A friend wrote the other day and asked me if I’d ever read anything by Stuart Archer Cohen. I fear for my friend’s mind, because just two years ago … on her recommendation … I read Cohen’s The Army of the Republic and sent her a copy of my brief review, which I’ll repost here:
For the past two years I’ve been seriously thinking about what American working people might do if the government allows employers to destroy labor unions and cancel pension obligations. I’ve been entertaining fantasies of assassination teams composed of unemployed and retired auto workers picking off high-profile CEOs and top government officials.
The world of The Army of the Republic features unrestrained capitalism and a Bush-like corporate government busily going after the few freedoms remaining to the American people, opposed by groups of loosely-organized militants and civil dissenters, playing out in front of a public that cares only about its own immediate comfort, perfectly willing to live under a dictatorship so long as the government leaves them to watch their reality shows in peace, with a Rush Limbaugh-like talk radio host and a Fox News-like Channel America screaming out government propaganda 24/7.
Narration shifts between three points of view: that of a militant, a civic organizer, and a corporate CEO. As the story progresses the three narrators become increasingly intertwined. They think about their actions, they waver in their commitments, they grow. Many books fascinate us, but how many both fascinate us and make us want to take to the streets? Not damn many. This is a brilliant and inspiring book.
My friend went on to talk about the Atlanta school testing scandal, which has been in the news recently, recounting a couple of her own experiences with people and institutions cheating to satisfy quotas and requirements.
Not much of a connection between a book about a fictional American uprising and a school cheating scandal, you say? Not to my fevered mind! Here’s my reply to my friend:
How do I know S.A. Cohen? You introduced me to him!
Re Atlanta: Arizona too has standardized testing for high school seniors. Of course this was done by right-wing legislators on the basis of AM hate radio anecdotes, and was really initially directed at Mexican-American students. But once mandatory testing started, every high school in the state became a test-teaching institution, since jobs and funding clearly depended on good average scores.
A few years later the legislature passed a bill to eliminate teacher tenure or seniority as a consideration in promotion, hiring, and retention (the bill was written by lobbyists working for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Koch Brothers-sponsored group that writes pro-business model legislation for members to introduce in their state houses).
Today school districts with lower than average test scores have adopted what they call “transformational models,” a lovely Orwellian phrase which translates into firing teachers who are getting close to retirement and the pensions they’ve paid into their entire careers. These teachers go to the back of the line for rehiring since their seniority no longer counts for anything. All the teachers’ unions can do is squawk … they don’t have a leg to stand on.
I remember reading about Stalin’s quotas in The Gulag Archipelago. When you have to find 2,000 enemies of the state every week, by golly, you find them. When your job depends on students passing a standardized test, you’re going to make sure they pass. Metrics come in, honesty goes out. Anyone unwilling or not competent enough to cheat winds up in some literal or figurative Siberia.
The brilliant part of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s model legislation? It goes hand in glove with ALEC’s anti-immigrant legislation, which Arizona also adopted and turned into law. Now we can transfer the teachers’ pension money to the governor’s private prison industry pals (a division of Koch Brothers Industries).
Fuck yeah I read Stuart Archer Cohen.
“Metrics come in, honesty goes out.” My spouse and partner has long had a saying about computers (and some of the people who use them) that’s not dissimilar: Garbage in, gospel out. After all, if it’s in the computer it must be right, right? Equivalent to “If it’s in print, it must be true.” Which is extended to the Internet: “But I read it on the Internet, so it must be true.”
How about this for a new credibility rule: If you can verify a fact from three independent, mutually exclusive sources, you think about believing. The new for daily life is: Everybody lies.
Regarding which, note that Hydrolyze is still pushing their phony eye cream hard on television again. Only their free sample actually signs you up for a very expensive subscription program. So, before you take anyone up on any free sample of anything, first ask yourself, “Where’s their money coming from?” We know it’s not by giving out free samples. Someone’s paying for those television ads. How much do you want to bet it’s you?
P. T. Barnum, if transplanted to our times, would have to change his favorite line, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” to something like, “Every one’s a sucker. You just need to find their weakness.” And, lord knows, we all have our weaknesses. I hate having to tell people they can no longer believe what they see, hear, or read, but we’re getting to that point. When even David Darling tells me something he heard on the radio, I usually have to go check my more reliable online sources.
For checking on social and economic issues: The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
For checking on possible scams, rumors, and any other stories that seem to good or to perfect to be true: Snopes.com.
For checking on computer offers: PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice reviews at http://www.pcmag.com.
For buying big ticket items: http://www.consumerreports.com.
Paul can probably add some more. Maybe this blog should have a standing list of believable sources.
The lies these days are coming at us so fast, it’s just downright disheartening. Reminds me of a verse from a gorgeous song by Leonard Cohen:
We were fighting in Egypt
When they signed this agreement,
That nobody else had to die.
There was a terrible sound
And my father went down
With a terrible wound in his side.
He said “Try to go on,
Take my books, take my gun,
Remember, my son, how they lied.”
And the night comes on,
It’s very calm,
I’d like to pretend
That my father was wrong,
But you don’t want to lie,
Not to the young.
From what I can tell these days, lying has become the new national pasttime.
And, by the way, some of us whose two-year-old memories may be a little shaky, might still have reasonably serviceable minds, upon which we dislike the casting of aspersions.
Aw, Reliza, no one knew who I was talking about until you identified yourself! You know I resist using smiley faces, but in this case perhaps I should have used one to indicate I was not passing aspersions, but was instead fondly reflecting on a dear friend’s sudden and calamitous slide into senility 😉
“Sudden and calamitous slide into senility?” What happened to say, “A welcome, if gradual, return to acuity after a long illness”? And, yes, you are now well and fully entered in the dangerous pasttime of aspersion casting. And, besides, I think you’re using the wrong fly. Might one recommend something a little more delicate? Perhaps with more feathers and fewer barbs?