The _Wizard of Covington: Gimme Fried Chicken!

"Look, I know we've had our differences, The_Wizard, and you've said some pretty mean things about me in the past--some of it was true--and this kind of dynastic thing seems kind of undemocratic . . .but let me ask you: What the fuck ya gonna do?"

1. One Vision

It's amazing how language and musical accompaniment can change our perceptions. For example, the above Laibach classic is actually a cover of another classic. Holy shit, right?

Laibach's continuing musical project is to reveal Fascist undertones in Western Popular Music by rearranging the music and imagery into something that would be comfortable in Triumph of the Will. Queen drummer Roger Taylor has said that his lyric for "One Vision"was inspired by the decidedly not-a-Fascist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but the arrangement, as with all Queen songs, is over the top, with soaring vocal harmonies, guitar harmonies--everything you would expect from the squillionaire legends. Switch the title to "Birth of a Nation", sing the lyrics in German, and change the music from Queen's signature pop/ heavy rock stylings to something all together more martial, more strident, more, frightening. The lyrics, about a utopian vision of "free at last" racial harmony becomes recast into a National Socialist volksreich, civil rights into might makes right, the benevolent civil rights leader into a malevolent fuhrer.

That was the point, of course. As the great band Living Colour sang, all leaders are, potentially, a cult of personality. It all depends how the you frame it. It's like I tell my students about arguments; the introductions are not just thesis containers, conclusions are not just the "almost done" perfunctory paragraphs; they are the "frame" of the argument. They orient the reader to the body of the argument, the evidence, the explanation of the evidence. They give the argument purpose and meaning. Frames, in circumscribing the argument, shape it. Phenomenologically, the frame and the argument are one in the same.

2. Narratio

In thinking about these two candidates, neither candidate's arguments seemed particularly inviting to me. I--and my family--are Sanders people (disappointingly, some Sanders people became Bernie or Bust, despite his admonitions, and despite his crafting the platform, Sanders had the cult of personality foisted upon him, and his message of reason and humanity became ideology, and the busters ideologues sharing Breitbart stories and Hillary for Prison memes). Clinton was not my candidate (here, here) because of her centrist instincts, her hawkishness, and the panoply of unforced errors that envelop them like a fart in a car. A lefty by disposition, the GOP offers me little, and actually seems to go out its way to tell me to "go fuck myself". This time, beyond the "go fuck myself", they actually seemed to pivot to something altogether more dark: a populism that recalled the worst in human history (here, here) while displaying an absolute disregard for even tenuous truthiness into absolute delusion, pouring gasoline on smoldering class and race resentments, effectively burning down facts for his follows and replacing it with a political ideology that is unconcerned with fact, unconcerned with discourse, unconcerned with anything other than aggressive rage and its own inchoate will to power. The rise of the Alt-Right, with its thin veneer of irony and the humor only a meathead could chortle to, is altogether a different animal than the Klan, and the usual right wing suspects. Beyond John Birch, we find ourselves looking at a preppier-troll version of Derek Vinyard, yet, I wonder how many of these trolls will go all in, with the rhetoric and the ideology, and become street soldiers. "Go fuck yourself" will most certainly become "Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker", if they have their way (and my online interactions, as well as crawling through the sewer of comment sections, see to indicate this maybe the case).

3. Adulting is no fun

During this last administration, I lost my appointment through Ohio collegiate restructuring (fuck you very much), and watched the pathways to baccalaureate degrees disappear for the poor and working class students. During this period, there were brief periods of respite (a Visting Instructor position that only lasted a year--fuck you very much) and a whole lot of teaching at practically every higher education institution in three states for half the pay. I have realized that whatever trappings of the middle class I had obtained are slowly disintegrating. Deeply in debt, and struggling to pay bills, skipping meals, I am grateful for my wife and certain that we will be okay once she starts kicking ass for the people as a defense attorney. I understand the frustration, the sense that, for the son of an autoworker, the scales have been thumbed the whole time. I feel that, after doing the right things--college, pursuing a career that is not lucrative but necessary and in demand--that the ladder has been pulled up as it always has been, and should just have known my place and stayed where my people had always been: in the factory. Except the factory closed, and that job is gone, too.

There. I said it. I feel class resentment. I feel exploited. I had a full time appointment, was moving up the ladder, getting great evaluations, contributing to all levels of the university, and by the stroke of a rich and prominent man's pen, it was all gone, and I'm now here, hustling every day for scraps, trying to get by on the hope that the institution will remember its mission, and I will be restored to my career. Good luck with that.

I am one of the forgotten, wondering how the fuck all this happened.

Here's what is doubtless: None of this was ever the fault of Black people, Latinos, the LGBTQ community, Feminists or Hollywood. No vague notions of walls, or "America First", or "Greatness" will fix this. No unfocused rage, no amount of trolling will fix this.

People like Trump did this to me, moneytizing everything. Trump wants to end the Department of Education, costing nearly 500000 teachers their passion and livelihood. What do you think will happen to me, with no contract and no representation?

People like Trump want the WASP male restoration to permanent hegenomy. What do you think will happen to my students who are not WASP males? Back to the ghetto, back in the kitchen, back in the closet. Know your place.

On a roll here.

People like business hippie Gary Johnson did this do me. He has the practically same education policy as Trump, costing nearly 500000 teachers their passion and livelihood. I realize, of course, I will be free to spend that time contemplating the irony for a working class person is that the prescriptions in Hayek's The Road to Serfdom is literally the road to serfdom. But hey, weed will be legal! And I'll be to broke to enjoy it. Freedom and shit.

Okay, what about the Greens?

The Greens didn't do this to me; that is true. And they would likely improve the country a great deal. Call me when they get a serious candidate.

4. The Frame

My candidate didn't win the nomination, but he did win the platform. There is a roiling,robust liberal-left coalition dragging the Democratic party left (no, not the GOP talking point "left", which has recently included, get this: John Kasich), but to an actual, people's, New Deal Loving Left to keep the corporate and centrist Democrats in check.

We need a New New Deal. I've been saying it for years.

What is the best, most realistic chance for this: Hillary Clinton.

Why?

Because I am sure that, give the choices, she is closest to that point of view, as the nominee of Roosevelt's party.

And?

I don't want to jailed as a political prisoner by the Fascist Trump and his followers.

Anything Else?

That, in my 42 years, I have voted for the first Black President, and then, the first Woman President, is pretty radical. Not in the 80's, Point Break "Warchild only lives to get" sense. No. It is rad-i-cal. Which is why the reactionaries, the authoritarians, the alt-right and the cranks are losing their shit. Good. The National Creed is coming to pass, slowly but surely. The arc of the universe bends toward justice.