This Election is for the People of the Sun

[Emilio Zapata is not impressed with the current Republican frontrunners]

 

Let's be clear: this election cycle is unprecedented.  Sanders was just supposed to be the protest vote, to tug Hillary a little further left. Trump was just supposed to be yet another celebrity side-show.  Yet here we are (in a post-Citizens United world no less!) wherein folks on both extremes of the political spectrum have been rising up against the "establishment" in unprecedented numbers (even if there is nothing new about a billionaire and a career politician respectively pandering to their bases).  It's exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time, and is enough to make one wonder a-times if maybe the "establishment" ain't so bad after all.

I've already prattled on about Hillary and Bernie, so now I'll briefly wonder aloud about the current front-runners on the Right (with a promise that, barring any unseen developments, I'll make no more political posts between now and November), because I am deeply troubled by the rampant and blatant xenophobia, particularly against Mexicans whom I love, on display here.

Yet, though anything can happen, that very xenophobia may be the best reason to be hopeful for this coming November.   Why?  Let us revisit the last time a Republican won a Presidential election, in 2004.

Among other factors, George W. Bush at the time claimed to have won roughly 50% of the Hispanic vote on his way to his 50.7% electoral victory over Kerry.  Whatever else Bush's many and manifold shortcomings, still, as a former governor of Texas, he fully understood the importance of winning over that growing segment of the electorate--but more than mere political expediency, I like to think there also was some genuine decency in his moderate call to make it slightly less insanely difficult for Mexican migrants to gain citizenship.

For the record, it was the sole point on Bush's platform that I gave my unqualified support for; it was also the point that finally drove much of his conservative base to turn on him--not Iraq, not Guantanamo, not torture or the Patriot Act, but for trying to treat Mexican immigrants like human beings for a change.

The Mexican-Americans, of course, were paying attention, and responded in kind in 2008, when McCain won less than 40% of the Hispanic vote...and lost the election overall.

Likewise Romney, in 2012, got less than 30% of the Hispanic vote...and also lost the election overall.

By now you're noticing a pattern.  The GOP leadership sure did, too.  For shortly after 2012, the growing chatter among certain Republican elites was on how, really, when ya thought about it, immigration is an "entrepreneurial act," one demonstrating initiative, grit, and self-determination, which are conservative values after all--and that, combined with Latinos' Christian faith and strong family values, made them a natural fit for Republican voters!  This they said both to placate their base, and to reach out to the Hispanic voters they'd been hemorrhaging.

But now here comes along Trump, and blows that all to hell.  McCain and Romney weren't even anti-immigrant demagogues, they were just punished for the slanders of certain of their base, but Trump blatantly owns the racist rhetoric in a manner that has galvanized Mexican-Americans like never before. Certain of my Conservative friends have half-jokingly wondered if Trump is some sort of Democractic plant, an infiltrator sent in to wreck havoc and ruin the Republican Party's chances of winning come November.  Cause if you need Hispanic votes to win, well then, Trump really is just the protest vote now, isn't he.

For unfortunately, the GOP leadership severely underestimated the xenophobia and viciousness of much of their own base.  Trump and his supporters, like all narcissistic bullies, driven and derided by a profound emptiness that no amount of power or money will ever be able to satisfy, have consequently lashed out against our most vulnerable people, and scapegoated them for all their insecurities, as we have since the dawn of America.

And it's not just Trump--he's a symptom, not a cause.  For awhile now, a distressingly large plurality of the GOP base has been ravenously hungry for someone to validate all the vile lies they've long yearned to believe about Mexican immigrants, ever since they first turned on Bush.  If it hadn't been Trump they rallied around, then it probably would have been Cruz--maybe, in a perverse sort of way, we should be grateful for both Trump and Cruz, for splitting the xenophobe vote between them, rather than allowing it to coalesce around a single awful candidate.

But make no mistake here: all this time they'd been dehumanizing Mexicans--calling them "illegals" and worse--the Mexicans have gone right along actually being human, with eyes to see and ears to hear, and have been following very carefully all the hateful things being said about them by so many.  More Mexican-Americans have registered to vote within the past few months than in the past few years combined, because they simply cannot wait to vote against these clowns.

And not just Mexican-Americans, either--Puerto Ricans, Cuban-Americans, and documented Mexicans who either came here "legally" or have been here ever since the border first crossed them in 1848, have all had their blood boiling over Trump and Cruz and their supporters, because they have (accurately) intuited that these are not merely attacks upon undocumented aliens, but insults heaped upon Latino culture altogether.  And Latinos do not take insults lightly.

Again, anything can happen between now and November; but I am LDS, and a key part of my faith's doctrine is that the indigenous groups of America are long lost members of the House of Israel (including Mexicans), whom the Lord God Almighty hath assured us He will regather in these Last Days, remembering the ancient covenants made to their forefathers, and endowing them with a power to go forth among their oppressors as a lion among the lambs, and there is none to deliver.  Ladies and Gentlemen, Brothers and Sisters, we may be approaching that day of reckoning, which shall come as a thief in the night, in an hour we know not of, faster than we think, for the Lord will suffer their cries no longer.

For we really did steal a third of Mexico away from Mexico; and our ancestors really did dispossess all the indigenous groups of their lands.  We so cavalierly deny their very real rights and historical grievances at our own eternal peril.  What's more, we base our agricultural production on their cheap labor, but then make it impossible for them to immigrate here legally, so that we can exploit them then deport them if they try to organize--meanwhile, their garnished wages add billions to Social Security and Medicaid, millions of them still pay both sales and income taxes, they keep our food cheap, yet still we have the nerve to accuse them of taking advantage of us!  "But they're breaking the law!"  So were slaves escaping to the North after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1851--and we all know what shortly followed that.

To conclude, maybe Rage Against the Machine, that perennial punchline of empty political posturing, was right after all--that "it's coming back around again/this is for the people of the sun."  Perhaps the purpose of that old Mexican-American band was not to rally all those moshing frat bros who completely missed the point, but to prophecy.  For now, a full 20 years later after that single's release, we may in all likelihood be coming upon the election wherein the Mexican-American electorate, maligned and trampled and ignored as though they had no voice, rises up yet again and answers the insults of Trump, Cruz, and all their vicious supporters resoundingly.  It's coming back around again.  This election is for the people of the sun.

Teaching with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has figured prominently in my Rhet. Comp. courses ever since I first started teaching college in 2010.  Chapters 15, 16, 17, and 19 in particular, featuring the narrator's adventures teaching college freshmen English, have felt especially apropos of my students.  I delighted in demonstrating through these chapters that my students already know when their writing is good or bad, even if they can't quite yet articulate why--that imitation is a real evil, that they not only can but must learn to see for themselves, and find their own personal voice--that Quality is achieved when one actually cares about it, personally, as a part of and expression of and extension of one's self, not as a mere impersonal, alienating checklist or rubric--that a paper or book can follow a rubric to a T and still be completely boring and sterile, and therefore checklists and rubrics are useless for determining Quality--that art and science are not as separated as we think, that in fact there is no division between them at all, for intuition is as necessary for science as rationality is to art--and above all, that grades not only do not represent learning but in fact cover up a failure to learn, and that only in a truly gradeless system will students be forced to learn, to imbue their writing with real Quality, and not just doing the bare minimum to squeak by.

And in order to really drive home that final message, starting my second year of adjuncting back in Salt Lake, I started withholding paper grades from all my students; oh don't get me wrong, I still provided a final grade, I couldn't get away with that, and besides, they probably still needed that whip-and-carrot, at least until they learned to be genuinely self-motivated, to love learning for its own sake, and not just to get the piece of paper and empty line on their resumes.  But, I did find that my students put a lot more effort into their revisions, that they were actually reading my feedback for a change and following it carefully. 

Also, when students invariable asked what they got, it was all the more refreshing to throw it back at them and ask, "What do you think you got?"  Not, mind you, "tell me what grade you think you earned" (as has been trendy among many High School and College teachers over the past 20 years, as though every student ever hasn't then just quickly calculated in their heads the most plausible way to give themselves an A), but "What do you think you got?"  Because then the student is forced to answer all the more honestly, say, "Um...a B-, C+, maybe?"  To which I could then say, "Yeah, that probably sounds about right!" "So I should probably revise it then?" "Yeah, I'd encourage that!"  Oh, it was great fun--and what's more, I actually got better written papers, too!  Robert Pirsig was right!

I returned to grad school in large part because teaching college English was the one job I've ever had that I didn't hate or end up getting sick of--and I wanted to actually try out for the off-chance of getting paid a living wage to do so, and for that one needs a PhD, so back to PhD school I went.  Hence, it was with some consternation that, when I resumed teaching Rhetoric here at University of Iowa, I found it just wasn't nearly as fun as it used to be, and I'd been trying to put my finger on why, exactly. 

Was it the fact that I was going to school at the same time, taking full course loads, studying for comps, such that my classes were always an afterthought by necessity?  Or, was it the fact that University students are of a different breed from the Community College students I'd cut my teeth on--the  latter being far more diverse, ethnically, economically, age-wise, with a far wider spread of life experience and trauma survival, whilst the former were by and large middle-to-upper-class white kids fresh out of High School, either from rural Iowa, the Chicago suburbs, or the wealthy parts of China.  Good kids all, yes, but a little harder to engage with the University kids when they are mere 18 year olds so bereft of life experience, or even their own fully-formed opinions yet.

Basically, the problem was either on me for being back in grad school, or it was on my students for not being interesting enough.  But this semester I've finally come to realize it was neither--really, it was the fact that I was no longer implementing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Oh, I was still sure teaching it alright; but the University's heavy focus on posting all grades online meant that I was no longer practicing what I preached. 

Until this semester--it's my last time teaching Rhetoric here, so I went for broke, and returned to my old practice of withholding grades on all essays written.  And what a difference it has made!  Somehow, grading isn't the horrible chore it used to be--I'm grading as quickly as I used to at Community Colleges, because now I am giving actual feedback again, on what could improve the quality of their papers, as opposed to constantly thinking about how I can justify or rationalize the grade I'm giving.  I'm looking forward to my lessons again, I'm enjoying teaching like I used to.  I'm dealing with people again, not rubrics or checklists or institutional requirements. 

Quality, claims Pirsig, is not a thing but an event, the moment when the Object and the Subject become aware of each other; more simply, it is when the Subject (you as a person) actually has a relationship with the Object.  It comes at the moment when you actually care about the thing itself, for its own sake, rather than what it can do for you, or what meaningless rules and requirements it fulfills.  And that has been the subtle yet all-important shift for me as well--I'm caring again, for its own sake, not for what it can do for me or anything else.

that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been

"Condemn me not because of mine imperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him; but rather give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been." (Mormon 9:31)

The scriptures are typically trotted out as examplars of how to live, how to behave, how to be.  Of course, one does not have to read these texts all that closely to be quickly confronted with horrific examples of violence and destruction.  We are still inhabiting the same old joke of the pious parents who make their kids read the Bible because they think there's too much sex and violence on TV.  The smart atheist and angry fundamentalist alike can point to numerous passages in the Sacred Canon where human beings perform blood-thirsty acts in the name of God.

However, all this blood and horror only presents a problem if one makes the utterly-uncalled-for assumption that the scriptures are supposed to be wisdom literature.  Though replete with sermons and doctrine, the scriptures by and large are actually the opposite of wisdom, and that intentionally--as Mormon notes, the point of these religious histories is not to learn from their examples, but to avoid it at all costs, to "learn to be more wise than we have been."  With only one very significant and shining exception, the people populating the scriptures present us not with lives to pattern our own after, but rather an extended presentation on what not to do.

You are not to examine King David and learn from his ability to get money and babes, but realize that that's exactly why he fell, and fell hard; you are not to read about the Nephites and read a lesson in how to get rich, but to read how their quest for wealth is why they completely and genocidally destroyed themselves.  The scriptures, over all, are not a compendium of the wisdom of mankind, but of our utter folly and idiocy.

I've lately come to realize that that's more or less the function of literature generally.  I bring this up because in the 18th and 19th centuries particularly (and their collective influence is still felt today), defenses of the study of poetry and fiction tended to center on the moral effect they could potentially have upon students: e.g. literary characters can provide us with models to pattern our lives after (the Illiad was supposedly read anciently as a model for warfare and chivalry); or fiction can stimulate the imagination, which in turn can increase our empathy, as we can now better imagine what it must be like to be someone else (this was Percy Shelley's defense of poetry, still utilized in defense of the English discipline today).  Literature, so the argument goes, is a compendium of all the wisdom and deep thoughts of the human race, saving us from having to constantly reinvent the wheel by sharing with us more profound ideas than we would ever be able to come up with on our own.

All this may or may not be true, and these various defenses and arguments certainly have their value, both in the classroom and beyond; but what I've lately begun to focus upon instead is how literature is a compendium of the folly of mankind, of all our mistakes and errors and rash foolishness.  You read Great Expectations not to learn from Pip's example, but to avoid it; you read the Illiad not to learn proper forms of warfare and chivalry, but instead to learn, as Goethe argued of the epic poem, "this world is hell," that all wars are unjust, and always have been, and no soldiers ancient or modern have been the least bit fooled on that point.

But we are not to read literature with the purpose of smugly condemning the gross imperfections of our ancestors, and pat ourselves on the back, "but rather [to] give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been," for we are in constant and real danger of repeating all that same foolishness again and again and again, and towards similarly destructive ends.

Inside The Iowa Caucus: A First-Timer's Account

Let's bracket for now the fact that it's frankly kinda weird that Iowa always gets to vote first in the Primaries and thus wields such an outsized influence on the election, particularly since they are literally less than a hundredth the total population of the Union--and it's even an easy issue to fix, just program some computer to completely randomize which states go in which order every 4 years, and thus give some other states a chance to wield an outsized influence on the election.

Nevertheless, the fact of the matter remains that, for whatever reasons of tradition and/or inertia, Iowa votes first--and when I first moved here 3 years ago for grad school, I determined to take full advantage of the fact.  All my adult voting life, I have either lived in Washington, Idaho, or Utah, which means that, when it comes to national elections, my vote was largely symbolic and meaningless--Washington almost always goes blue, Idaho and Utah always goes red.  Moreover, their primaries are late, such that the nomination is largely locked up and a non-issue by the time it gets to them.  What would it be like, I wondered, to live in a swing or early primary state, where my vote actually mattered?

First, I was reminded of what I first learned during my summer job in Colorado in 2008--if you live in such a state, you will be absolutely carpet bombed with ads.  Like, totally.  Just the other day, during a basketball game, I saw ads on TV for Hillary, Bernie, Ted Cruz, Jeb, Rubio, and even anti-Rubio attack ads (I suspect those were Jeb ads, too).  I also saw ads for Scott Walker and Bobbie Jindal before they dropped out of the race.  It's just been relentless.  It appears that if you want your vote to matter, then you also gotta put up with being shouted at from all directions.

It all came to a head yesterday, on the night of the Caucus itself.  I may never have this opportunity again, so out I ventured to my local precinct.

Note I said "Caucus", not Primary.  There's a difference.  In Washington we have both (despite everyone totally knowing how redundant that is),  so most folks, as far as I'm aware, just opt for the Primary.  You check a box on a ballot, mail it in, you're golden.  Clean, efficient, painless, organized--my partial-German heritage approves ("Bender" is an Amish name).

Caucuses, by contrast, are much more of an organized chaos.  You have to actually physically show up to your precinct location by 7pm (which is problematic for folks with disabilities or night-jobs).  Each individual precinct is tiny, by the way; mine was the "Iowa City 13th precinct," to put that in perspective.  One feels like this is a remnant, an artifact, of a much more archaic era, when Caucuses were held in Saloons or something, where drunken, eye-gouging brawls over candidates could break out at any moment, and roving gangs of mobs attempted to physically intimidate each others' votes--yet nevertheless everyone put up with the system because doing a live headcount was the only way to ensure that bandits didn't steal the ballot box en route to the state capitol by horse-back.  One would think that such vestiges of the Wild West would have gone the way of the whale-oil lamp and the horse-drawn buggy in our 21st century, but Iowa had stubbornly clung to the old ways; in a way, watching folks check their smartphones at a Caucus felt as anachronistic as wearing ear-buds at a Renaissance Fair.

But if the Caucus still feels staggeringly outmoded, well, you also can't help but feel there that you are actually participating in Democracy!  There was just this lo-fi charm about it, a low-key, low-budget, DIY approach towards determining the leaders of the most terrifyingly powerful country on earth.  I mean, my goodness, the votes were collected on 3x5 cards!  Also, it didn't matter if you were rich or poor, black or white, male or female--if you want to Caucus in Iowa, everyone has to do it the same humble way, stand in the same lines, against the same walls.   It was almost more like organizing a Punk show.  There's an infectious energy about the event, and a leveling of all social class and distinction--there are no VIP lounges in a Caucus.

That energy has spread, by the way--we are apparently not going to have a repeat of the record-low voter turn-out of 2014, because literally twice as many people as they were expecting showed up to my caucus (at least on the Democratic side).  My friends in other Iowa City precincts reported similarly unprecedented turnout.  It was in fact heart-warming, I admit, to behold participatory Democracy still alive and well in our cynical age--but that also means the organizers were unprepared for this many people, so I stood out in line for an hour in the cold, waiting to get inside, and I was not dressed appropriately.  They also ran out of cookies by the time I got inside.  So, if some of my Facebook posts seemed a little bitter last night, well, I was cold and hungry.

The way Caucus voting works in Iowa's archaic system is that in each precinct, a candidate gets 1 state delegate for every 50 votes. Hence, in my precinct, Sanders got 5 delegates with 263 votes, while Clinton got 2 delegates with 102 votes.  The total number of delegates per candidate from these thousand+ precincts determines the winner. Considering the razor thin margins of victory state wide, then yes, every last vote actually mattered!  For if I and only 2 other folks had not bothered to show up--or had wondered over to the Bernie wall instead--then Clinton would have gotten only 1 delegate from my precinct instead of 2, and she clearly needed every single delegate she could get last night!  So if you're a Bernie fan, you could arguable blame me--or if you're a Clintonista, you could arguably thank me.  I'll accept cookies.  I'm not saying I'm the greatest American hero...but I am. (jk)

A friend congratulated me this morning, saying "Now that the results are in, it looks like your vote both counted and mattered."  It's such a weird, exhilarating feeling!  David Harris, I totally get now why you kept voting absentee for Florida.  For now that I've had a taste for having my vote matter, I crave another sweet, sweet hit of the good stuff--and it's the first time I've ever regretted moving away from Iowa so soon.

Of course, this could all be rectified with a randomized computer program that gives all states a chance to have their votes matter in the primaries, which I argue could do wonders for strengthening participatory democracy everywhere in American--but that's a discussion for a different time.