Day 297, January 6, 2020

 The Death Spiral of Democracy

Tonight's soundtrack: (At first I didn't know what to listen to given the state of the country, but then I remembered this concert from the night after Dr. King was assassinated.) James Brown at the Boston Garden, 1968

Maybe there will be ways to remember this day. I remember my college political science textbooks, the pages dedicated to the Reagan presidency, this was before his posthumous resurgence, and there was the revelation that the secret service had direct communication with the helicopter pilot and would tell the pilot to rev up the helicopter's rotors whenever the president was asked a question that they didn't want him to answer.

That was a stunning revelation to me at the time. That, and the fact that president's didn't write their own speeches. And yet, now, we see the result of an unfettered president and it is frightening. It is frightening enough that I quote the (now) minority leader in the title of this post. I've been reading Angela Saini's Superior: The Return of Race Science, as part of a reading group at the University, and early on she writes, "When Enlightenment thinkers looked at the world around them, some took the politics of their day as the starting point. It was the lens through which they viewed all human difference. We do the same today. The facts only temper what we think we already know." It seems there is no convincing people otherwise, of what they feel is truth.

Saini is writing about the roots of white supremacy, the tight relationship to colonialism, and the fundamental connection to science. She goes on to illustrate how race science, racist science, grew and promulgated, and tied itself to politics from the very start, to this very day, finding its way into the Reagan White House, and on to today's image of people waving the confederate flag in the Capitol building. 

Julie Graham used to remind her students, all knowledge production is political. We need to understand that, as people whose livelihood is intrinsically woven into this commodity. And while we may have one political end, perhaps something about increasing unity, community, equity, sustainability, there are others who have other political ends, and they will utilize the creation of knowledge to subvert truth, democracy, and desperate people.

I've just written and deleted multiple times a sentence that seemed to keep devolving into name calling and curses at the President and the Republican Party holding him up. But, I don't need to do that for you.

What I learned most from Julie was to first, start where you are. When you look at what is happening on the streets of DC, in the White House... it seems like President Elect Biden and Vice President Harris face an insurmountable task. But, closer to home, on our streets, in our cities and towns, in our schools, colleges, and universities, in our classrooms, in our own lives, there are ways to counter that. We can change things that are  close to our lived experience, and that collective change can effect greater change. 

That said, it is easy to feel uneasy. The unprecedented time keeps becoming precedented. What we thought couldn't become more absurd or frightening, continues to escalate.

Where do we go from here? I hope all of you are home and safe and healthy. At the end of my day, before I change out of my work clothes, Debbie comes in and sits on my lap, and Franklin jumps on top and sits on her lap, and we have a few moments of connection after a day spent apart. I hope we are all able to find those moments with one another, with our pets, virtually or in corporeal form.

Take care,

Leo