Reflections for September 12, 2002

For various reasons, I've had considerable difficulty maintaining a coherent line of thought for a week or so. As such, this is going to be one of the "random reflections" commentaries. If you want to know the most primordial source for this format, it is Andrew Heller's occasional "Come Heller High Water" columns in the Flint (MI) Journal.

Today I substitute taught in Kankakee's "Impact" program. These are people who have filtered through normal classrooms, down to special ed classrooms (for learning disabilities, etc.), and finally down to "Impact." When I was called this morning, the sub coordinator seemed reluctant to place me there, but I needed the money, it didn't sound like a directly life-threatening situation, and there was going to be an assistant in the room with me the whole time. She thought it was great that I was giving it a try: most of the subs refuse to go to impact, although she does have a few subs with some corrections background who do it somewhat regularly. The kids cursed at each other, refused to do any work at all, constantly walked around the room, and had long conversations about such topics as prison sex and whose ass had been whooped recently. One kid spent the whole day complaining about the detention he was going to have to serve because he "had shit to do." One kid had to be physically restrained, meaning that two school officials wrestled him to the ground until he lay prostrate on the floor. They held him there until he was done crying. Throughout the day, the two people who sat nearest my desk, who I gathered were usually the good kids, were dead-set that I was scared and that I was never going to be coming back. The assistant in my room, who at one point threatened to file sexual harrassment charges against some students, said she wouldn't blame me if I never came back. She, the teacher in the classroom next door, and the secretary all seemed deeply surprised or impressed or sorrowful when they heard that I couldn't think of a reason why I wouldn't come back.
An additional reason I'm Catholic: I went to mass on September 11, 2002, because I happened to have the day off. In his homily, the priest acknowledged the horrific nature of the crimes and the heroism of those who risked their lives to rescue the victims, and he also said that Christians are called to be peacemakers. The intercessions were largely peace-oriented. We sang every verse of "America the Beautiful," and it felt somehow appropriate at that point, as though we could somehow love our country more because of our criticism. It was a welcome corrective against the mindless patriotism that has infected most American churches I'm aware of.
I'm sick of hearing about the stifling of public debate in America after 9-11. Noam Chomsky's deeply critical book 9-11 was a best seller. Susan Sontag was given a public forum for her views, even though everyone knows that she's pretty well become an idiot lately. Michael Moore's recent book Stupid White Men is also a best-seller. The New York Times, the most respected news publication in world history, has devoted practically half its space to debunking every possible rationale for the war in Iraq. In that same paper, Paul Krugman revealed Bush and Cheney's shady corporate past, and the administration took him seriously enough to deny the charges publicly. The left needs to get off its high horse about how the right is stifling debate, just as the right needs to get off the absolutely false idea that the media has a "liberal bias." I'll admit that Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Anne Coulter keep saying the same stupid things over and over and over again (the same things, incidentally, that the right has been saying for at least the last 12 years), but that does not mean that debate has been "stifled" or that dissent has somehow been censored. There's a whole lot of wonderful debate and dissent going on, just as there was on September 12, 2001. Democracy is not totally dead yet.
Some of you might be aware of a radical new movement in rock music toward imitating the sounds of the seventies. This craze, typified by such bands as the Strokes, the Shins, the Hives, and the White Stripes, is literally sweeping the nation right now. What you might not know is that six years ago, this movement was anticipated by none other than a group of normally uncreative Pearl Jam-ripoffs: the Stone Temple Pilots. I was a big fan back in the day, and although I now realize the error of my ways in general, I still hold onto their really weird, unpopular retro album Tiny Music: Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop. To be honest, I think it puts up a good fight against all the current retro groups: more variety of styles, more outlandish packaging, and certainly a much heavier drug influence. Probably most of you don't care, but I wanted it to be on record that I am the first (and probably last) to point out the one time that a blatant copy-cat group was actually half a decade before their time.
The people who think that war is a means to peace need to go away. I'm serious: I might punch the next person who says that. It's the same "logic" that says the best way to help the poor is to help the rich, because it will trickle down. It's all complete nonsense, but since it's been repeated enough times, people believe it. That's the strategy of the current conservative movement: pick a plausible lie to cover up your true motivations, then keep repeating it over and over and over until everyone accepts it as common sense. For instance, the Bush administration was going to cut taxes for the rich and go to war against Iraq no matter what happened. Those were the goals, and anything that happened would have become a rationale for them.
I always enjoy talking to the poor kids who are actually pretty smart, but aren't well-read, so they latch onto conservative dogma as a labor-saving device: "Wow! I'll never have to think again!" Any number of doctrines can fill this role -- the real distinguishing factor is not between conservatism and liberalism, but between thoughtfulness and thoughtlessness. At this point in history, conservatism is doing a better job of catering to the thoughtless demographic, though one only needs to look at the Soviet Union to see that the same thing can happen on the left.
But yeah, TV sucks. I mean, get on the Internet. Read a magazine or newspaper. Listen to NPR. Do something, anything, other than watch TV. If you're watching TV right now, the terrorists have already won -- except The Simpsons, of course, because that's a show I like.