Notes for the 70 million

And how is everyone today?

Well, I guess my magic eight ball failed me. Which means I’m out of the political prognosticating business.

My last post predicted, with great assurance, that Kamala Harris would be elected president. A historic achievement for so many reasons but mostly for the sake of the future of the country and the world.

Of course, personally, I’m not that noble.

The truth is I abhor racists, sexual predators and people who brazenly lie, break the law and prey on the trusting nature of those less cynical than I am.

Which means pretty much everybody.

Also, as a Scorpio, another of my truths is I have a weakness for revenge. I’m not proud of it and have to work to keep it in check. But somehow I convinced myself that shaming the biggest bully in the U.S. as a loser in the public square would be justice.

Well, nothing good happens when you let the righteous anger of revenge get the best of you.

How do I know that? Witness the results of the 2024 presidential election. Seventy-four million Americans took their own palpable rage out on the other 70 million of us who were trying to take the high road for the good of their country even though many of us were quite rageful and revengeful deep down. In doing so, they elevated a bully to the highest office in the land, and perhaps the world, hoping he’d…

Make their world better?

Protect them?

Beat up (Note: Or worse) the people they don’t like, disagree with or who look different than they do?

Get them some more money?

All of the above and quite a lot more?

I have ZERO idea.

Here’s what I do know.

As a college professor, advisor and mentor with hundreds of current and former students in my life, I heard stories from A LOT of traumatized young people this week.

Women in their twenties who were quickly obtaining birth control because they feared the next administration would outlaw their method, track their menstrual cycles and…much worse.
Sad students I had taught or am currently teaching who have non-white immigrant parents and are terrified for themselves and their families despite the fact they were born here.

Gay, lesbian and non-binary students so depressed they couldn’t speak about their present, much less their futures, even in a so-called safe space.
Trans students living openly wondering why they are so hated and others planning to transition who are now delaying becoming their true selves for fear of practical, and very public, retribution.
Very, very white students dreading Thanksgiving dinner with their gloating, MAGA relatives.
And across-the-board concerns, despite political beliefs, from all of them, about not only the health of the planet but their careers and economic futures under a president they universally see as a geriatric version of Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker. (Note: Their analogy, not mine).

The dancing is similar but you know Trump doesn’t do stairs

It was hard to know what to say.

Not to mention, heartbreaking.

This is not the world they imagined. It’s certainly not one I every fully acknowledged.

Or had I?

This led me to the only perspective and advice I had to give, that I’ve shared in bits and pieces on social media. It’s not a solution or a practical guide of what to do. I can’t think straight, or even gay enough, to offer much on that score at the moment. But what I do know is:

70 MILLION PEOPLE VOTING FOR SOMETHING IS NOT NOTHING. It is the possibility of SOMETHING.

As a gay man of a certain age, these days I try to not dwell on key events of the eighties. But like all trauma, and deep disappointments and losses, they are forever engrained in my psyche and have shaped me into what I hope is the decent, and mostly loving, person I am today.

Back then I thought it was all over after Reagan was elected and then re-elected thanks in great part to fear of “the other,” greed and Christian nationalism. In particular the latter (and Reagan) capitalized on a fear and hatred of the LGBTQ+ community, turned their back on the AIDS crisis and literally ignored the deaths of many tens of thousands of American citizens, not to mention eventually millions around the world.

A lot of them were my friends and peers and watching the mass indifference of so many of those so-called citizens basking in the glow of “Morning in America” made me sick to my stomach and uncontrollably angry. And, eventually, quite hopeless.

In those years I was convinced as a country we were soulless and probably doomed, not to mention completely morally bankrupt, and that nothing good could ever occur again for me, and certainly not US. I never, EVER imagined we’d get to Barack Obama. Not. A. Chance.

But now our country has clearly changed again (as it always does), has to some extent been deluded by disinformation, has to some extent chosen racisms/sexism/homophobia and others isms, and has to more than some extent chosen to be guided by fear and delusion vs. reality-based evolution.

So we’re going to have to go through some rocky times, most likely extremely rocky times, before we get to “the promised land.”

Fortunately, the nature of this country historically – especially in relation to change – is that there are huge swings back and forth as we evolve. It’s never easy and we often metaphorically, and literally, go kicking and screaming, but against all odds we manage to, if not get there, at least progress. Consider, more than a century and a half ago there was a CIVIL WAR. People you knew in the south were shooting at and killing those in the north they disagreed with. There should have been NO WAY for this country, much less any country as young as ours, to survive it.

Will it now happen again and include the Midwest, Southwest and Pacific coast states? As I said, I’m out of the predicting business. If only because I don’t even want to contemplate being trained in the use of a contemporary style musket.

Though, if needed, I could, and will, certainly learn.

Our CURRENT SITTING VICE-PRESIDENT, Kamala Harris, said in her concession speech – “The light of America’s promise will always be bright – as long as we never give up – and as long as we keep fighting.”

Endings = Beginnings = …Well, that’s up to us.

It’s okay to be sad and depressed and to escape with your vice of choice for a few days. Then it’s time to start again, all of us, as so many before us have done.

And remember, those aged 18-29 voted against the Bully by a clear margin – over 10%.

That’s the beginning of a whole lot of something. A seeable slice of hope in our always uncertain future.

Chappell Roan – “Good Luck, Babe”

12.10.23

by notesfromachair

College of Convictions

It was sickening to hear the presidents of what are considered to be three of the country’s most prestigious universities of higher learning — Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and M.I.T. — try to sidestep, prevaricate and otherwise legalese their way out of a definitive answer when asked point blank at a Congressional hearing this week:

Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your (university) code of conduct and rules regarding bullying or harassment?

Still, for me it was not terribly surprising to hear answers like:

It depends on the context…

Or…

If targeted at individuals not making public statements…

Or…

If the speech turns into conduct, that’s harassment…

As my young teenage self used to reply to my parents after they nixed any one of my perfectly reasoned requests:

A simple no would have sufficed.

Parsing words and phrases are a hallmark of big companies, nee institutions, these days. (Note: With some X-ceptions). And some of the most noted, bigger institutions under fire right now, especially by the razor thin Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, are the large and well-financed Ivy League universities and colleges turning out many of the upcoming American leaders of tomorrow.

Liberal bastions teaching slanted points of view to brainwashed students.

As if a religious college or university would be some alternate bastion of inclusion.

Nevertheless, these university presidents really fell into it when Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY-R), the fourth ranking Republican in the House and Liz Cheney’s replacement as Republican conference chair once she decided to co-chair the second Trump impeachment committee, began her line of questioning.

Quick backstory: Stefanik was a moderate Republican who turned full MAGA after Trump lost his re-election bid. In fact, she spoke out against ratifying Pennsylvania’s electoral votes after the Trump mob stormed the Capitol building on Insurrection Day. At which point, Stefanik, a Harvard alumna, was promptly removed as a senior member of the prestigious Harvard Institute of Politics.

Now I’m not saying it was the backlash she received from Harvard for being a Team Trump election denier that caused Rep. Stefanik to come fully-armed with a lacerating string of pointed questions and follow-up accusations against these three female college presidents last week at a hearing entitled, “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Anti-Semitism.”

Nor am I saying that her politics and personal animus did not contribute to how she went about it.

All I am noting is that one needs to look at the fullest picture possible in order to make a judgment on an issue – particularly this issue.

The latter is something those of us in higher education work tirelessly to achieve and relate to our students when they fly off the handle and make assumptions that can’t quite be supported. The kind of thing my teenage self used to do continuously before I had the good fortune to train my mind in college and grad school to ask questions and only answer them once I had the full set of facts.

Speaking of which, I am not for one millisecond defending the embarrassing, nonsensical and, frankly scary answers those three smart, professional women of higher education gave to Stefanik’s ambush… I mean….cross-examination.

University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill issued a mea culpa expanded statement condemning anti-Semitism the next day for saying things like, condemning statements of Jewish genocide would be “context dependent.”

But it didn’t help much. Magill was forced to resign a few days later though, for the time being, she will remain a faculty member at the institution’s law school. That’s right, you shouldn’t be shocked to learn Ms. Magill is indeed a….trained attorney.

Her much too nuanced, too cautious and too intellectualized response is typical of exactly what is wrong with not only higher education but with the public stage of thought policing these days. And it was the very predictable hesitancy of Magill, as well as of Harvard’s Claudine Gay and M.I.T.’s Sally Kornbluth to substantively wade into anything too absolute that Stefanik was counting on to create a viral revenge moment at the institution that helped train her, as well as institutions like it.

Stefanik has already, in the aftermath of her viral triumph, promised a “reckoning” and a deeper look into sources and funding of the nation’s colleges and universities across the board as well as how their diversity, equity and inclusion offices function.

And she vows this under the banner of their treatment of Jewish students and unchecked anti-Semitism on campuses.

Um, right. Like Sister Aloysuis says in John Patrick Shanley’s famous Pulitzer Prize-winning play:

I have doubts. I have such doubts!

(Note: Yes, the play is indeed titled Doubt but I didn’t want to give the line away before you read it).

See, free speech does not mean one has the freedom to incite riots and advocate, or even heavily imply violence, against any minority group, as some presidential candidates (Note: And in one case, even a former president) have been known to do. It means everyone is entitled to their opinions and beliefs but are limited in how and where they can broadcast them, especially when they are in rarified, controlled spaces (e.g. colleges) and violent intent is concerned.

Certainly, MAGA’s Stefanik understands this. But she also understands the tricky position cowering university presidents are in these days when addressing controversy. And clearly the public faces of universities under Congressional questioning understand just how quickly their answers can be used against them by agenda driven politicians who want to fire their words as weapons back at them.

So they parse – and parse badly – never anticipating that given where we are right now in the real world it will all rightly get read as anti-Semitism by a top member of a political party whose leader makes racist, not to mention sexist, pronouncements daily.

In fact, rooting out the vermin our country -as non-white immigrants as well as anyone vociferously disagreeing with the Republican agenda gets referred to – has become a new staple in the stump speech of that party’s runaway leader to be its 2024 nominee for POTUS.

I choose to believe that there is not a single president among those three that actually believes it is okay to publicly advocate for the genocide of Jews – and not only because I’m Jewish.

The problem is their first instinct was to NOT definitively stand against it for fear of… retribution? Controversy? Offense?

If a rank amateur “mean girl” like Stefanik can hornswoggle them so easily, how will they fare if Trump and his crew of psycho pirates ever get back into the White House?

As of right now, not well. However, there is almost a year for them, and us, to get more fully educated. At which time we can then publicly – and very simply – espouse the courage of our convictions to anyone and everyone that will listen.

Big Ten College Fight Songs – Columbus Gay Men’s Chorus

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: MAGA

Notes for the 70 million

College of Convictions