jason glosses one major and very important detail affecting teachers like him. He does not have a constitutional protection to freedom of speech. That may shock some of you, especially those reading in firmly unionized and liberal states with strong employment security. In the state of Georgia teachers are employed at-will. They do not earn tenure and are able to be fired at the discretion of the school or district level administrators. Because the Supreme Court has ruled in several cases (modern ones include Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier and Bethel School District v. Fraser) that schools are not protected public spaces akin to parks, teachers do not have the right to freedom of speech when operating in a school related capacity. Information from teachers has to serve a valid instructional purpose or it is not protected speech. Teachers can not be fired for teaching evolution. However, they can be fired for teaching students that evolution is the only acceptable form of understanding the origins of species and life on earth. Why? Evolution is a necessary instructional component of further biological education. The belief in evolution or anything else, however, is not necessary. In other words, kids only have to understand it, they do not have to agree with it and the teacher should not be pushing an agenda to change their beliefs.

Like it or not, that is how the court has ruled. To bring this back to Georgia, if a teacher like Jason took it upon himself to teach, say, current events, and he decided to spend time debunking the Trump administrations frequent lies and dissemblance, the district could (and probably would if a parent or coworker complained) fire him. Despite the broad number of topics which can at times enter into the English/Language Arts classroom, and the number ways to teach things like fact vs opinion, rhetoric, source evaluation, or any possible connection a teacher like Jason might invent to justify teaching about the Trump administration, it would be easy for the district to paint his choices as politically motivated and an attempt at indoctrination. He could have spent his time evaluating MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail, for instance. In the eyes of the district, Jason is a liberal bent on teaching his children to be liberal. It's not protected speech and not necessary for instruction so he's out. He's lost his job.

Another thing to keep in mind is that this is not the same fight which sometimes takes place related to censoring books like Harry Potter, Slaughterhouse Five, or Black Boy. Courts often defer to a teacher's professional judgement in those cases when instructional value can be justified. In Jason's hypothetical anti-Trump lesson plans, it is not the content of the lessons that is objected to as it would be in a censorship case. It is instead a question of the instruction itself and whether it could be achieved effectively by another means. In this case the answer is yes. You can teach kids to be critical observers of the world around them and texts, in particular, without using current events or mentioning current political controversy.

And let's not even get into the legal morass that surrounds "professional conduct" and other ways that states require their teachers to meet a vague and subjective ethical standards. Remember the Georgia teacher fired for posting a Facebook picture of herself touring the Guinness Brewery? The protections for teachers in the state of Georgia are very thin. So, when there is an apparent disconnect between the valiant efforts of college professors standing up to Trump and the cowardly silence of educators, maybe the problem does not fall with the educators but with the society that fails to ensure they have adequate protections.

Our New Governing Triumvirate

I want to suggest a way of looking at the Trump administration which may be useful in evaluating how the government functions for the foreseeable future. Triumvirate was not the first word that came to mind. I was toying with Trump's Triple Play for the alliterative strengths and sports metaphor. I also thought to call it Trump's Trinity as the three parts are in some sense separate and part of a unified whole but it failed to express the reality of the United States' new government. It's not a trinity because it's not very unified. No, Triumvirate is probably most apt even if I am discussing more than three individuals, as past Triumvirates have been.

The key aspect to any Triumvirate is the tension between each constituent. Antony could not assume too much power because Octavian and Lepidus would be more than capable of opposing him. At least that's the logic. It's a method supposedly built to constrain the power of any one member. It also failed in spectacular fashion. The governing Triumvirate now ruling the Unites States is not like this. The three components are not set in tension so that one may not overpower the others. Rather, each part of this Triumvirate supports the objectives of the whole. Let me explain who and what the compose our new rulers and that may illuminate why I like this way of viewing our present dystopia.

At the top is, of course President Donald J Trump. With him are his family and a cadre of his elite supporters. These are the billionaires and elitists who supported his run as well as those who quickly came to the table afterward. Goldman Sachs, for example. Much of his cabinet also falls in this category except the few career politicians and military who belong in the next category. The central purpose of this group is the use of government power for private gain. This group's, Trump's family, friends, and allies, main goal is the extraction of every possible penny from the government's (public's) coffers. They are here to profit and their actions and policies will be in support of that end.

On the right sits the Republican political class. Of special importance here are those who most supported Trump's agenda. Mike Pence leads this class in our new government and is the very embodiment of the connections Trump relies on there. Congressional Republicans with a majority in both houses are going to be responsible for legislating Trump's will. They must create the means by which Trump's agents can extract wealth from the government and public. However, that is not their agenda. Some areas like tax cuts serve both but on the whole, they are pushing for conservative legislative victories: repeal the ACA, enable states to discriminate against LGBTQQA, minorities and Muslims, and make significant cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Some of these do not overlap with Trump's goals but will be necessary negotiating positions so that he can privatise education and grant infrastructure handouts to private companies among other initiatives. Whatever they replace the ACA with is likely to be a morass of demands on both sides.

On the left is the final member of the Triumvirate, the people who voted for Trump and the media machine which organizes and misinforms them. Trump owes his success to his populist appeal and his populist appeal was successful because he went low. The Trump base is only satisfied by the idea that their straight talker is getting things done. They want him to appear active and to score "wins" for them. It does not matter that these wins are mostly symbolic or even outright false. It does not matter that the wins come at the expense of minorities, women, or any other group. In fact, it's probably better if they do. The power of Trump's base is it's overwhelming control of the future of Congress. The Senate, especially, has several seats up for reelection in 2018 which are solidly Republican but Trump, should he remain popular with his base, will likely exert a lot of influence. Remembering the Tea Party wave in the 2010 midterms and the trouncing of mainstream republicans in the primaries last year, Congressional Republicans feel a need to keep Trump's supporters happy. Trump for his part needs to just keep being himself: brash, offensive, and claim victories at every opportunity. Conservative media, radio and alternative sources beyond Fox News are going to carry a lot of this burden and have, so far, been excellent PR on Trump's behalf.

So that's our new leadership, in a nutshell. Trump, the GOP, and his base. Literally nobody else matters for policy making. Trump does not need the democrats to cooperate on anything. He does not care about the Americans who voted against him. They lost. Try again in four years.

How will this play out? How is this a tool for analysis? Trump needs to balance these three groups in order to accomplish what he wants just as these groups need to balance their activities in order to get what they want. Trump has to concede to some congressional republican proposals if he wants his corrupt redistribution to work. He also needs to give the base wins or he risks appearing unpopular with the base that elected him. That would embolden the GOP to break ranks. Similarly, he needs the media on his side and they want viewers/listeners. All three have to show some give and take or the Triumvirate fails.

Soon to be Example 1: Infrastructure spending.
Trump's proposed infrastructure package satisfies all three members' needs. First, Trump gets $1,000,000,000,000.00 in public money to distribute to private corporations. Firms are likely salivating over the prospects. These so called public private partnerships have a checkered history with several prominent examples of outright failure requiring more public money. How's congress placated? In two ways: ideologically, they like that's it's not spending done through state DoT or other government agencies. Also, Trump's pick for Transportation Secretary is the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. What better way to get the leader of the GOP on your side than to give his wife a trillion dollar spending account? The voters and media get a "win" and will assume that the infrastructure spending will translate into a lot of jobs and better infrastructure. That's not always the case with these kinds of projects but reality doesn't matter.

Soon to be Example 2: Education Reform
Trump's nominee Betsy DeVos wants a strong voucher program with the intended result being money flowing into private, religious, and venture capital run charter schools. Federal dollars (and any states that want to hop on this bandwagon) will be attached to the children instead of doled out to states and schools. This way kids can go to Vacation Bible School and it will receive federal funding (this is the part congress likes, as well as the way it marginalizes traditional public schools). Billionaires like DeVos will make a lot of money because their hedge funds and VC firms own a lot of these charter schools. It's basically a handout to them whereas before they were accountable (admittedly not very) to the states for meeting some expectations. So this is a big giveaway to the 1% and satisfies the Trump allies part of the Triumvirate. As a side note, did you know that Erik Prince, DeVos's brother and founder of the mercenary war criminals Blackwater is an advisor to Trump? Crazy the connections! So, what do the people get out of this? School choice. The biggest success in states that have implemented school choice isn't that the schools are better or that kids learn more. Nope. The biggest success is that parents are happier. They like that they picked the school and they feel like they are empowered. Outcomes be damned, it makes people happier. Also, the whites like that they don't have to send their kids to school with black kids. Triumvirate satisfied.

Soon to be Example 3: Health Care
This is a bit of an odd one. Trump is pushing ahead for a quick repeal of the ACA and isn't just making noise, he's signing executive orders to cripple the law at an administrative level. The ACA is deeply unpopular as a concept even though the public widely supports its components. So, the public and media get their win. ACA is going to be gone. How about Congress? In the lead up to inauguration week, the republicans were leaning toward a delay and replace strategy which has since vanished from their discourse. Republicans are looking for a few things: no tax increases, no significant regulations, and completely removing anything relating to reproductive rights or women's healthcare. The libertarian leaning wing led by Speaker Ryan also wants dramatic cuts to Medicare/Medicaid. The latter is probably a non-starter with Trump unless a replacement can somehow be written in a way that directly benefits Trump and Trump allies. Maybe it will have something to do with Trump's son and law Jared Kushner? You know, Ivanka's husband? The one he just hired on staff now that the Trump Justice Department said it's totally legal and ethical. Yeah, that guy! He's got a healthcare company called Oscar. Oscar is an insurer funded and partly run by Mr. Kushner and supplies insurance on New York's ACA marketplace. In fact, some called Trump out for being against the ACA while he had family members making millions supplying ACA subsidized health insurance! I'd imagine that, although gutting the ACA will be bad for Oscar in the short run, Jared will be in an excellent position to capitalize on Obamacare's replacement.

This post is getting a bit long winded. Perhaps I'm not being all that clear. It's been a long time since I've blogged anything and my writing reflexes are maybe not up to the task. The overall point is this: every major initiative by Trump or by the GOP held Congress is best understood through this Triumvirate. Each partner is going to have to be made happy in order for anything to go through. As new policy is being made, evaluate how Trump and his cabinet of kleptocrats are going to make themselves rich. Evaluate how the GOP gets more conservative laws on the books. Evaluate how the policy is going to be sold to the Trump base. That's been how I approach analysing things so far and it's quite good. As we look at immigration reform, trade, foreign policy, energy, climate change, and all the other big issues I'm forgetting to mention, remember the Triumvirate. When Trump or his allies say something outrageous, ask if it's an attempt to woo the base. If the Republicans pass laws which aren't very Republican, ask what they're getting in return. If it's obvious a deal is going to make Trump or his allies rich but congress is just rubber stamping it through, maybe there's a big conservative issue where Trump's giving them support.

As far as Triumvirates go, they are doomed to failure. Either one of the three can't sustain enough power to remain relevant (Lepidus was a ninny) or they reach irreconcilable differences and there's gridlock (the first triumvirate until somebody died). Triumvirates are remarkably stable right up until the point where they're not. As soon as it falters the whole structure ceases to function. Our new governing Triumvirate is no different. Trump needs the GOP Congress. The GOP Congress needs Trump. Both need the Trump base. The Trump base needs bread and circuses, mostly, and maybe a sense of greatness too. Who will be the first to break? How? Will Trump become too obviously greedy and corrupt thereby losing congressional and popular support? Doubtful. It would have happened already. Will Trump be too at odds with Congress to get anything passed? Also unlikely. He's a good dealmaker and knows how to give congress what it wants while getting what he wants in return.

No, I think the people are the weaker part in this Triumvirate. I think Americans have short memories and will need to be constantly showered with positive victories. Trump's Americans need to see a wall. They need to see jobs and factories come back on a large scale. They need to see Blacks and Latinos struggle to succeed so as to validate their own greatness. Frankly, I just don't see how that's going to be possible. Repealing the ACA will be catastrophic for so many people and there's no good GOP replacement. Hell, the ACA was the GOP replacement back when Hillary was campaigning for universal coverage in the early 90s. Trade wars aren't good for jobs. Especially not when we have such a globalized marketplace. Higher prices, expensive (or no) healthcare, and a collapse of any exports (of which there are few anyway) will not make Americans who expect to all be working in auto-factories and steel mills very happy. Add in the new toll roads popping up everywhere thanks to our public-private partnerships and the crappy public schools you're stuck sending your kids to because rich people took all the good private spots. Now that's a recipe for disaster. The people who voted for Trump are going to be hurt the most by him and by the conservative policies fronted by congressional republicans. How they keep supporting him in 2 years or in 4 years is beyond me. Unless it works and America sees a huge economic boom, the public that elected Donald Trump isn't going to be reelecting him. The Triumvirate will work until the people realize they're being shafted and the "wins" aren't helping them at all.