Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 97

September 12, 2022: War is Hella Funny: Catch-22

[50 years ago this coming weekend, the pilot episode of M*A*S*H aired. So in honor of that ground-breaking sitcom, this week I’ll AmericanStudy wartime comedies in various media, leading up to a special post on M*A*S*H!]

On one success and one failure in Joseph Heller’s famous wartime satire.

First, a little blog inside baseball that is most definitely relevant for approaching (and responding to) this post: I’ve read Catch-22(1961)—not just the novel as a whole, but even any excerpts or sections—precisely once, as a junior in high school (for pleasure, ‘cause I was just that AmericanStudies nerdy). I enjoyed it, and even laughed out loud a few times (which is very rare for me as a reader). But I don’t remember many specific things about it from that reading experience (that is, I certainly know plenty of particular lines and moments, including the famous definition of the titular phrase, from general popular consciousness, but have very few memories derived from my own engagement with the novel). I say that to make clear that, as is always the case but doubly so for a post like this, I greatly welcome disagreements or challenges to my ideas here (which you can share in comments below; if you’ve read Heller’s Something Happened [1974] you’ll understand why I’m being so parentheses-happyin this post).

Heller was far from the first satirist to engage with war as his subject—in American literary history Ambrose Bierce stands out as an ancestor to be sure—but I would say his focus on World War II in particular makes his book quite surprising and groundbreaking nonetheless. As I argued in both this post on the film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and this one on the Dresden firebombing, there’s long (if not always) been a sacredness to the way we approach and remember World War II, a sense that this truly was a “good war” that can’t be challenged or critiqued in the same ways that most such conflicts can and should. But the vital truth is that, whatever the more noble sides to the war (and I’m not for a second disputing their presence), it also featured all of the horrors and, perhaps even more tellingly, all of the absurdities that are inevitably part of such historical events and periods. I can’t help but think that it was precisely this multi-layered and somewhat contradictory reality which caused Heller to take so long to complete his World War II satire—he apparently began writing it in 1953 and didn’t publish until eight years later—but we’re all eternally lucky that he was eventually able to do so.

No cultural work is perfect, of course, and thus none is above criticism (concepts with which I’m quite sure Heller would agree). In this case, I would say that the portrayal of womenin Catch-22 is ultimately unsuccessful, and perhaps even troubling. Of course the soldiers who form the book’s main characters are all male, as was the historical reality of the US armed forces in that era. But does Heller does bring in a female character in a crucial role—the Italian maid Michaela, whom main character “Aarfy” Aardvark rapes and murders while on leave in Rome. This isn’t Aarfy’s first such sexual violence, either, as he has earlier in the novel told a story of raping two young girls at his college fraternity house. Rape and sexual violence are certainly part of war, and including them does represent another way in which Heller complicates the “good war” iconography. But to my mind (and again, I welcome challenges!), Heller uses Michaela entirely as a device for plot and symbolism, to both reveal things about Aarfy and establish additional absurdities (such as Aarfy’s famous line, “But I only raped her once!” when Yossarian notes that he will be arrested for his crimes). Too often wartime storytelling has featured women in only flat and problematic ways, and I don’t think Heller’s brilliant book escapes that pitfall.

Next wartime comedy tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other wartime comedies you’d highlight?

September 10-11, 2022: Michael Walters’ Guest Post: Chaos, Order and Progress, in the first North American Nation

 [Dr. Michael Walters’hybrid journalistic and scholarly work has appeared in The Human Prospect in both 2018 and 2019 –first with “On Overcoming Colonialism, a Dual Case Study”; and second with “On Historical Continuity, Slavery, and Justice.” During his journalism career, he covered talks by Spike Lee and Haki Madhubuti, news and features throughout Hudson County, NJ, and wrote a story on drugs in Greenwich Village, long before the decriminalization of marijuana. In 1997, his Jersey Journal profile of a young man killed during the Korean War brought praise from the Korean War Veterans of Hudson County, and recognition by a Hudson County Freeholder. A story he wrote on the Jersey City school district refusing to excuse student absences for visiting HBCUs resulted in the district changing its stance. He co-wrote Starting and Finishing the Paper: a How-to Guide for Quality College Writing, in 2006. Michael has taught composition in colleges across the New York metropolitan area; since 2008, he has instructed math alongside teaching writing. Michael has written a novel inspired by his postcolonial studies educational background, and the four years of Donald Trump's presidency. For American Impasse, which tells the story of race in the US through the lens of two families, he seeks an agent or a publisher.]

While undoubtedly Donald Trump’s presidency was most chaotic, the perception that the United States has been an orderly stable nation has always been subject to debate, depending upon whose status is questioned. Therefore, while a great portion of the country’s population may feel relief at a new presidency, a significant group within the voting bloc that resoundingly rejected the previous president still may aspire to a more orderly and just society. Simultaneously, the issue of how the wealthier in society may react must be addressed, for portions of society react disparately, when their senses of stability are interrupted. 

While to some the American Revolution, or War for Independence, as the 1776-1781 conflict is still taught in Europe, was radical, if society were dissected into the two major ethnic portions in the newly formed United States of America, there were two struggles subsumed in one. “A black revolution, if not the white one, confronted racial slavery” (Sinha 47).

Whether what United States students learn to be the American Revolution was even successful is open to debate. In a 2011 article on the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, Ghent University conflict and development researcher Brecht de Smet refers to United States sociologist Theda Skocpol’s “consequentialist” definition of revolution: to call a successful rebellion a revolution, it must entail “class-based revolts from below,” and “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures” (De Smet 12). Therefore, Skocpol claims, a change in power does not necessarily equal a revolution, unless the most oppressed ascend into the hierarchy. A less stringent definition of a successful revolution is provided by historian Diane Russell, author of Rebellion, Revolution, and Armed Force. “A successful revolution may be said to have occurred when substantial social change follows a rebellion” (Weede 44). Thus, societies may want order restored after years of rebellion, but whether that process brings progress for the society will depend upon which segment of the society is analyzed.

If Skocpol’s definition is applied to every violent transfer of power, then very few would meet the sociologist’s criteria for a successful revolution. However, historian Russell’s definition of attaining freedom from under an oppressor’s boot may be too broad. Regarding the process by which British North America became the United States, the revolutionary event was the initial separation of an American colony from a European power. Perhaps accompanying this journey was national social change, but such is harder to define, thus inserting greater subjectivity to whether attempted usurpations accomplish their goals. In the United States, many colonial leaders retained their status after 1781. Even abolitionist founding fathers John Adams and Benjamin Rush were not impoverished, and their slave owning brethren among the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution certainly did not want to see their chattel attain power over them.

Attempted insurrectionists from around their country, indicating at least somewhat elevated class status because of travel costs, sought to take over Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021, as the United States House of Representatives was certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump to become the country’s 45th president. Considering how Joe Biden ascended to the Democratic Party nomination, aided by the endorsement of James Clyburn, African American representative of South Carolina, this attack of white Americans climbing capital walls like zombies and attacking police was viewed by activists of color as a desperate act of white supremacy. From the prelude to colonial separation and national formation, the 1770 Boston Massacre, irony echoes through United States’ racial history: “One of the first martyrs of the American Revolution was an Afro-Indian sailor and runaway slave from Framingham, Massachusetts, Crispus Attucks.” 

John Adams stirred enmity among American revolutionary patriots by defending the British soldiers accused of killing Attucks, two others, and wounding eight more colonists, two   later dying from their wounds. “A few years later Adams used Attucks’s name to use as a pseudonym for an essay he wrote on liberty.” John Adams’ cousin Sam, “mastermind behind the Sons of Liberty” – in British North America more renowned than the future president -- organized the funeral processional for the massacre’s five victims. “Abolitionists used the symbolism of Attucks’s martyrdom well into the 19th century” (Sinha 34). Whether the upheaval in British North America ending in the formation of the United States facilitated progress for the most oppressed in the former colonies depends upon which region is studied. With multiple layers of government often disagreeing on philosophy and policy, national progress is difficult to attain, though some elected officials will easily discuss American greatness.

Many espousing “American Exceptionalism” refuse to acknowledge the United States’ journey – fraught with obstacles and sacrifices – to terminate chattel slavery. Regarding abolitionism, Manisha Sinha’s The Slave’s Cause documents a struggle over centuries; in the 1790s, British North America’s descendent, borne of violent struggle, was unprepared to mobilize to cease free labor, either politically or militarily. Enough of the early United States population preferred order of a new, allegedly stable country, to upheaval and chaos of the previously enslaved attaining more power than war granted. The tradition of granting legal equality to newcomers previously judged as lesser because of birthplace began during war from 1776-1781, but the seeds of future divisions – stability and opportunity for some, and struggle and shambles for others, begins during national formation.

First came Rhode Island; then all other northern states granted freedom to slaves who enlisted. “Virginia and Maryland allowed only free blacks to serve, though many slaves in the Chesapeake, pretending to be free, or in lieu of their masters, joined the Continental Army” (Sinha 49). Given that the American Revolution was a revolution, during the counterrevolution only social change and the burgeoning nation would be evidence that colonial disarray occurred, transitioning into the United States of America.

However, the consequential definition of revolution, of sociologist Theda Skocpol, could not be applied to the United States, as of the 1790s. Irish Nationalist Wolfe Tone went into exile in the United States in 1795, fearing arrest for words he wrote against the British crown. One reason he could not stay was his distaste for American politics: the Federalists had ascended, attracting rival Republicans labeling Federalists as the “British party” (Elliott 271). Thus, depending upon perspective, as of the 1790s little had changed in the social structure of the first nation state west of Europe, according to both Diane Russell’s and Theda Skocpol’s definitions of successful revolutions. However, from 1776-1781 chaos reigned as British North America became the United States of America. This case of transition is evidence that restored order does not facilitate violent insurrection of any kind.

Though slave rebellions did occur, human property would not rule over their owner class in former British North America: Even founding fathers who were not slave owners “believed that large scale emancipation would cause significant social disruptions, including life-threatening poverty, theft, and violence” (Beeman 334).  Anthony Di Lorenzo wrote in a philosophy dissertation that in the 1790s, ending slavery, which imposed chaos and disorder on the lives of enslaved, became controversial because antislavery causes were linked to ideas enough felt were designed to destabilize the new nation state. Congregationalist Pastor Jedidiah Morse, cited by Di Lorenzo as an opponent of slavery, first supported the ideals of the French Revolution, which freed slaves in all colonies, but then became concerned that the revolutionary goals, if spread worldwide, would entirely undo the influence of religion. The words of Baptist Morgan Rhees, after a late 1795 meeting with Morse, imply that the two were no longer compatriots on abolitionism. Morse was “drifting toward aristocratic beliefs,” Rhees wrote. Di Lorenzo cites theories referencing the “Illuminati,” which fostered belief that ending slavery would end religion. Discussions in private entered the public through sermons; meanwhile: “In the South, slavery's defenders could easily draw on the discourse developing in New England to caution against any dramatic alterations to the institution.” Therefore, “The resulting cultural, political, and religious atmosphere was not hospitable to radical abolitionist thought and activity. Even many opponents of slavery came to fear the destabilizing implications of emancipationist policies” (309-310). Before attempting to free his homeland from British influence, Wolfe Tone joined the French Navy, attempting two missions to complete his crusade.

Slaves would not be freed in the United States until the 13thAmendment in 1865, ensuring that from 1781-1865 the lives of national wealth builders could have their worlds overturned if an owner went broke, or if a slave did not perform free labor according to directions provided by a white person, often attaining stature resulting from a combination of birthright and inheritance. However, the country still expanded west. Clearly more disorder would have occurred, had the United States not nationally demilitarized after war. In claiming western lands, however, the same governments that sought to maintain hierarchy over an economy based on free labor took land from indigenous people, imparting chaos into their lives, from which entire peoples have never recovered. From this westward growth, lauded and enforced by, among other presidents, Andrew Jackson and James Polk, comes the myth of rugged individualism. For his part, John Adams, before he became George Washington’s vice president and president himself, lamented the lack of economic growth in his new country in the 1780s. More land would ameliorate this situation for a fledgling country (Langley 59-63).

Three years after the British sacked Washington D.C. successfully, burning the capitol building during the War of 1812, or, as his opponents called it, Mr. Madison’s War, the “Era of Good Feelings” arrived in the United States – 1817 to 1823. Democratic-Republican James Monroe presided over a one-party nation, after the Federalist party collapsed. Monroe was able to pay off the nation’s war debt, lower taxes, and envision a state without political parties, as George Washington outlined (Trickey). Flowery zeitgeist predominated, but suffering, unaddressed in the 1780s and 1790s, continued for the voiceless.

Undoubtedly, as a slave owner, Monroe was unconcerned that many on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder still sought to improve their collective status, which included African Americans living in the North debating vigorously how to attain their perceptions of the ideals outlined in the United States Constitution. In the chapter “The Neglected Period of Antislavery,” Manisha Sinha describes abolitionist activities during the alleged “Era of Good Feelings.” While it may be fair to say that absence of rebellion is a sense of order, upheaval in slave lives could occur at any time. Slavery did not recognize marriage, but minimizing those deemed other has not left United States political intent. During the Trump administration, many journalism outlets attacked immigration authorities for separating families. However, slavery effected similar family disruption and destruction for centuries, which, by the alleged “Era of Good Feelings” had become: “The cornerstone of the national economy” (Sinha 160). In 2020, more than seventy million United States voters supported a now former president whose administration sought to irreparably fracture families of migrants, just as slavery shattered human bonds for centuries in North America. To the Trump administration, creating order for their supporters meant injecting more chaos into southern migrants fleeing various dangers south of the Mexican border, just as maintaining slavery maintained the order of the United States, before the nation’s binds became untenable because of various factors, including the Dred Scott decision, essentially making all states slave states, if slave owners visited with their human property in tow.

In response to antebellum slavery, powerful African Americans and white allies continued the struggle for all to experience the positive ideals outlined in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. In 1816 the American Colonization Society was founded, supporting repatriating freed blacks from slavery to African nations. While some American blacks did move to African nations, Liberia, founded by freed slaves, being most prominent, black support quickly withdrew from the ACS. “By positioning themselves against colonization, African Americans rejected any solution to slavery that did not encompass black rights” (Sinha 160).  Asking people who lived on a continent -- as did their ancestors -- for centuries, to leave, with the stated goal preserving order, dismissed the uncertainty forced upon the prospective emigrants. Indeed, it is a government’s responsibility, to some extent, to assist constituents in overcoming obstacles. Race was decided as a classification employed to divide people in colonies, into those eligible for enslavement, and those able to escape bondage’s wrath.

The Civil War amendments freed slaves and were a step to equality, bringing disorder for both oppressed and oppressor. For a few years hence, within both southern and northern society, African Americans progressed as a community. However, to the white supremacist forces previously unquestioned by the federal government, such developments were intolerable. A new order, to the ascending previously oppressed, meant chaos to the former oppressors unwilling to adjust to a transformed society. While certainly some freed slaves were able to maximize opportunity after the Civil War, the numbers of freedmen and freedwomen who ascended multiple rungs of class was small, because United States white supremacy adapted. State laws passed superseded the 15thAmendment, which guaranteed the right to vote to all men. Statutes called Black Codes contributed to the atmosphere in the South called “Jim Crow,” named for a racist theater character played by a white man. When the 1876 presidential election ended essentially in a tie, very similar to that of 2000, the Republicans proposed to the Democrats, whose base then was southern white supremacy, that if candidate Samuel Tilden’s party allowed Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to serve as president, Republicans would remove all troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction, and enveloping black southern lives with threats of violent terrorism.

World War II’s quest for the allies to save the world from the Nazis and Empire of Japan awakened many to the realities that fellow citizens in the United States did not have the same freedoms they did; courts swung toward the oppressed. A landmark court case, Brown v. Board of Education, ended de jure school segregation by race in the United States. However, in any country three times the size of former British North America, practical transformation would take time to implement.

As the law changes, violators of moral reasoning behind such seek circuitous paths to ensuring their questionable, immoral, or amoral behaviors escape accountability. In 1956, two years after the unanimous Brown decision, argued successfully by future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, visions of maintaining segregationist superiority remained instilled in southern aristocracy’s worldviews. Following the first decision in Brown, a 1955 corollary called for desegregation to occur with “all deliberate speed,” much to the dismay of University of Virginia President Colgate Whitehead Darden Jr. Fortunately, from Darden’s perspective, the college president had just appointed James McGill Buchanan economics chairman. Buchanan would be instrumental in mobilizing university thought debates for decades forward.

Buchanan did not necessarily think that Brown was decided incorrectly. He did, however, believe that the wealthy should not be forced to fund programs they as individuals did not believe would benefit their interpretation of society. Therefore, if wealthy only view their own class as society, the most financially fortunate will not wish to fund programs, or schools, benefiting the poorest. UVA President Darden took advantage of this opportunity to intellectually argue against the long-term effects of successfully implementing the Brown decision – equal educational opportunity for black and white children nationally. Extending the same educational opportunities to all children could endanger the wealth gap among black and white families, ending white supremacy, a belief intrinsic in the unsuccessful arguments in the Brown case.

As discussions of costs for public service and relief persisted in national debate: “What animated Buchanan, what became the laser focus of his deeply analytic mind, was the seemingly unfettered ability of an increasingly more powerful federal government to force individuals with wealth to pay for a growing number of public goods and social programs they had had no personal say in approving.” Democracy in Chains author Nancy MacLean writes that Buchanan’s worldview came from a more libertarian age, before The New Deal, when government did very little, except “maintenance of order and military defense” (xxiii). “In [Buchanan]’s mind, to protect wealth was to protect the individual against a legalized form of gangsterism” (xiv).

Buchanan’s “public choice economics” (xxv), which claims that individuals have a legal right to withhold their taxes if they disagree with how any one of their tax dollars will be spent (xxiv), created a new wave in constitutional thought, spawning organizations including The Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, Citizens for a Sound Economy, and Americans for Prosperity.

The purpose of these organizations, funded by plutocrats including Charles and David Koch, Richard Mellon Scaife, Harry and Lynde Bradley, John M. Olin, and the Devos family (Mayer 4), is to finance political candidates who wish to “hobble unions, limit voting, deregulate corporations, shift taxes to the less well-off, and even deny climate change.” Though President Barack Obama sought to govern in a bipartisan way, such desire did not preclude the Koch brothers from spending a hundred million dollars in a “war against Obama” (MacLean xix). Constitutional activism to extract chaos from the lives of the less fortunate is the target of public choice economics and organizations which seek to undo not only the positive effects of Brown v. Board of Education, but more importantly gains of the Civil Rights Movement.

The objective of the crusade encompassing Buchanan’s academic brainchild, and organizations fed by plutocratic interests within the United States, advocates say, is “liberty.” Buchanan once told an interviewer the seemingly innocent: “I don’t want to control you and I don’t want to be controlled by you.” However, if a majority of taxpayers want to fund equal schools for all children, or criminal justice reform including fewer police and more mental health professionals responding to calls where violent force is not necessary, that majority should have a right to dictate to the minority, in a democracy.

Nancy MacLean, on Buchanan’s theory and political tree: “It’s architects have never recognized economic power as a tool of domination: to them, unrestrained capitalism is freedom.” Hobbling unions increases power of management, adding chaos to the lives of workers, just as maintaining slavery infected the lives of the enslaved with more work, and delaying African American emancipation from 1781 to 1865, after black Americans had fought for separation from England. MacLean: “For all its fine phrases, what this cause really seeks is a return to oligarchy, to a world in which both economic and effective political power are to be concentrated in the hands of a few,” (xxxiv). Trends in summer of 2022 indicate a growth in union membership, thus showing that people can rise up against the implementation of public choice economics and the effects of unregulated capitalism, if citizens are aware of the damages caused by plutocrats and libertarian economics.

MacLean implies that the quest to exemplify the positivity outlined in the United States’ founding documents has encountered consistent opposition from similar foes. Referring to the intellectual political movement begun by Buchanan, the scholar of social movements refers to Andrew Jackson’s vice president, John Calhoun, as its “lodestar” (xxxiv). Calhoun died in 1850 believing slavery to be a positive good for the United States; economically, “Calhoun was America’s first tactician of tax revolt, and arguably the nation’s most influential extremist” (1). If oligarchy rules, plutocratic oligarchs can effectively foster upheaval into the lives of all beneath them in the class ladder. Alterations to unregulated capitalism can create national order, if the privileged accept demotion, or do not have the power to attack ascendancy.

Since 1968, two successful presidential candidates have gained office, directly campaigning on stability represented by “Law and Order:” Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. In 1968, Nixon was able to capitalize on a stance softer than that of segregationist George Wallace, while courting a silent majority of white voters.

In the background, since 1936, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI had engaged in COINTELPRO, a program that surveilled United States leftists from 1936 to 1956; subsequently, in the early 1960s, the KKK was added to their list of state enemies. By the late 1960s, however, the Civil Rights Movement became COINTELPRO’s focus. As the antiwar movement peaked, the United States Federal Government’s unconstitutional program, begun unbeknownst to the president or attorney general (Donahue 1082):

 ‘Caused antiwar activists to be evicted from their homes; disabled their mail;

 wiretapped and bugged their conversations… prevented them from renting

facilities for meetings; incited police to harass them for minor offenses;

sabotaged and disrupted peaceful demonstrations; and instigated physical

assaults against them.’ The FBI conducted interrogations to ‘enhance the

paranoia in [Leftist] circles and ... to get the point across that there is an FBI

agent behind every mailbox.’ The organization extendedits interviews to the

workplace, where it questioned supervisors, as well asreligious organizations

 and neighborhoods (1083).

Therefore, since the New Deal, the United States government has spied on those perceived as enemies of stability, a term defined by a surreptitious federal law enforcement bureau. During the 1960s, COINTELPRO ensured that chaos pervaded the lives of activists seeking to end the Vietnam War.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a “war on drugs” began in the United States, leading to a massive increase in the prison population. Addiction is a disease, which by itself adds challenges to many drug users’ lives, but criminalizing drug use, especially for the poor and those of color, diffused waves of damage throughout populations deemed outside of Nixon’s perceived United States mainstream, the white middle class. In 2016, an interview given by then deceased former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman revealed that waging war on drug use and users was solely a political ploy to increase support among Nixon’s base, the “silent majority,” while attacking the allegedly lawless who consumed drugs, and protested military actions by a supposedly benevolent government.

“We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” Nixon had stated that the drug war was necessary because of an increase of heroin use and hallucinogens among students (LoBianco). The antiwar movement was creating disorder, to United States foreign policy hierarchy intent on staying in Vietnam. In response, those bestowed with government power spread havoc through the movement’s lives.

The war on drugs is a major factor in United States mass incarceration; only in Maine and Vermont can prison inmates vote, meaning most of those incarcerated lose the opportunity to have voice in their government. Lives and families have been ruined forever by the war on drugs, in the name of order. Only recently have senators and Congresspeople who voted for laws facilitating the massive increase in United States prison population begun admitting their mistakes; from Michelle Alexander’s 2012 revision of The New Jim Crow, on the effects of the drug war:

Drug offenses alone account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal

 inmate population, and more than half of the rise in state prisoners

from 1985 to 2000. Approximately a half-million people are in prison

or jail for a drug offense today, compared to an estimated 41,100 in

1980… drug arrests have tripled since 1980. As a result, more than 31

million people have been arrested for drug offenses since the drug war

began.

Regardless of the reason for incarceration, jailing creates disorder in a criminal defendant or a convict’s life. Chaos has subverted order for a tremendous percentage of United States residents: “There are more people in prisons and jails today just for drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980” (60).

Alexander explains how the Supreme Court first allowed more searching in 1968, but Justice William Douglass dissented in the case Terry v. Ohio, warning of a “slippery slope” (63-64). From 1982 to 1991, thirty seizures of drugs were contested at the court, and all but one were deemed constitutional (63). Police became emboldened by federal fund rewards for making drug arrests, to get more funds to do the same (73). SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) units proliferated, and to justify their existence, have engaged in raids when a quiet arrest will suffice. “Drug raids conducted by SWAT teams are not polite encounters,” featuring smoke grenades and pointing guns at young children – a disturbance that can cause psychological trauma to all, and physical trauma to the already infirm. Criminologist Peter Kraska has described 780 instances, from 1989 to 2001, of “flawed” SWAT interactions with people whom the officers should be protecting and serving. “Many of these cases involve people killed in botched raids” (75).

When engaging in questionable searching, not everybody is arrested. However, “Hardly anyone files a complaint, because the last thing most people want to do after experiencing a frightening and intrusive encounter with the police is show up at the police station where the officer works and draw more attention to themselves.”  Though not all targeted by the drug war are people of color, race is a focus of Alexander’s book, and, along with class, affects the extent to which people are willing to protest individual police actions at an officer’s workplace. “Many people – especially poor people of color, fear police harassment, retaliation, and abuse” (69).  Regardless of who uses drugs, police know that wealthy people would be far more likely to complain about being searched unreasonably – likely why stop-and-frisk, which enabled police in some cities to search people at will, was never implemented on Wall St. in New York City, instead pervading the lives of poor residents of color, effecting its unconstitutionality – years later. Support for criminal justice campaigns like the war on drugs occur, as Nixon and other shrewd politicians knew, because some privileged in a society see the other, threats to their status, as unruly, or a society’s de facto upper caste just understands the advantage to labeling threats as dangerous.  Hierarchy seeks to create chaos within the lives of those deemed threatening to ruling classes, which included the Nixon administration’s beginning of the drug war, and COINTELPRO’s targeting the antiwar movement and black activists. As the war on drugs persisted, the enemy of stability became criminals, focusing on the evils of drugs, as mass incarceration affected the entire country, predominating in communities of color. In 2022, the drug war appears to be subsiding some: evidence is legal marijuana, to varying degrees in many states. One example, Maine, has multiple cannibas dispensaries on some roads in major cities and small towns. However, mass incarceration, the domain of states, has yet to be addressed, even under an administration beginning to receive praise for its advances with a divided senate.

Many formerly incarcerated debate to themselves whether to dishonestly fill out job applications, considering leaving out checking the box admitting previous criminal convictions, if such a box is legal in their states. Only over the past decade have there been campaigns to “ban the box” in job applications, an attempt to prohibit such questions. Probation, parole, and other laws regulate former convicts’ lives as well, leading to recidivism of largely nonviolent offenders – a vicious circle of chaos in the person’s life, and those of his or her family members. “When someone is convicted of a crime today, their ‘debt to society’ is never paid” (Alexander 163). Therefore, comparisons between mass incarceration and chattel slavery have become more common.

Once slavery ended, the goal of sociological descendants of the slave power resembled the objective of the slave owners themselves – dictate to those seen as lesser, leaving the least powerful subject to whims of hierarchy. Before 1865, such could be accomplished legally, through ownership of other human beings. The commonality among 1860 slave owners and their political allies, and the billionaires funding The Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation is donors’ and southern nobility’s refusal to acquiesce to decreases in both economic might and accompanying societal influence. While the answer for the slave power was attempted secession, rather than accepting the future, the response of plutocrat think tank donors is to spend countless dollars to influence political candidates; at times even writing modeled bills candidates must support, to ensure that donations continue (Mayer 90; 346-347). Jane Mayer and Nancy MacLean know this is how democracy can die. With a midterm election coming in November of this year, and some candidates advocating that the 2020 language was fraudulent, many fear that if the United States Congress changes hands, no more free and fair elections will take place in the first North American nation. To the victors, this will be order, suppressing the majority. To those who want their majority voice to be heard, it will be chaotic, and oppressive, should the deniers of Joe Biden’s presidency gain control of Congress.

In analyzing the Civil War, historians claim that the conflict from 1776-1781, resulting in the Americas’ first nation state, left loose ends, what Martin Luther King would call order at the expense of justice. James McPherson’s Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution is one of many Civil War books analyzing the significance of the last war on United States soil within a national journey. As war ended, the southern interests had to evaluate how to retain their power, as chattel slavery ceased. Therefore, the ruling class experienced turmoil for a short time, but was able to recapture much of their status after Reconstruction.

Consequently, from the national founding of the United States, for the underprivileged, order often means continued subjugation, while upheaval can lead to ascendancy; in contrast, hierarchies appreciate stability, because chaos could cost status. In a society with any degree of capitalism, the exploited either seek to climb the economic and sociological ladders, while some seek greater systemic reform. Given how chaotic the Trump presidency was, in accordance with his loss in the popular vote, now may be one of those eras for the United States.

[Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think?]

September 9, 2022: APUSH Studying: High School History Heroes

[I’m not the only one gearing up for a new school year at the moment—so are my 11thand 10th grade (!!!) sons. That includes my 11th grader taking AP US History, a complicated and controversial and very AmericanStudies high school class. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of APUSH contexts—share your responses and your thoughts on all things high school US history for a crowd-sourced weekend post sure to make the honor roll!]

In lieu of my own words here, I wanted to end this series by paying quick tribute to just a few of the many amazing high school history teachers I’ve gotten to know through the #twitterstorians community. There are of course way more than this, and I’d love to share your nominees as part of that crowd-sourced weekend post!

Gotta start individually with Nicole Donawho, who when I first mentioned this blog series and my son’s upcoming APUSH class went above and beyond to share a ton of materials and resources from her own APUSH teaching experiences with me and him. Thanks, Nicole!

Next I’ll highlight two awesome educators whom I’ve been honored to have as Guest Posters on this blog: Ariella Archer & Tanya Roth.

Finally, just a handful more (and again, share more nominees please!), in alphabetical order ‘cause there ain’t no ranking these inspiring folks: Caris Adel, Sheila Billings, Matt D'Augustine, Rebecca Brenner Graham, Fiona Halloran, Angela Lee, Andrew Elliott McBurney, Samantha McCoy, Emily Elizabeth Slomski, Derek Tang, Tracey Thode, Katelyn Botsford Tucker, and Erika Weber.

Crowd-sourced post this weekend,

Ben

PS. So one more time: What do you think? Contexts or stories for APUSH or high school history you’d share? Great teachers you’d highlight?

September 8, 2022: APUSH Studying: The American Pageant

[I’m not the only one gearing up for a new school year at the moment—so are my 11thand 10th grade (!!!) sons. That includes my 11th grader taking AP US History, a complicated and controversial and very AmericanStudies high school class. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of APUSH contexts—share your responses and your thoughts on all things high school US history for a crowd-sourced weekend post sure to make the honor roll!]

On a frustratingly telling textbook controversy, and why it’s not the whole story.

I can’t be positive about this—I pride myself on my memory, but we’re talking a textbook from nearly thirty years ago!—but I’m pretty sure that my high school APUSH class used the same textbook my son will be using this year: The American Pageant. That certainly wouldn’t be a stretch, as the book’s 1stedition appeared in 1956, and it has gone through sixteen more editions since to arrive at the current 17th edition that his class will be using. That longevity and longstanding usage isn’t in and of itself necessarily an issue, as of course with each edition the text can be updated; and in this case the editors have changed, from its creator Thomas A. Bailey to (after Bailey’s 1983 death) a couple prominent contemporary historians David M. Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen, which only amplifies the potential for such revisions. But at the same time, I would argue that even with such changes over time, a nearly 70-year-old textbook is by its nature going to be a bit traditional, a bit staid, and perhaps at least a little bit conservative in its ideas.

Well, more than perhaps, as illustrated by a couple glaring details from the textbook’s 21stcentury editions. Historian James Loewen noted, in a 2011 critique of the 2006 13thedition, that the book included the South Carolina Declaration of Secession but used ellipses to cut entirely the (substantial) portions of that document which referred to slavery as a cause of secession. And more recently, historian Ibram X. Kendi highlighted some highly problematic language in the 2016 16th edition, including a reference to enslaved African Americans as “immigrants” and the sentence, “In the deeper South, many free blacks were mulattoes, usually the emancipated children of a white planter and his black mistress.” Loewen also noted a likely factor for such choices: “It is likely that [the publisher] took pains to avoid the subject [of slavery] lest some southern state textbook adoption board took offense.” That’s the particularly telling part of this controversy—that for a textbook to endure this long, through this many editions, it has to appeal to such adoption boards, and even before our current moment of attacks on historical education that too often meant avoiding any appearance of “revisionist” history.

Those factors haven’t gone away, and indeed have only ramped up over the last couple years (I shudder to think what American history textbooks produced in 2022 will look like). So I’ll admit that when I first paged through my son’s copy of The American Pageant, I was more than a bit worried about what I’d find. I’m sure there will be things with which I take issue or about which we talk to add some further context, but in truth, I found this 17th edition to be a significant improvement on the 16th. That’s true of its coverage of a specific historical issue like slavery, which now includes extensive quotations from foundational documents like the 1661 Barbados Slave Code (which influenced how the system of slavery developed throughout the English colonies). But it’s also true in the book’s broader representation of core questions like how we define America—Chapter 3, Settling the English Colonies, 1619-1700, ends with a two-page “Varying Viewpoints” section entitled “Boundaries or Borderlands in the Colonial Americas?” that thoughtfully presents distinct scholarly visions of culture, community, and nation in and around this period. There’s more to say to be sure, and I look forward to having those conversations with my son—with this new and improved version of The American Pageant as one of our guides.

Last APUSH context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Contexts or stories for APUSH or high school history you’d share? Great teachers you’d highlight?

September 7, 2022: APUSH Studying: Flaws and Limits

[I’m not the only one gearing up for a new school year at the moment—so are my 11thand 10th grade (!!!) sons. That includes my 11th grader taking AP US History, a complicated and controversial and very AmericanStudies high school class. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of APUSH contexts—share your responses and your thoughts on all things high school US history for a crowd-sourced weekend post sure to make the honor roll!]

On two elephants in the room when it comes to AP courses, and a way to respond to them.

By the end of high school, I had a running joke about the College Board/ETS employee who was enjoying a very nice (and quite lengthy) tropical vacation thanks to just the money I and my family had spent on standardized tests. There were plenty of tests that contributed to that armored car’s worth, but at the top of the list have to be the six AP Exams priced at over $70 a pop. I haven’t looked at the current costs (by this time next year I’ll know well, as my son is taking two AP classes next year), but I have to believe they have likely gone up significantly over these last 30 years. To put it bluntly (and a bit reductively to be sure), I think there are aspects of the AP system that are a scam (and I’m not alone in thinking it, as that hyperlinked article illustrates), or at the very least a racket (ditto). And even if there were ways to justify them, these substantive costs unquestionably make AP classes like APUSH less available to all American students than would be ideal.

The costs aren’t the only factor in that exclusionary issue: so is the standardized test that concludes APUSH (like all AP courses). I’m not talking here about the “teaching to the test” problem, although that is certainly a problem worth considering in any class which builds to a standardized test. No, I’m thinking here about the demonstrable racial and cultural biases in standardized tests as an educational and assessment tool, the ways in which they have long since been proven(and proven, and proven) to discriminate against students of color and other learning communities. That’s a problem with any and all standardized tests, and one of many reasons for example why so many colleges have begun moving away from them in admissions processes and decisions. But it’s doubly a problem when such a test is the overarching focus of an entire high school class—and triply a problem when we’re talking about a class like APUSH, that overtly focuses on historical and social and cultural subjects.

That last point might compound the problem, but I would also argue that it offers a way for APUSH teachers, students, and classes to respond to both of these interconnected problems. I know that they can’t ignore the AP Exam, and I’m not suggesting that they should—instead, I’m suggesting that they take a meta-testual (that’s my own term, and I kinda dig it) approach, thinking as part of the course about how the test itself offers a case study in these issues and themes of economics and class, of race and culture, of exclusion and inclusion. That doesn’t have to be the whole conversation, of course, but it can and should be part of the discussion, as a way to engage honestly and thoughtfully with the class’s own flaws and limits, and at the same time as a way to transcend them through (or at the very least utilize them to engage) the vital subjects that they, like every part of APUSH, exemplify.

Next APUSH context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Contexts or stories for APUSH or high school history you’d share? Great teachers you’d highlight?

September 6, 2022: APUSH Studying: The Evolving Framework

[I’m not the only one gearing up for a new school year at the moment—so are my 11thand 10th grade (!!!) sons. That includes my 11th grader taking AP US History, a complicated and controversial and very AmericanStudies high school class. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of APUSH contexts—share your responses and your thoughts on all things high school US history for a crowd-sourced weekend post sure to make the honor roll!]

On two particular details I would highlight about the Fall 2020 APUSH framework.

First things first: a significant part of the “controversy” over the last couple APUSH frameworks is, as it has been each time there have been such “debates,” manufactured by anti-education forces looking for any opportunity to attack and undermine public education in America. Those arguments are not made in the slightest bit of good faith, and to my mind the only appropriate and effective way to engage them is to point that out clearly and consistently. However, that doesn’t mean that the frameworks for a class like APUSH—perhaps the single most shared space in which high school students learn about American history—don’t represent a hugely important place to talk about how we teach US history, what is particularly included and foregrounded, what has changed over time, through what kinds of sources and documents the history gets taught, and so on. Obviously there’s way more in those topics than I’m able to engage in one blog post (or even a weeklong series), but I did want to take this opportunity to share a couple interesting details from the most recent such framework (which is at that first hyperlink above, and all of which is worth checking out for sure).

For the first, I want to lean into an aspect of the “controversy” question by examining the introductory section (on page 18) entitled “The Founding Documents.” The framework doesn’t state this in so many words, but there’s a clear underlying assumption throughout this section that APUSH teachers might or might not choose to “teach the founding documents and the ideas they express in depth during the course.” And that’s good! I know you might expect this (increasingly) grumpy old AmericanStudier to say that of course those documents and ideas need to be taught and analyzed, and I do believe that that’s the case. But I believe even more strongly that no subject or source for this class (or any class) should be taken for granted—that it’s crucial to think openly and critically about every possible subject and source, especiallythose that might seem obvious or given. I really appreciate that before the authors of this framework get into the specifics, they create a space for that conversation about what might seem to be the most obvious such subjects/sources for APUSH, making the case for engaging them but also making clear that teachers and students alike can and should be part of that conversation and decision.

The second detail I want to highlight is about the Course Content section, and specifically about how the Units/Periods are organized (as illustrated in the Table of Contents on page 27). I really, really love the definitions of, as well as the overlap and relationship between, Unit 5 (Period 5: 1844-1877) and Unit 6 (Period 6: 1865-1898). Unit 5 does a great job exploding the over-emphasis on the Civil War, thinking about slavery and abolition through the lenses of the pre-war period as well as Reconstruction (and including the latter as part of that history, rather than the afterthought it far too often is presented as). Unit 6 does start with the end of the Civil War but smartly concludes with the year of the Wilmington coup and massacre (among other histories) to think through the post-war rise of white supremacy and exclusion. And as much as I appreciate those individual definitions, I think I’m an even bigger fan of the fact that there’s that dozen years of overlap between the two Units/Periods—it would be certainly understandable to create a fully chronological group of sections for a class like this, but history isn’t nearly so cleanly divided, and overlapping the Units allows for students to think through such interconnections as they move across the APUSH course content.  

Next APUSH context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Contexts or stories for APUSH or high school history you’d share? Great teachers you’d highlight?

September 5, 2022: APUSH Studying: Mrs. Frankel

[I’m not the only one gearing up for a new school year at the moment—so are my 11thand 10th grade (!!!) sons. That includes my 11th grader taking AP US History, a complicated and controversial and very AmericanStudies high school class. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of APUSH contexts—share your responses and your thoughts on all things high school US history for a crowd-sourced weekend post sure to make the honor roll!]

On a small moment that reveals two layers to what makes a great history teacher.

I was fortunate enough to have a number of phenomenal teachers during my four years at Charlottesville High School, including Proal Heartwell and all those I wrote about in this tribute post. To some degree I’ve written about those teachers in particular not just because they were all great (although yes for sure), but also because I have had individualized enough experiences with them (both during high school and in some cases afterward) that I really got to know them well on a more personal level. That wasn’t the case with my AP US History teacher in 11th grade, Mrs. Frankel (I don’t even remember her first name and haven’t been able to find it online). But I have nothing but the fondest memories for that class and year, and would connect them to one seemingly small but very telling moment: interesting the July 1905 Niagara Falls convention that launched The Niagara Movement, Mrs. Frankel said “Niagara Falls” dramatically and then paused…waiting for someone (indeed for me specifically, she noted once I delivered) to add, “Slowly I turned…step by step…”

Again, a small moment, and a deeply silly one at that (I’m quite sure it was the only time, then or since, that I’ve had any occasion to quote The Three Stooges in any class). But the silliness itself is one of the two things I want to use this moment to highlight about what made both Mrs. Frankel’s teaching and her class so successful. APUSH is one of those classes that has a reputation for being extremely challenging—that was true back in the early 1990s, and it’s even truer today, as my son has heard horror stories about the workload and late nights and so on. To some degree those characteristics are likely inevitable, and it certainly was one of my most difficult high school classes and I imagine will be the same for my son. But one of my most defining beliefs as a teacher is that the tone of a class can go a long way toward making the dynamic less challenging and more welcoming, even (perhaps especially) if the workload and expectations remain the same. Even though I only remember this one moment specifically, I have a very clear sense that Mrs. Frankel created precisely such a warm and welcoming tone overall, and it made a huge difference in my experience of APUSH (and perhaps my deepening interest in all things AmericanStudying).

On that last note, I would also argue that this seemingly small moment reveals an important truth about not just teaching overall, but history education in particular. APUSH has long been (and to at least a degree I’m sure remains) a class that can be far too easily associated with the most mundane form of history education, the kind that’s about learning and memorizing and regurgitating a large collection of facts and figures, details and dates. The Niagara conference is an example: remembering the July 1905 dates, remembering the group of individuals (including W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter) who took part, remembering the facts about the subsequent Niagara Movement conferences held elsewhere, and so on. I’m sure we learned those things in APUSH, and that I remembered them well enough for the assessments in that class and the end of year AP Exam alike. But that’s not what history is, and it’s not what makes history classes memorable and successful. For that, we need the human side, the stories, the significance, and, yes, the silliness. My APUSH had plenty of all of those, and while they might not have showed up on the exam, they and their excellent teacher have stuck with me long after that standardized test has faded.

Next APUSH context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Contexts or stories for APUSH or high school history you’d share? Great teachers you’d highlight?

September 3-4, 2022: Other Fall Updates

[This week we start a new semester, one I desperately hope will feel a bit more settled and positive than the last few. To that end, for my annual Fall previews I’ve highlighted something I’m especially looking forward to in each class, leading up to this weekend update on my current book project and other Fall plans!]

First things first: the update on Two Sandlots: Baseball, Bigotry, and the Battle for America continues to be of the “watch this space” variety. My awesome agent Suzy Evans and I are working diligently to find a home for the book, and I promise y’all will be the first to know when I’ve got good news to share!

But as ever, that’s only one of the many irons in my Fall fire, and in particular I wanted to highlight and invite y’all to a couple of upcoming events put on by organizations I’m very proud to remain part of and active in:

--On Tuesday 9/27 at 4pm, my Scholars Strategy Network Boston co-leaders Natasha Warikoo and Tiffany Chenault and I will be hosting a Zoom conversation about the MA Fair Share Amendment. State legislators, activists, and educators will all be part of the conversation—register here to join us!

--And on Saturday 11/12, the New England American Studies Association will host its Fall 2022 Colloquiumat Clark University in Worcester. I’m so glad that the NEASA Colloquiums, which I created way back in 2011, continue, and hope you’ll join us to talk all things diversity, equity, and inclusion—in the classroom, in American Studies, in New England, and beyond!

Please feel free to reach out, here or by email, with any questions about either of these events!

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What are you working on this Fall?

September 2, 2022: Fall Semester Previews: Adult Learning Classes

[This week we start a new semester, one I desperately hope will feel a bit more settled and positive than the last few. To that end, for my annual Fall previews I’ll highlight something I’m especially looking forward to in each class, leading up to a weekend update on my current book project!]

This past Spring semester, I dedicated my courses for the ALFA and WISE adult learning programs to my book in progress Two Sandlots (on which more this weekend). As I wrote in that reflection, the experience was everything I hoped it would be and more, and has powerfully informed my continued work on that project. So this Fall I’ll be doing something similar, but even more foundational—dedicating my classes for those two programs to my planned next book, which I won’t have begun at all pre-courses. That book is tentatively titled “Our boasted civilization is but a thin veneer”: How White Supremacy Erodes the American Ideals It Claims to Love, and will look at a wide range of historical, cultural, and contemporary subjects, from our Revolution/Framing to education, immigration, and the right to vote to home ownership, family and children, and hard work. Haven’t decided exactly how to slice those for these adult ed courses, but I know no matter what that their conversations and students will immeasurably influence and inspire my continued thinking and planning for book 8!

Book update this weekend,

Ben

PS. Classes or other things you’re looking forward to this Fall?

September 1, 2022: Fall Semester Previews: American Lit II Online

[This week we start a new semester, one I desperately hope will feel a bit more settled and positive than the last few. To that end, for my annual Fall previews I’ll highlight something I’m especially looking forward to in each class, leading up to a weekend update on my current book project!]

As I wrote about in my Semester Recap post at the end of my section of American Literature II Online last Fall, despite having taught at least one all-online course every semester for 8 years now, I think I continue to improve a lot when it comes to things like feedback and communication and student engagement. That trend certainly keeps me excited for my next such online-only courses, which is a good thing as that type of class is becoming more and more an option that the FSU administration wants us to offer (and that at least certain cohorts of our students unquestionably want to take, and have likewise become better at navigating successfully I’ve found). But I’m particularly excited for this section because I’m finally trying to work in the way in which I’ve always ended my in-person Am Lit II courses—asking students to share authors/artists who have been meaningful to them, as a way to get our 21st century identities and perspectives into the conversation. In place of final readings and Blackboard responses, I’ll be asking students to share such an author/artist and a particular work of theirs in an ungraded last BB post, and can’t wait to read and learn from all their highlights!

Last preview post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Classes or other things you’re looking forward to this Fall?