Category: uncategorized outrage

The Chumps Are Winning

I have a draft post that’s still waiting to be finished. Perhaps it will never be completed. I wanted to write about Twitter and user migration, about the tension between staying and leaving, about anticipated loss and diminishing returns and I stalled out. No great insight was revealed to me in the placing of words on the page. I’m reminded of the first months of 45’s term in the White House. How we hissed and scratched against his wanton disgrace of the office. We were not just upset with the awful policy decisions. Those of us who could afford to protest loudly without ever having to feel the immediate effects of said policies, could barely contain ourselves over the gaudiness of each new affront. So much of what was uttered by that ill-mannered and seemingly inarticulate brute was just plain dumb. Logic and reason were not required protocol. The country chose a chump as its leader and our embarrassment was unbridled.

And here we are again faced with the reality that another chump is gobbling up all the airtime, because he bought it. The point is that we as a public are not wiser. We continue to conflate wealth with intelligence; power with inherent value. Our media structures, harnessed as they are to capitalism’s logics, support these confusions. Actually, many amplify and promote them. And do so widely for the benefit of clicks, which is apparently the only way to stay alive among the conglomerate media sharks.

The chumps are winning. They are having their way. With us and then without us, they are having their way. And please let’s be honest that it truly galls us that they do it with zero attention to style or sophistication. If only they were clever about it! we lament internally. It pains us, with our multiple degrees, elevated humor and lust for nuance, that these loser dudes are dominating the attention wars. That their branded cruelties continue to find supporters across time zones and income registers, still appalls and confounds us. Think pieces, explainers and primers flow generously from various platforms promising to illuminate the obvious for the non-believers: The chumps are winning – here’s why.

If I seem angry it’s because I am but also kinda done. The accompanying theatrics of a media landscape as corrupt and jaded as the villains they report on leave me cold by now. We are caught in a spin cycle of billionaire power plays and we, the public, are not even collateral anymore, not even pawns. That’s maybe my most significant takeaway from this: Neither this billionaire nor that cares one whit about my micro platform, or communities, or political leanings. My existence does not register for them. It simply does not.

Given that, I feel a bit freer. I can stay on my BS with abandon. I can plant seeds, fertilize ideas, cultivate cultures with or without billionaire controlled platforms. I really want more of the so-called liberal elite to get wiser, but that’s a fool’s errand, like waiting on white folks to eradicate racism, or for the West to unhitch itself from neoliberal doctrine. I will do what I have done until now: Write into the wind. Speak as if someone, somewhere might be listening. Read alongside readers. Become an illustrator who paints big pictures with words.

Anyway, I think everyone should listen to these smart things that Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom has to say about the current state of affairs. She has a habit of making sense, even when the chumps are winning.

Headlines With a Chance of Substance

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Image via Pixabay.com

I began collecting headlines*

2017

Why Does T Remain So Witless About the World?

Will T be the Death of the Goldwater Rule?

What Did DT learn in  Texas?

What Would War With North Korea Look Like?

Could T alone kill Obamacare?

2018

The Beginning of the End for T?

Will T Fire Rod Rosenstein?

Is T’s Vanity a Threat to the Economy?

Will T Abandon a Reckless Saudi Prince?

Is Fraud Part of T Organization’s Business Model?

Does T Think The War on Terror Is Over?

Is Optimism Dead in the T Era?

2019

Can T Invoke Emergency Powers for the Wall?

Does Congress Care About T’s Emergency?

Is America T’s Banana Republic?

Are We In A Constitutional Crisis?

Is T Provoking A War?

Will T Outsource the Border Crisis to Mexico?

 

Headlines have a several functions: they should grab our attention, give us the gist of the topic, and make us curious enough to keep reading. In the digital attention economy, the most successful headlines elicit a flurry of clicks, followed by hungry eyeballs. That’s the goal. Hijacking the amygdala or viscerally activating your mirror neurons can all be strategically planned. Platforms that draw crowds know well what it takes to move the masses to click, comment and keep the attention machine running at high speed.

We’re tied up in this business model. In our attempts to stay informed, up to date, critically aware, we also click, click, click our way from one data mongering platform to the next leaving our digital breadcrumbs that will make others well off. Meanwhile these same platforms heap more oil on the dumpster fire of liberal democracies, and we all watch our precious civil liberties disintegrate before our very eyes. Somehow the profitable 1% will survive every political weather – they own our media, their power will not wane anytime soon.

And those headlines, increasingly designed “for your eyes only”, play us one song in 10,000 variations. It’s the song of inevitability, of market forces, of the End of Times. We listen over and over again because it’s ubiquitous and to be honest, it’s kinda catchy. Like the crime novel we can’t put down, we keep turning the pages of this ever unfolding horror story that doles out these pin prick closed questions: Will T do this? Can T do that? Each query a stab at our previously held beliefs about governance and decency and legality.

 

 

Here’s what we can do: Listen to folks who know these ropes. Take their advice, learn from their example.

Take the headlines for what they are: Click-bait with a chance of substance. Read carefully, astutely. Follow Mike Caulfield who is my go-to expert in all things media literacy, especially fact-checking and avoiding disinformation.

Above all recognize that there is no need to go it alone. There are good people all over the internet doing good, meaningful things. There are helpful resources and we can support each other in finding and applying those resources. I resent the complicity of mainstream media in surrendering so fully to the tug of the attention economy and away from shoring up democratic norms through transparency, critical reporting and by countering bigotry. But I see this is where are and not elsewhere.

My illusions are no more. The scales have fallen from my eyes. The trouble is deep and so are our resources if we get our act together.

 

*2-3 times per week since mid 2017, I have consented to The New Yorker sending me updates to my mailbox on their latest editions. And through the headlines, I noticed patterns. The headlines above are a selection of e-mail headers that I received.

What I Will Fret Over, 2018

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A few years ago I wrote a blog post about what I would fret over regarding my two sons and their futures. It’s near the end of 2018 and what I will fret over is some of the same but more and with a different urgency.

At the time I realized:

On my deathbed I will not be wishing I had fret more over my children’s education.

Rather, when that day arrives I may fret about their futures. About whether they know how much I love them. I will hope that they know how rich they have made my life. I will hope that they understand themselves to be capable and extraordinary human beings. I will pray that they have learned to trust others, how to reach out for help, how to care for and love others especially when loving is hard to do. I will fret that we have not had enough time to say all the things that we wanted to say to each other. I will fret over whether their passion for life and learning will be enough to see them through, in and on whatever paths they pursue. It is extremely unlikely that I will fret over how they did or are doing in school.

Today, following the election of an openly fascist president in the largest country in South America, who joins the ranks of world leaders poised to desecrate nature in hopes of power and profit, to punish indigenous populations for existing, to carry out nationalistic policies which openly discriminate and uphold racist divisions. In the midst of these developments, I fret for the future not only of my own children but children across the globe who will grow up knowing perhaps only the unrest, anger and deception that lie at the heart of the rise of unjust regimes.

And I fret over education and how we practice it. While I have found wonderful nurturing communities of educators who are deeply committed to opening minds rather than closing them, I need to remind myself at times that we are not necessarily the majority. The willingness of my allies and accomplices to face their own biases in order to better serve the children in front of them is not the norm. The rigorous pursuit of inquiry, liberation and radical imagination is not the focus of our professional development programs or degree granting institutions. Rather, we insist that new teachers learn to look past inequity and miraculously raise test scores. Education officials may suggest that gun training for teachers is a higher priority that ensuring that all children have adequate access to counseling services in every school. At the ballot box, funding initiatives to guarantee the coverage of school necessities in communities across the US struggle to pass and take effect.

We are living in a time where we have become comfortable with idea of stealing. From our children and grandchildren. With our political choices we are showing them that we are indeed selfish and short sighted, stingy and cruel, poor historians and lazy thinkers. All of our proud speeches about respect, care and critical thinking run smack into the reality of what they can witness on a daily basis – dehumanizing rhetoric, never ending violence against the vulnerable, the hardening of a ruling class that refuses to change itself.

My fretting today is the kind that has me writing at 4 am instead of sleeping. It’s the fretting that is physiological and that rekindles old worries and insecurities. It’s the kind of fretting that these new regimes aim to foster. Because a fearful, disoriented and unsure populace is much easier to manipulate with strong man arguments and false promises. But I am an educator. I’m not a superhero. I am a parent. And at this moment I am fearful.

And I have a little faith. I have two sons who know some things about care, respect and critical thinking. They are avid readers and understand that this matters. They have strong imaginations and dreams about what they want to achieve. In my classes, I work with eager students who have seemingly boundless energy to climb, jump, run and tumble. As they grow, I hope that they also build their strength of character and learn to recognize and counter injustice wherever they find it. Many of them will. Among hundreds of previous students, several have already made that commitment.

So this morning I have fear and some faith. I have community and back up. I know which side of history I am on. Today I will fret. I will also fight.

image via Pixabay.com CC0

Reckoning With Resistance

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Today my mind has not strayed far from the awful crimes being committed against asylum-seeking families arriving at the southern border of the United States. Yes, my outrage is selective. Yes, the previous administration had a tremendous deportation machinery of its own. Yes, this preying on brown and black people by a white supremacist political structure in the US has deep historical roots. Yes, this policy-mandated behavior by immigration officials is entirely American and cruel at the same time.

The hard truths about this situation rest snugly embedded in a larger political context which features steady the erosion of democratic norms; rampant corruption and profiteering off the backs of the most vulnerable; a depressing exposure of historical illiteracy of the American populace, all wrapped up in a climate of fear, exhaustion and despair.  These hard truths are not the enemy.  Bitter realities, such as they are, show us the monsters of our own making – either through our silence, complacency or even active encouragement.

One of the hardest reads of my day centered around asking the question how was it possible for people to practice the cruelty necessary to carry out genocide on their neighbors and fellow citizens then (in WWII) and now. From the subReddit stream of AskHistorians:

The descent into cruelty and abhorrent deeds is one that in almost all historical situations is not caused by one individual’s personal cruelty but by a socially and political accepted mindset of necessity and acceptance of cruelty.

The reality we must face is recognizing our real and potential complicity with the cruelty proposed, enacted and denied by authorities, politicians, and everyone else who determines it better and safer to ‘get along by going along’. We are or will be regularly confronted with choices which uphold or further the cruelty rather than confronting and demanding its end. Hearing the audio of screaming children, seeing footage of caged children and teens, reading first-hand accounts of those directly involved either in the processing or being processed – these all provide ample evidence of awful realities – in snapshot form.

Feeling both hobbled and blessed by my geographical distance to the unfolding crisis, I tweet my desperation through the day. I try to refer others to meaningful threads. I comment on my own inclinations in posting widely on this topic. I throw stick after stick onto Twitter’s outrage bonfire and I question my own integrity in doing so. There can be no self-satisfied way to confront human rights abuse from afar. Discovering and applying my best resources to offering assistance require time and thought. (Truth without comfort: This is one battle among many, I can and should plan for the long haul.)

Perhaps by tossing my twigs on the outrage fire I seek to add my voice to the masses who resist a mindset prepared to normalize long-term detention of children and families seeking asylum in the United States (or in other wealth Western countries – see Australia). To resist a mindset that consciously and deliberately turns its back on upholding human rights. To resist a mindset that says my voice – my living-outside-the-country, black woman of substance voice – doesn’t count.

I am learning resistance. I am embracing resistance. I am struggling in my resistance. But I will persist. I must persist. We must persist.

Thank you.

image via Pixabay CC0

Nobody’s Version of Dumb

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Shoes by Vincent Van Gogh CC0

I spend a lot of time on Twitter. I follow more people than I can actually keep up with and miraculously a bunch more follow me and I apologize that I can’t just follow right back. I’m overwhelmed. I lose threads and also get lost in reading. I miss a lot and what I catch can probably be attributed to Twitter’s algorithmic sorting which keeps the folks I most interact with close to the top of the tweets I will see. It’s an imperfect system. My interests and responses are being guided, steered, nudged to achieve the golden data outcome of ‘maximum engagement.’ As long as I keep clicking around on the platform and rewarding the algorithm that delivers those precious “In case you missed it” messages, I am holding up my end of the user-platform bargain. Twitter stays in business and I cultivate my little networked worlds almost as intricately as my 9 year-old’s Minecraft creations.

Then along comes a short thread like this:

https://twitter.com/gsiemens/status/905837030072086529

https://twitter.com/gsiemens/status/905837397950255105

https://twitter.com/gsiemens/status/905837821071691776

There’s more but that’s the core.

I know this lamentation. It is familiar and well worn and different figures deploy it at different junctures. Of course, @gsiemens is not just anybody. He’s a public intellectual, well recognized in the tech and higher ed circles I frequent. So I also hesitate to publicly push back on this particular take. But, alas. I get tired of authority type voices telling me and others that Twitter is making us dumb.

Speak for yourself, I say. Rain on your own parade, not mine.

Look. Not everyone who comes to social media is looking for a fight. We have not arrived here to recreate Greek forms of debate. We are not showing up so that we can rattle our intellectual sabres. We are not turning up to punch each others’ academic lights out, argument for carefully crafted argument.

I, for one, came because I was looking for others who could help me grow. I was in the market for good writing and good people and I found them. The longer I stayed and the more I engaged, good people found me. Good writing – I mean, strong, critical, robust and also sensitive writing walked right up to me and said, “Hi!” I got involved. I created adjoining spaces and fashioned a new home to welcome some of that rich writing. And I found art, humor, compassion, support, care, and (*praise hands*) Black Twitter. My life has been tremendously enlivened and broadened through my social media connections. I am a smart person who is more open, more aware, more vocal and more critical due to my connections via social media.

You will rarely find me putting up my verbal dukes on Twitter but I will support those who do it well. When authority type voices trot out these blanket statements about our shared intellectual demise, they offer a point of view that can be as narrow and constrained as those they accuse of the same offense. And often such voices enjoy the comfort and yes, privilege, of established recognition through institutions, publications, speaking invitations and considerable social media reach. These statements seem to come when these, usually male, individuals no longer feel “challenged” – when their membership in the social media ‘Gifted and Talented’ program is losing clout.

When I first ran across this thread, I wanted to ignore it. Give it the ‘ho, hum, somebody’s bored’ non-response. But the annoyance stayed with me because I felt in those few tweets that my experience and the experience of too many others were being denied. And thoughtlessly so.

Some of us are here for community; to gather and confer with the like minded. To remind each other that our presence matters. For someone with a particular kind of status, this aspect might easily be overlooked. Not for me. I come to Twitter to prove to myself again and again that I have a voice and know how to use it. In other circles, my voice, my presence runs the very real risk being inaudible, invisible. But for an authority voice type, this instance may not occur or even register.

Formulating this kind of push back takes energy. It takes energy away from some things I’d rather read and write about. And I don’t wish to expend more energy delving into the right-left Twitter divide article which prompted these tweets. When George Siemens claims that his network is fairly homogeneous, that is something that he can fix if it’s a priority. But to drag us all down into a space that he in a later tweet describes as “closed, intolerant, narrow minded, and short sighted” is decidedly unfair and unnecessary and I refuse to be placed there by proclamation from on high.

Maybe this is precisely how and why I persist on social media: Refusing to be placed somewhere by someone who is not me. I place and position myself. I speak my own mind. I pick my own battles. I am nobody’s version of dumb.

 

Note: The image is from the The Met collection of Public Domain images which is well worth a visit.

Because Someone’s Listening

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The sign that’s not on my fridge but should be:

“Don’t go there.”

Of course, I go.

Damn social media. Damn me.

The time I spend in my own head is no longer solitary.

I can hear myself think (still)

but

my voice is tempered for your possible reception;

my words carefully tested for palatability

before they can be released.

And I keep writing, writing, writing

straight onto the screen, so few

filters between this thought

and what you might make of it.

 

But let me say this:

I have an Alice Walker T-shirt from the Writing Project and the quote says:

“Writing has saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.”

And every day that I come to terms with concentrated power

in the (tiny) hands of a federal administration bent on

harm, revenge and unmitigated selfishness,

I thank God for writing saving me from the sin and inconvenience

of violence.

 

My moral outrage is but a drop in the bucket of

untold suffering among

too many.

Some of whom understand what is in the making and many more

who have no inkling that they will not be spared

the pain and humiliation

of being discarded, dismissed, and annulled.

 

I regret to inform you that

I have spent time reading the incomprehensible

transcripts of a figurehead

who struggles to express one thought

coherently.

 

I regret to inform you that

these elementary and primitive

patterns of speech

appeal to some,

to many, in fact.

The joke that was now lays like detrimental oil spill

over the gulf of what we thought

was a semi-functioning democracy.

 

The bill for the clean up will be paid

by our children and grandchildren

But the spill is ongoing,

widening its toxic reach

seeping and tumbling past each new measure

designed to contain it.

 

I can be angry about social media

about myself on social media

and I can write

because someone, somewhere

is listening.

and sometimes that is just enough

of what is needed.

 

 

Dear User/Supplier,

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Greetings!

We are pleased to inform you that your contributions to the greatest research effort ever on the confluence of human and machine learning into a single all-powerful source of knowledge, wisdom and capitalist domination are of the utmost importance and always welcome!

Making the world a better place for all is a massive undertaking and we would be nowhere without the generous efforts of you, your family members, colleagues, friends, business partners, classmates, pets, auto mechanics, health care professionals, insurers and personal assistants (Hey, Alexa! Hi, Siri!) to stay connected, to share and spread the wealth of your lives with our systems and in our spaces. Every day you empower us to dig deeper into understanding much more than just purchasing patterns and streams of demand; you help us comprehend the complexity of human desire; the content of long and short range bucket lists. Because of you and your unfettered thirst for more choices, better selections and unlimited access, we are able to tell you more and more about

  • who you are
  • what you need
  • where you can get it
  • why you deserve it
  • and why anyone who would counter that can climb under a rock, no love lost!

As purveyors of this bright new future, we value every click, keystroke and swipe you make. These seemingly simple actions help us to unlock the secrets to true human understanding and the consolidated wealth of a steadily shrinking class of digital overlords and provide us with the fuel we need to build the bridges of enlightenment for all and for much less than we ever thought it would cost! Your participation is vital and essential and we want to make sure you know how grateful we are.

You are the future we’re building for.* We see you.

Ever in your service,

Tech’s Top DOGS (Digital Overlords Governing Surveillance) 2017

 

*Some restrictions may apply. Full benefits in limited supply. First come, first served. May the better man win (literally). It’s a dog eat dog world. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Survival of the fittest, baby.  Smile pretty, we got you covered.

 

 

Not Another Think Piece

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Old story, never ending

let me tell you about all the think pieces in my head.

they are circulating and bubbling, surfacing then submerging.

They are the last thing you and I need:

one more carefully phrased analysis of the %&+## fix we are in.

And I have several,

just waiting, gathering steam or dust or mold or I don’t know what.

Think piece upon think piece that we don’t need right now

or tomorrow or next week.

But let me say this:

If kellyanne puts her feet on the sofa while important company is over,

it doesn’t matter.

If he says ‘you people are doing amazing work’ and means it,

it doesn’t matter.

If he says ‘you people are doing amazing work’ and doesn’t mean it,

it’s what we expect

and it doesn’t matter.

Or that picture of all those grinning white men

again in expensive suits plus one white woman using thumbs up

to indicate their satisfaction at agreeing to pollute more streams more thoroughly from now on.

Seems grim.

But it doesn’t matter.

And what doesn’t matter doesn’t score change.

We can raise our eyebrows to the high heavens,

quote one official falsehood after another ALL DAY LONG and into the night,

And still it does not matter.

 

There is talk of blood and soil and unity because

you and I know most likely whose blood will flow,

whose soil will be lost

and that unity is for decoration.

The only honesty to be found is in the hate that rises,

the agency morale that soars,

the billions of clicks this reality show is generating

daily.

 

meanwhile some ridiculously wealthy men (or perhaps just one named Robert who cares a lot about what he cares about and we are definitely not in that mix)

find more avenues than they can count to

impose their narrow lily white vision of a future

we won’t want to be a part of.

If it’s too much trouble (and expense) to kill us all,

general subjugation will do.

So cleverly shackled by chains of our own making:

unlimited streams of data which belong to them

not us.

which earn them profits, but not us.

yes we will keep paying into our demise click by clickety click click while they

(the bad guys) steal our elections,

manipulate our emotions,

corrupt our media and feed us our own helplessness

in the face of white male mediocrity gone wild.

 

So many think pieces I might pen

to report, compare and contrast

the devastation of what is and will be.

I will spare you.

 

We could talk about the white male effect

which seems to explain a lot

but doesn’t account for all the white sisters who sold us out.

There’s of course this rise of extremism

among the ‘lost boys’ who have turned to Pepe and 4chan

as symbols of their defeatist indifference.

There are too many explanations

and more understanding no longer feels like a help.

I will think my piece

and save you the trouble of too many more thousands of keystrokes to decipher.

Because in contrast to all this

your time is valuable

and matters

so use it

for good.

please.

Thank you.

 

image: NY Public Library Digital Collections

 

 

 

 

Document 2017

The peaceful transfer of power

We all watched it happen: the shaking of hands, the sitting through ceremony,

hands on Bibles. Peaceful Transfer

of power.

To witness the immediate consolidation

and abuse

of power.

To stomach the legislative complicity of

that abuse of

peacefully transferred power.

If this is where we are after 10 days,

where are we likely to be in 100 days?

I am told not to despair,

that we will fight back. Yes.

But all that power we handed over,

so peacefully

Is being used to frighten, silence and beat

us all.

If you think this is not you,

just wait.

Unless you belong to someone in that room

applauding each fresh signature of doom,

don’t believe that this won’t catch you

someday.

People will bow to authority before they recall

their humanity and

acknowledge yours.

Each of us has power and often we hand it over

because we trust,

we have faith,

we believe

that others mean us no harm.

What we forget is how poorly

we understand harm when it is not us

but our neighbor,

our colleague,

the guy across the street, city, county, country

whose livelihood, dignity, existence

is at stake.

‘No harm done’ we say so easily

because we followed protocol

when it came time.

We witnessed the peaceful transfer

of power.

Laws will be broken.

Orders will be given.

People will suffer. Always.

And that room of self-satisfied men

will know

That they got the power cheap at a

fake news rummage sale.

And they will hoard it and flaunt it

and use it against us,

because we gave it to them,

we handed it to them through

our quirky institutions and unspoken appetite

for criminal political theater.

The power they got peacefully handed over

will be the instrument of our undoing.

It already is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parallel Lines

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I am awash in feelings right now. It’s after midnight and I can’t imagine what advantages sleep will bring. My Twitter feed is overflowing with the unfolding tragedy of the new US Presidency. Today it is the Muslim Ban executive order in effect, which involves the detainment, questioning, and/or potential turning away of citizens from 7 Muslim-majority states. We don’t know which further affront to human rights and democratic process will follow. But by now, many of us are confident that more anti-human measures are in store.

And it’s Saturday, a Saturday on which I was attending and presenting at a conference for middle level educators. I listened with interest to engaging speakers, got into conversations with old friends while welcoming new contacts, and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to create some workshop magic for a group of educators. There was great food, a warm hospitality and plenty of laughter.

Saturday – and I led a session on using social media and blogging for professional growth. I had three folks from my school attend including two administrators. There was a lot to celebrate. I felt happy being among educators from schools all across Europe. Educators are my people.

Still, the reports keep rolling in. Protests at major US airports are growing. The New York City Taxi Workers have called for a 1 hr strike on transportation to and from JFK airport. Families have been separated. Fear levels both within the US and without is rising, not only about the implications of this order but everything that could possibly follow. Unchecked.

I went out to the evening celebration and had fun chatting with new acquaintances and eventually shaking a leg on the dancefloor. The conference attendees were a strikingly white crowd, mainly of American and British descent with a few other nationalities sprinkled in. I am used to this – being the only black person in the room. This is my every day norm, and a result of multiple life choices. We were celebrating the end of a successful conference and the dancing felt good. “Joy is also a form of resistance.” I read this week in my Twitter feed.

I checked my phone on the way home, catching up on developments as the tram rumbled through town. It’s Sunday here now and the bad news will not let up. Whatever individual victories I can call my own today or yesterday or even tomorrow are dwarfed by the scale of human suffering that is systematically being exacerbated by policies put in place by a few powerful white American males in suits.

We are always living our lives in context. And often – perhaps more often that we recognize- contexts is the correct phrasing, covering foreground and background, subtle and overt, praise-worthy and fear-inducing. Today I was reminded of how these contexts can ride in parallel, cross paths or even collide all within the space of me being me.

Saturday to Sunday.

image via Pixabay.com