In January I wrote about Rodney, a junior in one of my English classes in the 1980, who walked into my class one day wearing an “Ozzy for President!” T-shirt. “Ozzy for President!” he proclaimed proudly as he bounced past my desk. Rodney was a nice kid, though not the brightest I had, and something of a head banger wannabe. In the post, I imagined I asked him, “If Ozzy Osbourne was really running for president, if there was really a chance he’d be leading the United States of America, would you vote for him?” And I imagined Rodney replying, “Well, no, probably not . . . But wouldn’t it be cool if Ozzy was president?”
I went on to postulate that Rodney was like a lot of Trump supporters, that they loved thinking about Trump as president, but when they were confronted by the possibility of him actually sitting in the Oval Office, they’d realize what a ridiculous idea it was. And I wrote that somewhere down the line, maybe not in the early primaries but later on, “Trump’s support will start to crumble, and once that starts, there will be no stopping his downward slide.”
I began the last paragraph of that post by writing, “But what do I know? I could be completely wrong.” It’s looking more and more like I was wrong, completely wrong, ridiculously wrong. Unless some of the recent anti-Trump advertising takes hold or people wake up from their reality show revery on their own, Trump will steamroll his way to the Republican nomination. I haven’t completely lost faith, but I’m beginning to think Rodney, now in his late 40s, is one of those guys at a Black Sabbath concert Trump rally taking the pledge.
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2016.
You were wrong about Trump (and about the reason the 18-24 cohort is voting for Sanders) for the same reason you are frequently wrong about TUSD: you are too insulated from the realities the middle class (in the case of Trump and Sanders) and those with children enrolled in district schools (in the case of TUSD) are experiencing.
I suggest you take a break from producing commentary and re-read Orwell. What formed the basis of his best writing? Direct experience, not viewing the subjects he wrote about from some lofty position where he could comfortably condescend to them and from which he missed entirely what being subjected to brutality feels like, looks like. He served with the imperial police in Burma. That produced “A Hanging,” “Shooting an Elephant,” and other pieces still worth reading. He was an indigent laborer in Europe. That produced “Down and Out in Paris and London.” He fought in the Spanish Civl War. That produced “Homage to Catalonia.”
What do you know about the life your student, Rodney, was living, or how he developed enthusiasm for Ozzy Osbourne, a subject unlikely to reward his interest and the time he invested in it with any lasting benefit in his future? If you knew the circumstances he grew up in, it might be clear to you. If this “Rodney” you write of was in fact a real human being you taught, your willingness to repeatedly write disparagingly of him speaks very ill of your level of compassion for your students. Most teachers I know had students whose interests and dispositions were not to their tastes, but not many of them would be willing, if they regularly produced columns read by the general public, to write this way about young people they had taught in their classrooms.
Assuming Rodney, described as an erstwhile not too bright headbanger, would now in his late forties be a Trump supporter is pretty lame – but what do I know? High school kids tend to grow up and a great many surprise their ex-teachers and friends. My friend Marty was a bit of terror – he liked to blow things up but he was a good artist – always in trouble. He recently retired as a successful architect.
False equivalency – Donald Trump=Ozzie Osbourne – always gets in the way of actual “thinking.”
But if we are going to talk about the voting preferences of young folks, like say the “millenials” we are talking about some really disruptive headbangers. When asked ” “If Bernie Sanders was really running for president, if there was really a chance he’d be leading the United States of America, would you vote for him?” a strong majority have answered “Yes.”
But what do I know? These same younger voters may “mature” between now, and say the end of June, come to their senses and realize the person really best suited for the presidency is Hilary Clinton. She has after all, a 10 point plan for every imaginable problem facing us. But that is as likely as Marco Rubio becoming the Republican nominee and sweeping up The Donald’s insane posse.
But I could be wrong.
“Any revolutionary change must be preceded by [the mass of our people] feel[ing] so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future […] To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 % of American families — more than 70 million people — whose incomes range from $5K to $10K a year. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don’t encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let’s not let it happen by default.”
Saul Alinsky in 1971. Wonder what he would think of what’s happening in America now.
The extent to which the disaffected will vote for Sanders rather than Trump is a measure of the degree to which the generation of activists working in the past forty years has successfully, in Alinsky’s words, understood “the art of communication” and the “fundamental idea that one communicates within the experience of his audience — and gives full respect to the other’s values.”
Expressing disdain for the preferences of the masses and saying “See? I understand the Rodneys of the world,” won’t get you very far, as an organizer working in support of humane values and social justice.
How stupid is the electorate? Hillary announced her college funding plan. She said nobody should go into debt to attend college. Her plan is, “go to college, get a good paying job, and then pay us back.”
The idiots in attendance cheered the plan.
Here is the context of her plan per the NYT.
“Mrs. Clinton does not go as far as her Democratic presidential opponents in promising to end tuition debt altogether, since her plan would still require a family contribution that could involve parents taking out loans to cover some tuition.”
Kids, put down the crack pipes. It ain’t gonna happen.
“Unless some of the recent anti-Trump advertising takes hold”.
Take a look at that sentence, re-read it and let it sink in. That’s how mediocre the current crop of bought and paid for globalist puppets are.
At least Bernie seems genuine and is idealistic, Hillary does not care about anything but being elected President. Other than her possessing a vagina, why would anyone legitimately vote for her – because it’s not due to her “accomplishments” as First Lady, Senator or Secretary of state.
I bet Rodney doesn’t think about you at all David, and hasn’t for a very long time.