Today’s post is going to a bit of a meander. I was working on the promised Adventure Time essay to post. Then I spent the morning reading the Sunday Times Opinion section. I felt a need to respond (not that my response matters much to the world, it just feels urgent for me right now). A little backstory about my relationship to the paper. I have been a daily subscriber to the Times for over twenty years. I know I could read online and I do when needed, but there is something in the configuration of the app and the website that doesn’t encourage my deep reading. Sometimes I can’t find articles that I know exist. The physical paper however is something I can flip through, cut out articles and save. I know the argument for going paperless is a good one, but one must also consider the vast energy and lands gobbled up by server farms. Anyway, that is neither here nor there for today.
Since January, our paper stopped coming. In the month of February we received three papers, one soaking wet in the street. I would call, report and get the same answer: “we value you’re support we are looking into it.” Out of frustration I switched to Sunday only. Even then I would only intermittently receive my paper. Now, before you think this is about to become a Larry David-esque rant; stick with me. I was getting so frustrated with the New York Times I was considering canceling. And then (thanks to copious amounts of serial television) I had a perverse thought. What if someone were gumming up the works intentionally for that very purpose to discredit and suppress the readership of the New York Times? I can get mad at the paper. They played into the false equivalency of the 2016 election, they give over column inches to the likes of Kellyanne Conway for no good reason. However, for the most part, I trust I am getting good information and not propaganda or cheap entertainment in the form of news. I still feel the need to support journalism.
This morning, miracle of miracles, I received my paper. It wasn’t soaking in the gutter of the street, it wasn’t missing sections, it was actually on my property and it was dry and whole. Like the rest of the nation I am distressed by the manner in which the protests to the war in Gaza is portrayed. I teach on a very progressive, activist campus. My students are similarly enflamed, enraged and try to understand the nuances. The Opinion section had several different responses to the Columbia University protests and the draconian police response. Side by side on the middle spread was Lydia Polgreen’s measured and thoughtful look at what is actually happening on the ground and conservative David French’s call for a stance of neutrality from college administrators. I also listened to The Daily’s breakdown of the events leading up to the arrests and attacks on faculty and students by New York City police. On the periphery of these main stories was yet another Ross Douthat lament about the teaching of certain texts and a call to return to “core curriculum”. Jamelle Bouie points out the efforts by the right to make Trump unaccountable for his actions. There is a piece about the far right take over in Italy and the weaknesses of the Constitution. A pattern begins to emerge.
I am just an artist, a writer and a teacher. I hold no advanced degrees in Political Science or Economics. As an image maker, I do what artists and writers do: we divine the world from the images created in the culture. Many images are sent out deliberately and with great intent, but images are slippery and they won’t stay tame. Like the telling of a dream to a friend that seems innocent but inadvertently tips your hand; images in the media are tricksters. They will send up pulses from the depths to reveal their true intentions. At the beginning of the Trump administration, my wife Tracy Schlapp and I began collaborating on a series of responses to the news called Resistance is Necessary. At some point, almost at the same time, but independently, we realized we were poisoning ourselves by meditating on these daily pictures. It was then that it became crystal clear to me that the image world of the media, and especially social media is paper thin. It is a deceptively reflective surface which distracts. Like the still surface of water, if one were to jump from a great height and hit that surface with a belly flop, you could break all your bones and possibly die. But, understanding that what we see are simply reflections or the palest copy of events happening deep below the surface one could dive gracefully and cut through that skin of water. One could reach the depths and see the larger connections. This is the divining rod mind of image makers.
So today, with my newly restored Sunday Times, I found myself blinded by the surface reflections. It seemed like a good day for deep sea diving. Something that I have been intuiting (and other much smarter people have been pointing out such as Heather Cox Richardson) is that there is something foul in this story. There is a camouflage or shield phalanx that is obscuring other motivations. The reaction to the student protests over the war in Gaza are couched in familiar binary terms. One can only be seen as anti-semitic. The other is that unless you show absolute solidarity to the cause you are complicit. But this is not the case in reality. So let me get this out of the way. I believe that the state of Israel is a highly militarized, right-wing bully. They are occupying land that should be Palestinian. Islamophobia and guilt drives the West’s support of the state. Saying this has nothing to do with Judaism or Jewish people who are made up of widely diverse beliefs and nationalities. Hamas does not necessarily represent the Palestinians, but by demolishing their homes, killing thousands of innocent people on top of decades of oppression; Hamas now becomes that face. Reducing this down to terrorists targeting innocents is disingenuous at best. While this is all true, I have little patience for being told how I should be performing my outrage. Calls from artist groups that say if you are not doing work about Palestine you are complicit are absurd. Social media has deranged the social fabric. Everything is performance. My outrage, sadness and distress are not for public consumption. Going back to my analogy of the deep diver, it is important that someone is connected to the depths, lest we all get swept away.
So the patterns I am seeing emerge are this: the right’s outrage over antisemitism is not about Judaism or Jewish people. Antisemitism is real, dangerous and alive in many quarters of the world. To deny that is to show a complete lack of sensitivity. But that is not what drives these debates really. It is part of a concerted attack on higher education. I can be pretty critical of higher ed and its absurdities and unfairnesses. I wouldn’t trade those absurdities; that are a result of questioning and curious minds, for the hollow, scorched earth utilitarianism being pressed as its antidote. As Polgreen points out in her piece, many of the most outrageous antisemitic displays come from outside agitators.
It’s true that students can carry their new found political passions to ridiculous logical endpoints that become hurtful and dangerous. Their righteousness can become its own form of bullying. This must be seen in perspective. Police brutality is actual bullying and state sponsored violence. Actions such as the Republican hearings that have ousted three high profile female university presidents is an ongoing attack on democratic and civic structures. The attack on education through state laws limiting content and the demonizing of students and faculty is all about control. For all the missteps and mistakes made by educators (often in good faith) it is through those mechanisms that a generation of citizens can learn to swim in the sea of images and not drown.
One final article that I think relates is one by Jessica Grose called “Tech in Schools Needs ‘a Hard Reset’”. Research has been pouring in since the pandemic about the shortcomings of the technological classroom. Young people are depressed and disconnected and anxious. Tech companies have been flooding schools with products. School districts trying to fix holes in tech use more tech. I’ve written before about what I feel about the need for presence in education. At the end of the article she quotes Jeff Frank, a professor of education at Saint Lawrence University. He says, “students are hungry for experiences that make them feel alive and authentically connected to other people and deeper sources of value.” Like coming together to protest a brutal war or finding community through deep study. I have been more and more exhausted by my social media feed as I scroll and watch as everyone of us has to dance and perform our lives no matter how mundane. The dissemination of images around the protests are tailor made for that kind of junkie rush of enraging pictures. Maybe the most radical thing we can all do is leave social media. I miss people, don’t you?
Now your meander with the grouchy man is done. I was left with an unease today about the traps we are leading ourselves into. Utilitarian arguments and binary, gotcha framing on its face appears to be unassailable logic, but it really is just a blunt cage door. I promise next week will be much lighter. I’m excited to share some thoughts on Jake the Dog and Finn the Human and their predecessor Kamandi, the last boy on Earth. Post-apocalyptic settings can be fun it turns out. In the meantime, we’d all better get some good sunglasses and scuba gear in coming months. A storm is brewing.