A Liberal Dose, August 24, 2023 "Politicians, Libraries, Schools, and the Power of Knowledge"

 

A Liberal Dose

August 24, 2023

Troy D. Smith

“Politicians, Libraries, Schools, and the Power of Knowledge”

 

I am starting off this week with another academic deep dive, but -as you will see -it has direct relevance to what is going on right now politically.

For the past several decades, people attending grad school programs in the humanities -in any field -have been heavily exposed to the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault (pronounced foo-ko), one of the most influential thinkers of the late 20^th century. Foucault wrote about the connections between knowledge and power, and about the role control plays in those connections. Control, he argued, comes from surveillance and discipline. In other words, people in power (in the modern world) keep close watch on everyone else, control what they know and what they think, and punish them if they get out of line by thinking/saying something that is not the official doctrine. Control the narrative and you control knowledge. Control knowledge and you maintain power. This process, Foucault said, comes through modern institutions like prisons, factories, and schools, the goal being to produce people who are easily controlled.

And that brings us to Florida and Ron DeSantis, and all the red-state politicians who are following his lead.

They want to control what you read in the library. They want nothing there that does not conform to their specific political ideology. They want nothing there that could lead anyone to even question their specific political ideology.

They want to control what your kids are taught about in school -even in college, where those “kids” are legal adults with minds of their own. They especially want to control what students are taught about in history classes, and how it is presented to them. A couple of good examples came to light last month in new Florida guidelines for middle school history.

One of the new guidelines states that students must be taught that slavery benefited some black people because it taught them useful skills. Not only is this stupid -how do “useful skills” benefit you if you are a slave, if you are still a slave no matter how “useful” you are? -it is patently offensive. The same guidelines stated that, essentially, “both sides” must be represented when teaching about the massacres of black people by white mobs in 1910s/1920s Florida. Because a handful of black people tried to defend themselves, the lessons must stress that there was violence “by and against” black people. Well, gee, that makes it sound like there was fault on both sides, and if there even was racism it must’ve been both ways… which sounds a lot like absolving the white rioters for their hateful actions. And that “useful skills” business… gee, that sounds like slavery wasn’t really all bad, and even had some benefits.

As a historian, I am compelled to point out (whether politicians want me to or not) that these are the same kinds of things used to defend slavery before the Civil War.

Those are just a couple of recent, egregious examples. I could go on and on. But what is the end game?

The end game is to make those historical facts -if they in any way inconvenience or embarrass contemporary white conservatives -disappear as if they never happened. A couple of generations of this kind of education, and that is exactly what will happen. And if no one can point out the mistakes of the past, because no one has been taught about them… no one can challenge the actions of politicians in the present, or be socially aware enough to try to stop them from doing whatever they want to.

Every week, my friend John admonishes all of you to “think for yourselves.” Yet it is conservative politicians who are working overtime to deny you the tools to do that, thereby manipulating you into accepting their ideology (or else) because it is the only one presented to you.

Academics have a word for that. Foucauldian.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, August 17, 2023 "Learn from the Cycles of History"

 

A Liberal Dose

August 17, 2023

Troy D. Smith

“Learning from the Cycles of History”

 

I appreciate those of you who humored me over the summer as I did a historical and sociological deep dive on these pages. I will soon get back to responding to current political events, but there is one more “history nerd” topic I want to discuss first. To wit, a new book that is making a lot of waves: “End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration” by Peter Turchin.

Back in 2010, several media sources were asking scientists to predict what the next decade would bring. Most of the prognostications were pretty rosy, but Turchin’s stood out as different. He predicted that, according to his calculations, the U.S. was due for a major political upheaval. By 2020, he said, there would be an “unprecedented collapse of social norms governing civilized discourse” leading to a decade (the 2020s) of violent rhetoric and action.

I’d say he called it.

Turchin was born in the Soviet Union, and his family defected to the U.S. when he was young. He grew up to be a professor specializing in environmental mathematics. Specifically, early in his career, his work consisted of looking at population trends of predators and prey to see what that could tell us about a specific environment. After the USSR’s collapse, he started wondering if the same principles could apply to human societies. In the late 90s, he and several colleagues started working on a project that involved building a massive database of historical facts concerning nations and states around the world, over thousands of years. They were then able to use computers to determine trends.

We’ve all heard the expression “history repeats itself.” I prefer another quote: “history doesn’t really repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” That is, history never repeats itself in the exact same way, as there are too many variables (see “chaos theory”)… but, in the aggregate, you can often discern themes and trends (see “complex system theory”). That is what Turchin and company endeavor to do. The book is an explanation of their methodology, and -of more concern to the lay reader -what they discovered.

Every society has elites and non-elites (common folk, if you will). There are four kinds of elites: military, political, economic, and ideological. Societies function well when there are a small number of elites, working toward the benefit of the common people. Things start to fall apart when the elites take more for themselves, thus depriving the common people and causing them to suffer. Turchin calls this a “wealth pump.” It causes increasing discontent among the people. At the same time, as more resources flow to the top (and away from the bottom), there is not enough to go around to keep everyone at the top happy, leading to an “overproduction of elites.” When these two factors both happen -discontent and “immiserated” common folk and a class of wannabe-elites for whom there are not enough elite spots to fill -things fall apart. Turchin argues that our current situation of income inequality (almost at the level it was right before the great stock market crash of 1929) paired with overproduction of law degrees, proliferation of social media political figures, and other factors, has set the stage for discord. He also argues that this tends to happen about every fifty years: one generation experiences it, the next generation learns from it, and the next generation forgets all about it and repeats the same mistakes.

By the way, I hate to keep harping on Bacon’s Rebellion, but… angry poor people and some frustrated rich guys who were cut out of what they considered their rightful due led to that incident. Just saying.

The bad news is, when societies reach this stage they usually either topple or have to weather a destructive period, even civil war. The good news is, it can be avoided if people listen to the warning.

Which no one ever does. 

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, August 10, 2023 "Waving Goodbye to Waving Hello?"

 

A Liberal Dose

August 10, 2023

Troy D. Smith

“Waving Goodbye to Waving Hello?”

 

Most of y’all know I was born and raised in White County. I love my hometown, and I missed it during the years I was gone. I left in 2005 for grad school in Illinois, and returned in 2011 with a Minnesotan-raised wife. Soon after we got here, we were sitting on the front porch of the farmhouse we were renting, watching the occasional cars go by. Every driver waved at us, and I waved back. “Who was that?” my wife would ask, and I’d usually respond, “I have no idea.” Because that’s just what we do here. It’s what we have always done. Often it is not a full-handed wave, but one or two fingers lifted in greeting from the steering wheel, or sometimes a nod of the head.

I remember, twenty years ago, when I would leave my White County home and drive to Crossville to clean a couple of stores in the mornings, then drive to Jamestown to clean another (and then head to Cookeville to attend class at Tech). I noticed the difference then. When I left Sparta and got to Crossville -which is much bigger and has a significant number of retirees from outside the South -the waves stopped. Then, when I left Crossville and started getting closer to Jamestown, they would resume.

I had a little culture shock moving to the Midwest in 2005 -even though, as a young man, I had briefly lived in New York City and South Florida. I think this is because I had expected people to be rude in those other places, some New Yorkers are even proud of it (and a lot of Floridians are retired New Yorkers). But the Midwest? They’re proud of how polite they are… but it didn’t seem that way to me, or to most of the fellow transplanted Southerners I ran into there. I remember the weird stares I got from strangers when I waved to them, or simply made eye contact and nodded, as we passed on the sidewalk. Even people I knew seemed irritated when I passed them on the street and felt socially obligated to chat with them for just a moment, because I was slowing them down. I remember how surprised I was when people walking ahead of me let doors slam in my face, or when teen-aged store workers -when I gave them my credit card -called me by my first name instead of mister or sir. So, where friendliness was concerned, I was glad to get back home.

But I have noticed a change in the last few years. No one waves from their car anymore, even when I wave at them first (which I make a conscious effort to do). Salespeople and vendors seem less friendly, more impersonal. Students who’ve worked for years as servers tell me even they have noticed customers becoming ruder than they used to be -including older people. This breaks my heart. I think there are a lot of factors at work. For four years, we had a president who made it acceptable (even preferable) to be coarse, rude, profane, and ugly -some people now perceive that as a sign of strength. We’ve also had a lot of people move in, many because they like our friendly, laid-back atmosphere -but they don’t know or participate in our customs which make it that way. That’s especially sad, because -welcome as they are -some are unknowingly helping to change that atmosphere into what they left. Having been there, I recognize it happening. And it's happening with locals as well as new arrivals.

This is NOT me discouraging new people from moving into our area, nor am I casting a wide net -I could list dozens and dozens of newer folks from other regions who are wonderful people and excellent additions. What I AM saying is that maybe all of us -whether we are from here or not -should return to those friendly traditions.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, August 3, 2023 "Dispossessing the Poor, Part 9: Tying It All Together"

 

A Liberal Dose

August 3, 2023

Troy D. Smith

“Dispossessing the Poor, Part 9- Tying It All Together”

 

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

I realize I still need to wrap this series up and tie it all together. I need a coda, if you will. First, I will briefly summarize the whole series of columns, distilling it down into a single paragraph.

From the beginning of the Modern Era (which historians identify as the 16^th century), which was also the beginning of a global economy with the discovery (by Europeans) of the New World, efforts have been made by the “big shots” to force the poor and working classes out of any semblance of self-sufficiency and make them, instead, part of the economic system. Their role in that system, assigned by the people making the rules, has been to become laborers, working as hard as they can be made to work for as little payment as possible. This has often been done by making sure hunger and want run rampant among them, so they have to scramble to stay alive. Any efforts to maintain autonomy in the face of that economic system, such as by Native Americans or rural Appalachians, has led to such groups being “othered” and dispossessed, ostensibly “for their own good.” Racism has long been a tool, as well, pitting the poor and working classes against each other to prevent them from uniting to seek their mutual benefit. I gave several examples, from the Rainbow Coalition to indigenous culture, to demonstrate that unity CAN be achieved, and can work, which is why the powers-that-be try so hard to prevent it.  

I have acknowledged that the Democratic Party has its issues. One of which, in my opinion, is that they are way too attached to Wall Street. But that does not mean they are “just as bad” as the modern Republican Party (which has spiraled way downward from what it used to be). That is a false equivalency. The GOP stokes up the fears of its base, to the point of paranoia (ratcheted into overdrive by the administration of Donald Trump). Distracting white poor, working class, and middle-class voters with horror stories about black people, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and “wokeness,” they seek -just like the Civil War-era plantation owners -to solidify their own power and privilege by hoodwinking that white working class into fighting for them, when they would discard them in a heartbeat once they no longer needed them. That has been clearly demonstrated. And it is especially true of the South and Appalachia. Have you not seen the way Trump and his ilk have talked down to and made fun of you out one side of their mouths, even as they stroke your egos out the other?

Studies have shown -and those paying attention are not surprised to learn -that trickle-down economics does not work. It never has worked. By the way, in the 19^th century it was known as the horse-and-sparrow theory- don’t waste time feeding sparrows, give all the seed to your horse and the sparrows can pick out what they need to survive from his poop. Yet people still believe it when conservative politicians tell them “lower taxes on the rich, and you will all benefit!” We know who benefits -and that’s what it is all about. History shows that, over the past century, when taxes on the wealthy were at their highest, the middle and working classes prospered the most because income inequality was leveled. All the smoke-and-mirrors around “wokeness” and social issues serve only to stir up the base… to elect politicians who will lower taxes on the rich (even more) and lessen regulations on businesses, and make things even harder for the working class. If you know your Shakespeare, it is the voice of Iago, manipulating you to your downfall (“Aye, sire, but what about her emails?”).

Remember your Appalachian heritage. Remember the “redneck” coal miners who stood up against the man. Don’t let the bigshots use you until they use you up.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE