Month: November 2016

We just had a weird moment in American politics.

What was weird wasn’t what happened, but what was said.

Here’s what happened.  This weekend, Donald Trump called on the Broadway cast of “Hamilton” to apologize for “harassing” his vice-president-elect, Mike Pence, by imploring him — in a scripted, post-performance entreaty written by the show’s creator — to “uphold our American values and to . . . govern for all Americans.”

There should be nothing odd at this point about Donald Trump’s puerile, thin-skinned behavior:  grinding everything to a halt to settle the score — via Twitter — with anyone who subjects him (or his surrogate) to the slightest criticism — particularly in public.

But here’s what was weird.  In his tweet, Mr. Trump alleged that the performers, in addressing Mr. Pence inside the theater, had violated “a safe and special place.” This phrase’s word choice and offended tone echoes a favorite phrase of American college activists: the “safe space” — which has been satirized in the press as Play-Doh and crayon-filled rooms where wounded rich college kids can have their feelings soothed after dangerous encounters with terrifying things, like new ideas, or conservative speakers.  

For Mr. Trump — sometimes characterized as the Republican party’s Id — to turn the safe space concept back on this bastion of liberal diversity was truly bizarre, and I couldn’t help but read it as the Left’s identity politics coming home to roost.  While I was patently appalled by Trump’s mischaracterization of the actors’ plea, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been somewhat taken aback by the striking wave of intolerance — denoted fairly or unfairly by “safe spaces” — that has been breaking over the shores of American colleges for the last two years.

I first noticed something was awry in 2014 when University of Oklahoma president David Boren expelled two students caught singing a racist song on secret video tape.  Perhaps you remember this video: a bunch of loathsome, drunken frat-boys — the kind I’d have rather seen transferred to, say, Tanzania back when I was in school — singing a thoroughly racist and probably long-cherished fraternity song celebrating lynching.  What would I have liked to have done?  To slightly misquote the ignorant know-nothings (probably some of the same ilk as those bus-singers) who voted for Donald Trump: lock ’em up!  Kick them out!

But of course I wouldn’t have, because that’s not right.  Because THAT’s some Donald Trump bullshit.  We don’t do that in America.  We have the First Amendment.  It’s not illegal to be a racist.  It’s not illegal to say racist things.  It is illegal to practice discriminatory hiring, or to make direct threats, or to incite violence.  But it’s not illegal to say racist nonsense on a bus with your equally ignorant, entitled, preppy, asshole friends.  There’s nothing illegal about that and we definitely don’t expel people from college for that.  Not in the United States.

Except they did!  David Boren — a former DEMOCRATIC senator, no less — wasted no time doing so!  Although both withdrew before disciplinary hearings could proceed, the message behind Boren’s decision was clear as Windex: hold certain beliefs, say certain things, and you will be expelled from the University of Oklahoma.

And everyone was fine with this!  The public loved it.  The fraternity was shut down, people picketed outside the boys’ houses, and everyone thought all was well and good in our progressive America.  We’re stamping out the racists, tossing them off of campus.  Out with the old ways, in with the new, modern, post-racial America.  All was well.

But was it?

Of course not!  That moment represented a major blow to free speech — and it didn’t come from some evil, Steve Bannon-type; it came from a former Democratic senator and from well-meaning and liberal college students.  Again, I found the content of what these boys said thoroughly loathsome (although hardly surprising — why do we always pretend there are no racists in America?)  Yet as a teacher myself, I feel strongly that the cure for ignorance isn’t censorship or expulsion; it’s education.  Put those idiots in a classroom and make them take a hard look at themselves and their history.  Make them read Beloved.  Make them study redlining.  More importantly, I feel strongly that the cure for hate speech isn’t censorship or legal protection from it — the cure is what it has always been: more speech.  You don’t expel people; you make them walk around with everyone criticizing them all the time.

It’s a hard balance — as anyone who has run a classroom knows: to embrace the right to free speech, yet to ensure that nobody is unreasonably offended.  This is particularly tricky on increasingly diverse college campuses which for years have been dominated by white students and white professors.  It’s also true that campuses and classrooms should be “safe spaces” — in the sense that everyone should feel a modicum of inclusion to participate.

But on the other hand, it’s possible to take this too far, and I worry that this is what many colleges, judging by the news stories that we’re reading every week, have come perilously close to doing.  After all, we live in a vast, brawling country — capable of incredible tolerance and understanding, but of enormous bigotry and hatred as well.   That has never been more apparent than since Mr. Trump’s election to president.

Last year there was an infamous incident at Emory University during the Republican primary.  This incident was much-mocked by conservative commentators.  It was dubbed “The Chalkening.” Here’s what happened:  Emory students awoke one morning to find pro-Donald Trump messages chalked on campus sidewalks.  They weren’t even awful.  They said, “Trump 2016,” and “Accept the Inevitable” and “Build That Wall.” This was all common speech in the political arena at the time.  Yet many of the students reacted — and this is where the media had a field day — as though these messages constituted an actual threat to their physical safety:  “I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe [here],” one student said. “But this man is being supported by students on our campus and our administration shows that they, by their silence, support it as well … I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school,” she added.

Students called on administrators to banish chalking on campus, or at least to police it.  They ordered administrators to find the chalkers and to punish them:  “The University will review footage “up by the hospital [from] security cameras” to identify those who made the chalkings, (college President James) Wagner told the protesters. He also added that if they’re students, they will go through the conduct violation process, while if they are from outside of the University, trespassing charges will be pressed.”

And yet — here we are, six months later, with Donald Trump as our president.  As badly as the college students (in Georgia, no less) wished to push Mr. Trump away — as badly as so many of us did, his supporters elected him President.  Now he carries the potential not only to say offensive things, but to do truly awful things.  We do our students and ourselves no good by pretending that unpopular ideas don’t exist.  They do.  And now Mr. Trump is using the Left’s own language back on them.  American campuses have seemed to me on a quest for who can be the most sensitive, and the most offended.  Now we have the most sensitive, thin-skinned president in history throwing the Left’s language back on it.  We all want a safe space away from criticism: even our newest Bully-in-Chief.

There can be no doubt that the First Amendment faces grave danger under Mr. Trump.  Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump attacked the media frequently and with vitriol.  He called out individual reporters by name, like poor Katy Tur of NBC.  He banned the Washington Post from covering his rallies.  He tossed a Mexican-American reporter from a rally.  His mocking of a disabled reporter became the subject of a national debate.  Trump’s very ascendance shows a distrust and even hostility toward the institutions of a free press and of free speech.  

Now more than ever it’s time for all of us to remember that the cure for hateful ideas isn’t to censor them, but to confront them.  The best cure for hate speech, as our founders knew, isn’t creating restrictive speech codes about what’s right to say and what’s not.  The cure is more speech.  And the cure is education.

Of course, free speech is not to be confused with threatening speech — direct threats of violence or intimidation — which is in no way protected under the First Amendment.  Nor is it to be confused with acts of real violence — which unfortunately have seen an uptick since Mr. Trump’s election.  These problems are real and in no way permissible.  

Yet now more than ever we must face up to the uncomfortable facts.  Trump has been elected and soon the likes of Steve Bannon will be slithering into the West Wing.  It seems to me that the time for being offended by small, perceived slights — a luxury on campuses during the Obama years — is one we can suddenly no longer afford.  I once read that the Joseph McCarthy years were great ones for universities: suddenly there was a common enemy, and it was quite clear who the bad guys were and what they stood for.  I believe that we’re entering that time again.  If free speech is about anything, it’s about this: know your enemy.  In order to progress as a society, in order to continue to form a more perfect union, we must allow all uncomfortable and unpalatable ideas their legal due, if only so that we can know most clearly who exactly the enemy is and what he wants.  Only this way can we beat him back.  

This post is not a plea for marginalized groups to shake hands and make nice with bigoted Trump supporters.  This is a plea for all of us to remember that just because we don’t like an idea doesn’t make that idea a physical threat.  This is also a plea for college students to stop disinviting controversial speakers and to start sitting in the front row, and listening.  Don’t drown him out.  Respect his free speech.  Then — during the question period — debate the hell out of him.  Disarm him, beat him down with logic, make him look like the petty little mean man that he is.  Know your enemy.  Above all, this is a plea to keep in mind the idea behind the First Amendment: just because we are offended by an idea doesn’t mean that the speaker has no right to say it.  Because that’s ultimately the way to progress.

I truly believe that it is our president-elect who most needs to remember this lesson well.  My guess is that he may need a few reminders.  

And that is up to all of us.

Take a deep breath,  I keep telling myself.  

Now that votes have been cast, the results counted, and the election decided everywhere except my home state of New Hampshire, which is Too Close to Call, and should, at this rate, be decided just in time for the 2020 election, I have now had a few days to digest the shocking, shocking truth: Chris Christie’s political career might not actually be dead!  

Oh, and DONALD TRUMP is going to be President of the United States!!

(Remember that scene in “Jaws” when the shark boat captain scrapes his nails down the chalkboard and everyone in the room cringes like when someone brings up Colin Kaepernick around your elderly grandmother?  That’s me every time I hear the phrase “President-Elect Donald Trump.” I cringe.  Because it’s just not right.  It’s like saying, “President Al Capone.” Or “President Roger Goodell.”)

What the hell happened?

A whole metric fuck-ton of rural white people voted, that’s what happened.  People from towns where they talk politics at the feed store, towns sung about in John Mellencamp songs, towns where they hate John Mellencamp (that’s all of us — can we agree?) Many of these towns are located in an economically depressed region of Appalachia called “The Rust Belt,” which has a lot of angry voters, and which you really need to make sure you wear with “The Brown Shoes” (located in Louisiana, or wherever we last took them off).

Rust Belt men and women voted at rates never before seen, except in rare cases — such as any time Kim Jong Un’s name is on the ballet in North Korea.  That’s the kind of support Trump got.  By “turning out” in “droves” in “swing states” (defined as states that love their wives, but also enjoy being with their neighbors’ wives), these voters were able to “tip” the election to favor their “nominee,” Donald Trump, who enjoyed a “wide margin” in his home state of “Hades.”

On Tuesday morning, most of “blue America” (defined as the places where a car breaks down and no one knows how to fix it) was left scratching their heads as to why anyone would vote for a man with the attention span of a caffeinated Border Collie.

I was, like almost everybody in the nation — except for Donald Trump, who’s like the one goat who’s so far behind that he thinks he’s ahead — completely in shock about the election results.  We’d just lived through a dramatic campaign, thought that we finally knew what we were getting, and then — right at the goal line, everything was taken away.  With apologies to my friends who are Patriots fans, call it a Malcolm Butler moment in U.S. politics.  (And I’m sorry to say: both times, Bill Belichick came out on top.)

I had started the night confident.  As results came in — first Virginia was razor-close, then Pennsylvania looked shaky — confidence gave way to a sense of rationalization.  That led to inebriation, followed by incapacitation, and the next morning, Tylenolization.  With my head ringing, I stared at the computer screen in utter disbelief.  Ironically, the man who’d railed against the “rigged system” had finally been saved by the system: the Electoral College.  

I’d woken up in Donald Trump’s America.

My initial reactions were not very mature.

“We need to get out of here!” I exclaimed to my wife.  “How quickly can we sell the house and you learn German?”

“Alden, calm down.”

“But they’re coming for us!”

“Who?”

“Newt Gingrich!”

By the time I’d roused myself from existential despair enough to feed and clothe myself, I found myself thinking: okay, this is it.  The American experiment is over.  Done.  We’re well on our merry way to a fascist state.  How could we not be?  We’d just elected a man who’d said or done at least 4,276 separate, patently appalling things, each of which would’ve been immediately career-ending for any other candidate in my lifetime.  But his poll numbers hadn’t budged an inch.  Wasn’t Trump’s Teflon status the plainest evidence that he’d been willed to office not so much by an electorate as by a worshiping cult — one that would not just excuse but eagerly endorse whatever domestic genocide he’d perpetrate from the Oval Office?

As I drove to work, I thought of all the fun things I was going to miss now that I was living in Trump’s America.

I thought about my favorite hobby: aviation.  No way my small flying club would survive the inevitable stock market crash.  At least we’d all get plenty of air time in the next few years.  Too bad it’ll be in Trump’s Air Force — dropping bombs on, say, Washington State.

And what about our cherished freedom of the press?  Won’t Donald Trump — emboldened by his apparent victory over the media’s predictions — at best lord it over them, at worst throw his presidential weight behind neutering them?  In three years, we’ll probably have one choice of newspaper: Trump Times, which he’ll control just like Oprah controls O Magazine (except a little less dictatorial — let’s not go that far).  We’ll have one choice of TV provider only that will use an evil staff, shady sales practices, and a total monopoly to drive up your prices.  In other words, it’ll be exactly what we have now.  Except instead of “Time Warner,” it will be called “Trump TV.” And the content will be vastly different.  Oh, there will still be “news.” Except it won’t be “the dishonest media.” Now every night we’ll watch a docile Lester Holt — wearing bracelets at all times, just in case he tries anything funny, like quoting reality — along with a glassy-eyed and possibly lobotomized Chuck Todd reading the day’s latest news:  “This just in: President Trump has the largest hands ever!”

And what about my beloved line of work: public education?  

A few weeks ago — before The Shock — I joked to a colleague, a Social Studies teacher, that his work would be doubly important if Trump won the presidency.

“You’re assuming we’ll still have high schools,” he said dryly.

But now that Trump won, how was I supposed to be a teacher?  How was I supposed to tell a room full of teenagers that their arguments need facts and evidence — when half the nation’s electorate apparently went “truth-free” about six months ago?  (That’s sort of like going “gluten-free,” except less trendy.)

I don’t know what Trump will decide about education.  You can’t underestimate a guy whose idea of educational policy was Trump University: basically the educational equivalent of those scammers who call up my 98 year-old grandmother and ask for her ATM code.

But then again, he knew how to game the system, right?  So we should trust him to fix it.  That makes perfect sense, right?

In the end, the best thought that I have is this:  Maybe this election is a useful look in the mirror for America?  Because you know what’s genius about the First Amendment?  The answer to hate speech isn’t to ban it — it’s to encourage more speech!  Why?  Because you want to know who the racists are.  You want to know who the bigots are.  You want to know the names and faces of the Neo-Nazi supporters, of the race-baiters, of the serial p—sy-grabbers.  Censor speech — even so-called “hate speech” — and you push it underground.  It doesn’t resolve itself there.  It broods.  It festers.  It takes on strange legitimacy.  But it never gets better, and we never move forward as a country until we confront these latent undertones head-on: through debate, through discussion, through understanding where the other side is coming from.  Journalists mused that Donald Trump was the Republican party’s id during the primaries.  Maybe the role of Trump is to bring the ugliness of America — and this campaign showed us something ugly — out into the open so we can finally reckon with it?

Some of us thought that we’d wave our magic wand, elect a black president, and suddenly we’d live in post-racial harmony.  That’s clearly not the case.  Maybe this election is one giant chance for all of us who were scratching our heads and moving our investments (if not our homes) to Switzerland on Wednesday morning to start to understand exactly what it is that we’re up against.  Maybe this election was one big, giant explosion of that best of American rights: free speech.

I just hope it doesn’t end free speech for good.

You know those times in life when you look back and ask yourself, “How did it get lost in all this that . . . ?”

Fill in the blank.

• “How did it get lost in all this that . . .  he wasn’t misunderstood — he was really just a jerk?”

You get caught up in everything — lots of drama, lots of debate — and you lose perspective.  You miss what’s right there in front of you.

• “How did it get lost in all this that . . .  she wasn’t unfairly treated, she just didn’t work very hard?”

• “How did it get lost in all this that . . .  the judge wasn’t overreacting — we probably shouldn’t have fed beer to those goats in the first place?”

And so on.  

Years later you look back and wonder how you could be so dumb.  It was right there in front of you!  

But as George Orwell once wrote, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

And so it’s been in this election:

• How did it get lost in all this that Hillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate ever to run for President?

• How did it get lost in all this that Donald Trump — never having held political office — is one of the least?

• How did it get lost in all this that this is a historic election — the first woman ever to be nominated for President?  (Strange as it is to say, this seems to have been almost completely forgotten.)

• How did it get lost in all this that Donald Trump, who claims the system is “rigged,” is his own best counterexample?  How would he have beaten Jeb Bush and his $120 million war chest if our system was truly rigged?

And here’s the one that stands out most to me this week:

• How did it get lost in all this that Russia is hacking us — and the Republicans (the Republicans!) are largely okay with it?

How did this get lost in everything?

Let’s forget for a minute the massive implications of the Wikileaks hacks: namely that the Russians are likely trying to undermine our democratic process.  Let’s forget that Putin, with his own rigged elections, has every reason to discredit democracy.  Let’s forget that all this should give pause to anyone who enjoys walking to the polls without stopping to have a mandatory chat with armed guards about your voting preferences.  Forget all of that for a moment.

Let’s start with something more basic that I think has been lost: What these hackers are doing is illegal.

Nobody’s talking about this.  Computer hacking is a crime.  Hacking John Podesta’s emails is not a lot different than breaking into his house and stealing his computer.  If that had happened, would we be reacting differently?  Forget privacy: it’s theft.

By not denouncing these criminal acts, Donald Trump and his followers are setting a bad precedent: they’re encouraging break-ins.  Trump calls Clinton’s email revelations “the biggest (scandal) since Watergate.” But by condoning illegal break-ins to expose his opponent’s secrets, Donald Trump isn’t exposing Watergate.  He’s condoning it.

Have we simply gotten to a point where we’re so used to our online information being shared that we don’t care about hacking?  Are people so enraged by Hillary Clinton’s keeping private public documents that they don’t care the Russians want to undermine democracy — so long as she gets her just deserts?  The same Republicans who were so critical of Edward Snowden’s Wikileaks hacks are suddenly fine with Julian Assange now?  Doesn’t the fact that it’s clearly Putin behind things bother any Republicans?  Weren’t they — just yesterday, it seems, the party of tough-talking international policing?  Weren’t they just taking a hard line on Russia during the last two elections?

Furthermore, what happened to being conservative?

Conservative.  If you’re going to call yourself that, the word needs to mean something.  It seems to me that conservatism should imply nothing so much as conserving our laws and traditions.  Why didn’t Trump stand up and say, “What Russia is doing is unacceptable.  They don’t get to mess with us.  I won’t let that happen under me.  I’ll get to the bottom of this,” while also saying, “Yet they’ve exposed corruption in my opponent, and I’ll put an end to that too”?  

Wouldn’t that have been not only smart and consistent, but — dare I say it — conservative?

Trump is clearly not conservative in any shape or form.  He has even gone so far as to encourage Russian hacking.  Stop to think about that for a minute every time new Clinton emails are released.  Is that a deal with the devil we really want to make?  

How has that been lost in all of this?

The debate about Wikileaks really comes down to the classic question: do the ends justify the means?  A friend of mine distilled the question to its essence recently on social media:

“If you know someone committed a crime and the evidence of that crime is in their house, is it wrong to break into their house to get that information?”

The best response came from another friend, who happens to be a lawyer.

“Yes,” he wrote.  “Only law enforcement can do that and they need a search warrant. It’s the 4th amendment. That’s in the constitution.”

That’s a conservative (small c) answer.  And that’s why what’s going on with Wikileaks right now should give any Republican who’s supporting Trump cause for concern.  Because as Marco Rubio put it recently, “Tomorrow it could be us.”

And that’s what’s been lost in all of this.

That and a whole lot else.