This Is NOT "Real Housewives"

“It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater,” writes Soren Kierkegaard, “The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning. They shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid the general applause from all the wits who believe that it is a joke.” It’s ironic that FX is airing “The People vs OJ Simpson” right now, as Americans once again face their great Achilles Heel: race. For, despite the gains made in the last 60 years that have made our country more inclusive; despite electing our first African-American president, many in white America continue to harbor deep-seated resentment toward other races. It still remains, as Toni Morrison said, that “In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.” Until this time in modern history, white Americans have not had a viable political candidate behind whom they could throw their support; no one who clearly articulated their angst regarding their perceived loss of power. Enter Donald Trump. Perusing the comments section of many online articles regarding Trump’s cringe-worthy run for the White House reveals a scathing potpourri of racist sentiments straight out of a 1950’s Klan meeting. In fact, a cursory reading of such comments would give one the impression that white resentment has been simmering there, just under the surface, for quite some time, waiting for the right demagogic mouthpiece to articulate it. In many ways, Donald Trump is the right’s Barack Obama: that one candidate who storms onto the otherwise staid political scene and threatens to shake things up, to bring “hope and change” to the disenfranchised and disillusioned. Yet, while Obama appealed to a large cross-section of American voters and advanced race relations in this country, Trump, although promising to take on the establishment, is also brazenly un-PC, calling out Mexicans and Muslims, mocking the disabled and women. And he is winning. Barack Obama’s election, while it may have advanced our race-stunted society by leaps and bounds, has also served to deepen the angst of the white, male Republican base. For years we have heard them rail against reverse discrimination, affirmative action, and political correctness,” all code words for their terror at losing power in an increasingly inclusive social landscape; and, for years, we have ignored them, believing that they would just go away. But this is America, and in America, race never goes away. According to sociologist Julien Freund, “There is an essence of politics…There are no politics without a real or potential enemy.” Donald Trump is giving a voice to all of the American white male hysteria. The enemy is illegal immigrants, who we need to keep out by building a “yuuuuuuge” wall on our southern border; the enemy is Muslims, who we need to forbid from coming into our country and kill the families of terror suspects; the enemy is China, who we will really piss off with some “yuuuuuuge” tariffs. Basically, our enemies are anyone who doesn’t look like “us,” and by “us,” he means white Americans. At a recent Trump rally, a protestor interrupted Trump and his only question to her, which he repeated into the microphone three times for perfect clarity was, “Are you from Mexico?” It’s very easy, when people are worried about unemployment, to place blame. Hitler famously did this with the Jews. It didn’t matter that the Germans had just lost World War I, and that the Versailles Treaty was a consequence of that; the Germans needed an enemy, someone on whom to pin all their blame. Until now, Hitler’s rise to power was seen as a poignant lesson in what not to do; but Trump seems to use it as a playbook. A former ex-wife even admitted that he kept a copy of Mein Kampf on the bedside table. Guess what? It is working. It’s not the fact that we have spent exorbitant amounts of money fighting an endless war in the Middle East; it’s not that we continue to spend equally exorbitant amounts of money on our military-industrial complex. The reason the economy is down, the reason jobs are down, Trump says, is because of the Muslims and the Mexicans. Since American education became solely focused on memorizing answers to test questions and not on using basic critical thinking and analysis to solve problems, many gullible voters are buying into this. After all, it is always easier to blame someone else than it is to take the blame yourself. It remains to be seen whether Donald Trump can sustain his support through the Republican convention and actually win the nomination. His party is already in panic mode and is pulling out all the stops (and old politicians) to try and derail him; but this only emboldens his fiery base by harkening back to the days of Goldwater or Reagan, both staunch anti-establishment heroes. It’s like that fiery base of hysterical white supporters are so desperate for a mouthpiece for their racism, that they aren’t even paying attention to half of what he is saying. They want their power back; they want to be on top again; and they aren’t going to let anything as inconvenient and boring as the lessons of history stop them. If Donald Trump wins the presidency, we will all be forced to deal with the consequences of his trending global insults, either through wars, terrorist attacks, or tariffs. Trump’s election would actually weaken America’s stance in the world and hurt us economically. (Who’s really going to pay for that $10 billion wall on the Mexican border?) In fact, the only people who would prosper would be the military-industrial complex, because we would be in a perpetual state of war, kind of like we are now, only worse, because ALL of our allies would turn on us. Trump wants to be friends with Vladimir Putin, and we would end up fighting with them in Syria and Ukraine. It’s easy to just laugh it off, as we watch this Republican debacle unfold; it’s easy to reassure ourselves with “It can’t happen here.” This has been one of the least civilized primaries in American history, and as Marco Rubio and Donald Trump engage in veiled insults about each other’s penis size, it’s easy to shake our heads, and turn the channel. But this is not just another episode of “Real Housewives.” This is the future of our country, and this is not just a script. Donald Trump’s words have real, global implications. As we watch this debacle, we can only hope the American people heed the words of Bobby Kennedy and not Donald Trump. Kennedy believed, “The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use -- of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public.” Hopefully the American public will realize that life is not a reality show, and that words do have consequences.

The Style over Substance Problem in American Society

The doctor looked at us. “Sorry,” he said, “But I am not really qualified to deal with this. To me it looks like Asperger’s.”

“But they already ruled that out,” I protested, yet again. “Our pediatrician recommended that we take Will to the Autism Spectrum Disorder clinic in the city, and after two days of extensive testing, they ruled it out.”

He nodded. “On what grounds?”

I sighed. Sisyphus standing at the precipice. Here we go again. I leaned back on the couch, thrusting my hand out in the direction of the clinic’s report, lying on his lap. “It’s a processing issue. He’s processing things at a 7 year old level.”

Will was 10.

“And,” I continued, “they said he was virtually incapable of abstract thought.”

The doctor shifted in his chair, now attacking the problem from a different angle. “And the school? Why did the school turn him down for an IEP?” He glanced down at the report, opening the cream colored folder and flipping through the pages.

“He didn’t qualify. They did a battery of tests.”

Suddenly, he jumped out of his chair. “Maybe…” he reached up to the top of his bookshelf, “if I can find a DSM diagnosis, it would convince them to provide the services. Maybe they just need a clinical diagnosis.”

Despite having my reservations about the DSM’s efficacy (Didn’t they declare homosexuality a mental disorder not too long ago?), I feigned optimism. Maybe if he wrote a letter, the school would feel legally obligated to provide resource services to Will. Maybe, in this litigious society, they had to.

After five years of worry, chasing the tail of my son’s unspecified psychiatric/neurological disorder, I was starting to better understand why people hate our current healthcare system. But to me, an out-of-work middle school English teacher, Will’s case obviated the need for a symbiotic community of healthcare and education; each working separately to fulfill their goals, while routinely meeting to discuss areas in which their goals overlap, which are indeed many.

What struck me, after spending four years in a public school classroom, where students’ IEPs were neither strictly followed nor completely understood, is that education is a symptom of good health. When one is of sound mind, one is of sound body; and of sound mind I mean free of mental distress, the kind exacerbated by a deficiency of the mental tools necessary to alleviate it. When a country educates its citizens, the country is full of well-being. Conversely, when a country is repressive and hierarchical, as is the United States today, it foists its neuroses upon its citizens. We are not only sick in spirit, we are sick in mind and body as well; all of us, dependent on drugs for survival, held captive by our love of excess to the corporate machinations of greed and deceit.

The financial woes befalling our public schools are leaving education prey to the same malevolent forces, as charter schools become more popular and the current Secretary of Education enforces policies tantamount to wholesale privatization. What is education now but a money game, a place where lawyers lie in gluttonous wait, all too eager to strengthen their reputations while lining their pockets with a litany of litigation? My former superintendent began his inaugural speech to our district with the mantra, “No more lawsuits.”

What I began to better understand as I sat in the doctor’s office was that in 2010, America was suffering a catastrophic drought of substance the likes of which I had never seen in my lifetime (And I was born during Watergate!). The frolicking Ford years; Reagan’s shoot-em-up Western audacity; Clinton’s indiscretions, none of it compared to the complete lack of substance prevalent in American culture today. Is it just me, or do you get the sinking feeling that nobody really cares about anything? Or maybe people care. They just care about the wrong things. We pay lipservice to the environment; to human rights and the earthquake in Haiti; but what we really devote our energy to is vice. Vice is so prevalent in American society today that it forces even the most ardent among us to react to it. We are constantly having to defend ourselves, against what we say, who we say it to, lest we get sued. Doctors can’t make a diagnosis; teachers can’t advise; people can’t have an opinion, lest they get sued.

Civil rights in this country have faced a steady erosion since 9/11, turning what used to be an inalienable right (having an opinion) into a seditious thoughtcrime. Barack Obama’s friendship with Jeremiah Wright was considered a near fatal liability to him during the 2008 presidential campaign. Conservatives were quick to paint Obama, a former college professor and man of great intellect, as a “radical” who possessed nefarious ulterior motives for wanting to be president. Obama’s curiosity was never painted as a positive thing. Not once did any of the pundits, Democratic or Republican, put forth the view that a person interested in others’ opinions could actually be a good thing. What better way to deal with world leaders, some of whom do not share your views, than to be tolerant and hear them out? What could have been a seminal moment in American, and therefore, world history, was reduced to the familiar realm of fear-mongering and overhyped insecurity. Our golden moment was tarnished, and Obama has been encountering road blocks ever since.

The Democrats’ frustration over their squandering of a national mandate for change is embodied in the areas of healthcare and civil rights. Healthcare and education again find themselves coconspirators in an insidious plot to retain their funding while also placating the status quo. Along with their failed healthcare initiative comes an added blight: a one-year extension of the Patriot Act. It seems that Obama’s support of it was disregarded when he ran for office. He voted for it as a senator after all. So swept-up were Americans in an almost evangelical fervor during the 2008 election, that they let Mr. Obama’s positions on national security go unnoticed. Since taking office in 2009, Obama has advocated a 30,000 troop surge in Afghanistan, placating liberals by stating a timetable for Iraq. While Obama plays Whack-a-Mole with foreign policy, his Democratic allies in Congress, anemic and divisive as they are, lose seats along with supermajorities, what was sure to be the cornerstone of a resurgent revolution for change. The healthcare bill seems interminably stalled, and now, the Patriot Act has slipped through once again.

While the media becomes more bifurcated, engaging in increasingly partisan arguments, consumed by their verbal tennis match, the citizens become increasingly self-obsessed. Where else is this more evident than in the plethora of reality shows that have sprung up in the Clinton and Bush years? Americans are obsessed with fame, each of us intent on relishing our God-granted 15 minutes before settling back into the depressing obscurity of debt and greed, frustrated desires and low self-worth. We love the machine that controls us, but we see a way out, a fabricated way out to relieve us of our fears. Money. If only we were as rich as Paris Hilton, as driven as Oprah Winfrey, if only we could assume that, happy consumers one and all. And how does money control us? The same way it controls education: By promising instant gratification, an end to suffering.

The fascist strain is alive and well in America because it is the control by those who have the most resources. Moneyed interests target areas for “improvement” and then they begin their take-over, through lawsuits and bribes, threats and incentives. The status quo remains and the citizens blindly follow along, too assuming and consuming, too wrapped up in their own neuroses, to know or even care what havoc the moneyed powers have wrought.

Healthcare and education, both in dire need of transfusions, both abused and broken, but neither truly being fixed. Lawyers can gut the system all they want, for there will always be someone to sue, but true change will never come about until practitioners can again express their opinions. Change comes with dialogue. Otherwise it is dysfunction; otherwise it is a sham; otherwise it is nothing more than style over substance.