The Class War: Why Follow Me To Higher Ground?
America is suffering under a lack of leadership.
To be fair, the world is suffering from a lack of leadership, but most cameras and most eyes and most guns and most interest is trained on the contiguous 48 (apologies to Sarah Palin and Barack Obama's childhood homes), and I have a very wide swath of experience therein, so that's where we're gonna focus today.
Leadership is the sort of thing that Patrice Lumumba brought to the Congo, that Toussaint L'Ouverture brought to Haiti, or (even notwithstanding his imperialist bloodlust and apparent insanity) Teddy Roosevelt brought to the US presidency. Going back to conquerors like Genghis Khan, entrepreneurs like Madame CJ Walker or great thinkers like Dr. Mark Dean (one of my missions this year is to name drop this guy as much as I can, in that I technically could not have made most of the money in my career without three of the thirty patents he holds existing, forming the foundation for all "personal computers" that we use today), leadership changes things. Leadership steps up.
Unfortunately -- and I can personally attest to some of this -- leadership has been bred out of the greatest parts of western culture for (at the very least) sixty years. With the advent and popularity of television (combined with the staggering yoke of sexism, holding down some of the most talented minds from jump street). After a soul-crushing day of workplace monotony and dehumanization, the comforting opiate of cathode rays (or reflected plasma or LCD screens these days) is a welcome reward and a childcare necessity for many. Made all too comfortable by the "convenience" of iPhones and Wal-Mart, the rewards of leadership -- historical posterity, change, a better world for the future to inherit -- are viewed as not worth the challenges of hard work, rampant opposition, political gladhandling in organizations and (in some cases) threat of personal harm. This is true even when it leads to being in debt up to your eyeballs, imprisoned by mortgages and soccer practice schedules. The very concept of service has been middle classed to death with Huxtable aspirations and Good Times realities.
Older people often like to speak negatively of the adults and youth of today. Sure the "greatest generation" beat the Nazis -- they were there. What mountains were even left to climb by the time we came along? So desperate for achievement, we had to build whole digital and fictional worlds -- from Warcraft to Hogwarts -- to have something to do that we could see. Beating cancer or the common cold are too ethereal for people to get behind after "we will put a man on the moon" and what not. As a culture (such as it is), we're more interested in box office receipts than decreasing the unemployment rate.
Speaking from my own experience, there are other challenges for a Black man that make leadership less than appealing as a path. For all of the "hope" inspired by the current commander-in-chief (and I for one don't believe he could launch nuke one if push came to shove, or that any Black man currently alive could), how many people kept looking worriedly for the shadow of Fred Hampton behind him (they were both from Chicago)? I grew up in Memphis, a city internationally known for putting down Black men who stand up, so I felt crosshairs on my chest every time I raised my hand in class, every day I walked out of the library with a new idea. Combine that with the sub-cultural programming inherent in this country's Black people, devaluing scholarship and involvement and rewarding nihilism and indifference with all the short-term hot and cold running cash and willing sexual partners that anti-social extremism could bring. The pretty boys got the girls, the jocks got the glory, the guys who could properly conjugate a verb into more than three tenses got a big frothy cup of "shut the f*** up."
When I eventually stopped walking under branches still notched for nooses, finally finding a way that I thought "I can do something," I was beset on all sides by insecurity, self-aggrandizement, treachery, self interest (and some of that was my own, I'll admit) and every other human failing tearing at the foundations and structure of what was trying to grow. Before any modern-day COINTELPRO energies could step in, the base of the tree was rotten solid, no matter how sweet some of the transitory fruit. I left college disillusioned with the idea of collective work and responsibility, and that colored many of my decisions as years went on.
Is there a solution? Honestly, I don't know. Maybe the happy ending is accelerated heat death when the sun finally calls it a day. The nihilism that's grown inside of me since I was a child echoes the words of Alfred Pennyworth, "some men just want to watch the world burn." Even as I watch new life grow from my inspiration, I see things getting worse before they get better for the children under my care, despite my best efforts to infect the global zeitgeist with the seeds of a finer world.
Or, in the brilliant I Hate It Here graphic novel, the talented (but challenged) Warren Ellis had his Hunter Thompson-inspired character Spider Jerusalem say ...
Playing (Music): "Age of Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" by the Fifth Dimension
To be fair, the world is suffering from a lack of leadership, but most cameras and most eyes and most guns and most interest is trained on the contiguous 48 (apologies to Sarah Palin and Barack Obama's childhood homes), and I have a very wide swath of experience therein, so that's where we're gonna focus today.
Leadership is the sort of thing that Patrice Lumumba brought to the Congo, that Toussaint L'Ouverture brought to Haiti, or (even notwithstanding his imperialist bloodlust and apparent insanity) Teddy Roosevelt brought to the US presidency. Going back to conquerors like Genghis Khan, entrepreneurs like Madame CJ Walker or great thinkers like Dr. Mark Dean (one of my missions this year is to name drop this guy as much as I can, in that I technically could not have made most of the money in my career without three of the thirty patents he holds existing, forming the foundation for all "personal computers" that we use today), leadership changes things. Leadership steps up.
Unfortunately -- and I can personally attest to some of this -- leadership has been bred out of the greatest parts of western culture for (at the very least) sixty years. With the advent and popularity of television (combined with the staggering yoke of sexism, holding down some of the most talented minds from jump street). After a soul-crushing day of workplace monotony and dehumanization, the comforting opiate of cathode rays (or reflected plasma or LCD screens these days) is a welcome reward and a childcare necessity for many. Made all too comfortable by the "convenience" of iPhones and Wal-Mart, the rewards of leadership -- historical posterity, change, a better world for the future to inherit -- are viewed as not worth the challenges of hard work, rampant opposition, political gladhandling in organizations and (in some cases) threat of personal harm. This is true even when it leads to being in debt up to your eyeballs, imprisoned by mortgages and soccer practice schedules. The very concept of service has been middle classed to death with Huxtable aspirations and Good Times realities.
Older people often like to speak negatively of the adults and youth of today. Sure the "greatest generation" beat the Nazis -- they were there. What mountains were even left to climb by the time we came along? So desperate for achievement, we had to build whole digital and fictional worlds -- from Warcraft to Hogwarts -- to have something to do that we could see. Beating cancer or the common cold are too ethereal for people to get behind after "we will put a man on the moon" and what not. As a culture (such as it is), we're more interested in box office receipts than decreasing the unemployment rate.
Speaking from my own experience, there are other challenges for a Black man that make leadership less than appealing as a path. For all of the "hope" inspired by the current commander-in-chief (and I for one don't believe he could launch nuke one if push came to shove, or that any Black man currently alive could), how many people kept looking worriedly for the shadow of Fred Hampton behind him (they were both from Chicago)? I grew up in Memphis, a city internationally known for putting down Black men who stand up, so I felt crosshairs on my chest every time I raised my hand in class, every day I walked out of the library with a new idea. Combine that with the sub-cultural programming inherent in this country's Black people, devaluing scholarship and involvement and rewarding nihilism and indifference with all the short-term hot and cold running cash and willing sexual partners that anti-social extremism could bring. The pretty boys got the girls, the jocks got the glory, the guys who could properly conjugate a verb into more than three tenses got a big frothy cup of "shut the f*** up."
When I eventually stopped walking under branches still notched for nooses, finally finding a way that I thought "I can do something," I was beset on all sides by insecurity, self-aggrandizement, treachery, self interest (and some of that was my own, I'll admit) and every other human failing tearing at the foundations and structure of what was trying to grow. Before any modern-day COINTELPRO energies could step in, the base of the tree was rotten solid, no matter how sweet some of the transitory fruit. I left college disillusioned with the idea of collective work and responsibility, and that colored many of my decisions as years went on.
Is there a solution? Honestly, I don't know. Maybe the happy ending is accelerated heat death when the sun finally calls it a day. The nihilism that's grown inside of me since I was a child echoes the words of Alfred Pennyworth, "some men just want to watch the world burn." Even as I watch new life grow from my inspiration, I see things getting worse before they get better for the children under my care, despite my best efforts to infect the global zeitgeist with the seeds of a finer world.
Or, in the brilliant I Hate It Here graphic novel, the talented (but challenged) Warren Ellis had his Hunter Thompson-inspired character Spider Jerusalem say ...
People keep saying to me, 'you're doing a good job, Spider,' 'you're really changing things, Spider.' And it's all bullsh**. I'm not changing a f***ing thing. I'm a writer. A journalist. I can't change sh**. What I do is give you the tools to understand the world so that you can change things.Even with that cheery thought, I will say this, given how much I hate people who complain without solutions ...
And I'm stuck here, only hoping that you do.
- People of color need banks as much as armories, mathematicians as well as rappers, husbands as desperately as teachers. If we can't figure out how to reward all equally so the ratios can start to even out, game's over before it starts.
- Everybody has to feel safe. Period. It's impossible for everybody to get a gun and for nobody to have a gun, so follow the wisdom of Chris Rock, and impose a $20 dollar tax on every single bullet. Make that $40. The extra funds go straight into, say, health care or education (actual stuff, not administrative). I know the power of the NRA, but this is a more likely bill to pass than reparations, which are what I really want, so you go for the fight you can win sometimes.
- Most people will mess up along the way but if they keep moving intently in the right direction, time spent tearing them down is time not spent heading to the goal (I'm looking at you, Jesse Jackson, you grizzled has-been). Build in times for retrospective, speak openly and express what you feel, but time box that stuff and move on like the dot org.
- The greatest gift I ever got was from my great aunt Mabel Grant. Growing up, she regularly reinforced the idea that I could do anything if I worked hard enough, achieve anything with sufficient determination. When my head was spinning with X-wing fighters and lightsabers, she never discouraged me. That kind of unconditional belief can rocket children beyond their limitations -- I could have ended up selling weed and cutting hair, or in prison, or dead, like so many other friends and classmates and cousins. But she raised me to believe I could do better, and those higher expectations produced results. We have to ask more of ourselves first and of each other second, while acknowledging that we're all walking a difficult path. Cut people some slack, but keep pushing them to do more of what they want to do. Even if they wanna be a loc'ed out gangbanger, encourage them to be the best, most murderous, most drug-slingingest one of all (because either they'll die fast or become Sanyika Shakur), never settling for "just okay."
- Whatever you think is so serious, it's not. It's just not. Unless people will remember it in a hundred years, unless one billion people in China have a reason to care, it's not that big a deal. Don't keep going over it -- study long, study wrong, as they said around the domino table. Time box your analysis to avoid paralysis.
Playing (Music): "Age of Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" by the Fifth Dimension
NOTE: This blog was actually written June 16, 2009 and has been kept in reserve for reasons that nobody can seem to remember. Carry on.
posted by Hannibal Tabu, The Operative at
9:40 PM
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