When Censorship Backfires and the Toll of Opiates

I have reflected here and elsewhere about my recent-ish turn away from social media. I didn’t like the way it was warping my brain; I didn’t like how much time I spent on it; I didn’t like how often it made me angry about the state of the world. Algorithmic social media feeds are designed to keep you (doom-)scrolling. At some point I had enough: first of FB, then of Insta, and most recently of Twitter. If you care to hear more, I talked about this with Alyson Klein in a recent pair of pieces from Education Week, here and here.

Instead, I have subscribed to a handful of blogs by writers I trust. In some ways, I have gone back in time and am now experiencing the internet 2013 style, largely via RSS feeds on Feedly (RIP Google reader). I feel more in control of what I'm consuming and less like I'm being manipulated algorithmically.

Today, I wanted to share a few things that I think are worth reading. I may do this on a regular basis, I may not. One thing I like about this period of my life is that I am genuinely doing what I want and creating new habits and patterns. It’s like a good midlife crisis. Instead of buying a dumb sportscar or motorcycle, I am changing my information and news consumption habits.

Clive Thompson on how a Chinese streamer was censored for showing a cupcake that looked kinda like a tank. I’ve always been fascinated by how much Americans are obsessed with China’s censorship of discussions of the Tiananmen Square protests (and state suppression that followed). What China did was clearly terrible. It’s also morally indistinguishable from the National Guard’s murder of students at Kent State or the assault on Black Wall Street in Tulsa. Notably, the discussion of these and other incidents of state violence (like the Wilmington Coup) are often suppressed or unwelcome in US schools. It’s obviously not the same level of censorship as China but the intention of the regime in both cases is the same. The Tiananmen Square massacre is just out of living memory for Chinese millennials but the state’s dramatic efforts to suppress knowledge of the events has led to people accidentally discovering the protests, the so-called Streisand Effect. I hope that recent teacher censorship laws passed in many US states will backfire in the same way. 

The scope of the opiate crisis is insane and it has killed an unfathomable amount of people over my adult lifetime. I am in the final pages of Beth Macy’s Dopesick. It is a Michael Lewis-esque work of narrative nonfiction about the US opiate crisis and the extent to which it was foreseeable, preventable, and driven by corporate greed. The data Macy brings to the table is staggering: 

• Over 100,000 people per year overdose in the US; that’s over 2,700 people (or a 9/11 every day);

• We are less than 5% of the global population and consume over 30% of the world’s opioids; 

• In 2010, enough opioids were prescribed in the US to medicate every man, woman, and child in America—24 hours a day—for a month;

• As early as the year 2000, pharmaceutical companies were spending $4,000,000,000 on direct marketing to doctors to induce the doctors to write more prescriptions for drugs, in particular opioids.

Like gun violence, for reasons of general dysfunction, campaign contributions by industry, and regulatory capture, the US is largely alone in struggling with this issue. These are self-inflicted societal wounds. The book is enraging because warnings from clinicians and advocates as early as the 1990s were ignored by regulators and pharmaceutical companies.

Lastly, Melissa Santos on the State Democratic Party Chair bullying State House members for supporting a more experienced and progressive candidate. For my people in Washington, in the aftermath of the recent midterms the tea is coming out about the State Democratic Party Chair, Tina Podlodowski. The short of it is that Podlodowski is deeply pissed that some progressives were supporting non-partisan candidate Julie Anderson for Secretary of State. We discussed this issue on a recent episode of my podcast and Santos covered it in Axios, including screenshots of texts where Podlodowski threatened to cut off house members who didn’t toe the line.  Saying to one, "this is bullshit — apparently the House thinks so little of the Democratic Party … we can spend our resources elsewhere." We all understand the nature of political parties but it’s really dumb to see someone go to the mattresses against fellow progressives, especially in defense of Steve Hobbs, who is less progressive than Anderson and was basically the Joe Manchin of the State Senate.

On a more personal note, we are well over here. This weekend Hope and I are in Al Ain visiting her sister Faith. We stumbled on a local Emirati handicraft festival, had some great Ethiopian and Moroccan food, and I’m looking forward to the opening of the World Cup this weekend. 

See you next week.

A Shanghai Travelogue: On the Merits of Dumplings, Debate, and Democracy

I have history with Zhōngguó, the Middle Kingdom, enough so that when word got out last winter we were departing the states, many people assumed we were China-bound. In 2018, we hosted two Chinese exchange students: Bob and Wong. I got a dose of being a dad for a moment; it cemented for me that I’m not cut out for parenthood. In the summers of 2014 and 2015, on the invitation from a visiting professor, we went to Chengdu in Sichuan Province to teach Chinese students in a summer program. I taught a blend of US history, American college culture and knowledge, and some theater. Each time before we began our teaching, we flew into a different city and traveled overland for three weeks. We spent time in Beijing, Xi’an, Hong Kong, and Macau. 

After our second trip to China in 2015, my school hosted a visit from President Xi and I hosted him for a lecture in my Government class. He spoke to my students via a translator -- it was surreal. If you think an urban high school is a stressful place, toss a phalanx of armed Chinese and US Secret Service into the mix. I’ve opined on that experience previously, but I continue to be struck by a line in his talk: “If you want to time travel, go to China. Go to Xi’an and see the Terracotta Warriors to understand the world 1000 years ago. If you want to go 500 years in the past, go to Beijing and see the Dragon Throne and the Forbidden City. But if you want to see the future, go to Shanghai.” 

Last week I took up his offer and made my third trip to China. As chaperones, I and a colleague accompanied a travel team of thirteen students from our school’s Model United Nations Program to Concordia International School for their Model UN conference, heretofore, CISSMUN. For the unfamiliar, Model UN is the international school equivalent of US high school debate. Over three days students… rather delegates... researched and wrote resolutions on various topics that they presented to committees to be debated, amended, and voted up or down. At this conference, there were committees on human rights (HRC), world criminal justice (ICJ), global health (WHO), economic and social matters (ECOSOC), and disarmament. Students took on roles representing various states. The conference had over 1000 delegates, from over 75 schools all over African, Asia, and Oceania. It’s a fascinating environment, an ocean of pant-suits and blazers. It felt like the NFL combine for aspiring lawyers, diplomats, and NGO workers.

CISSMUN was hosted by Concordia, a Christian K-12 international school, in an expat enclave in the city. We took an overnight flight from Abu Dhabi and landed in Shanghai at ten am. Y’all, Downtown Shanghai is Blade Runner. At CISSMUN, students did homestays with local families (awesome), so I was relieved of the usual hotel bed checks in the evening (more awesome). In my off-time, I checked all the usual Nate boxes: small talk about politics, knife-cut noodles, beef noodle soup, Shanghai dumplings (xiaolongbao), and several wanders through unfamiliar neighborhoods while listening to podcasts.

I was struck by the nature of my students’ task and how they rose to the occasion; Model UN is an amazing way for students to learn about the world. Writing resolutions requires regional specific knowledge, an understanding of recent history and international law, and the ability to present your findings in an organized, compelling manner. I had several students in my delegation who are veterans of MUN, including several who chaired sessions and were main submitters of resolutions. I think it is such a smart way of preparing students for life in an increasingly complicated world. 

I especially appreciate the skill-set they are developing when contrasted to the HS debate experience. No shade or smoke to debate coaches out there, but Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson are champion debaters. In a debate, students are often competing, rather than cooperating and sophistry is rewarded because a person willing to lie or make stuff up has an innate advantage over a person making evidence-based arguments. In Model UN, students all have a laptop in front of them. They fact-check each other in real-time and will pounce on non-sense and resolutions lacking evidence. On day two I watched a student from Hong Kong, with an Australian accent, representing Argentina, demand specificity on a human trafficking resolution, while sipping a juice box -- like a boss.

China’s human rights record is notably complicated (and the fact my student from Pakistan was unable to obtain a visa was a frustration to me). But on this trip, I heard Chinese students talk about the importance of tolerance, defend religious freedom, and call for protection of human rights. They overtly addressed their country’s domestic politics. Like my American students and my students in the Emirates, they want to build a more just and equitable future for their states. I can mess with that.

On Hosting President Xi at Lincoln High School

One of the things that I really enjoy about teaching is the relative anonymity of the profession. We are public servants, but not public figures. I couldn’t imagine working in sales, marketing or politics where I was constantly meeting new people or trying to sell myself (in fact, the idea of that just gave me a chill). As a teacher at Lincoln, I work with a relatively stable staff. I have been there for seven years and at least half of the faculty predates me. I meet a new crop of kids and parents every year, but once I meet them, they’re familiar, we develop routines, become family even. Last week, while students were reading a Ta-Nehisi Coates article, I stood in the back of third period and realized I had eleven siblings of past students and two children of my former HS classmates in the class. Abe Nation is familiar turf for me and I am familiar to them. When I am teaching I am selling ideas and content, not myself. I am not the focus, the mission is.

The last week has blown a hole in all of that.   

I found out about the possibility of President Xi’s visit a while back. As time passed it went from “there’s this crazy idea that might go down, but probably nah” to “Secret Service vans parked by the Abe statue and snipers in the clock tower.” 

As a government teacher, hosting a head of state in your classroom (or one you borrowed for the occasion) is like an classic R&B fan sitting at the mixing board in Quincy Jones’ studio or a soccer fan playing pick-up with Messi or Ronaldo (pick your poison). China is the most populated nation on Earth. Twenty percent of all the people alive right now are Chinese. They are the largest economy on the Earth. China is the most powerful nation in Asia. China is a nation that I was fascinated by as a student and have had the pleasure to visit twice as an adult. I could go on… Having President Xi walk the halls of my school, stand in our auditorium, joke around with the football players from my third period--watching it all was whatever comes after things become surreal.

My favorite part of the visit though was the kids. It’s early in the year, I have all their names down, but we’re definitely still the rapport building phase. I was nervous about how they would behave. Would they understand how big a deal this was? Would one of the boys in the room try to be funny and instead create an international scene or worse get beatdown by Chinese Secret Service (yes, these were actual fears I was having).

After being screened by the Secret Service, while we were being briefed by a Chinese Protocol Officer (there were several, both officers and briefings) a student asked if they’d be allowed to shake the President Xi’s hand. I and the Protocol Officer both (belly) laughed. Fast forward an hour, when President Xi, after his conversation with my students and before departing under a blitz of camera flashes, reached out to shake hands with the front row of the room, there was an audible (and hilarious) burst of co-ed squeals. That moment… that moment, they’ll never forget. The kids were amazing. They got it the importance of the moment.

President Xi concluded his visit by addressing a crowd of nearly 500 students and community members and offering one hundred students from my school the opportunity to travel to China; it brought on a thunderous applause. I ended my night posing for photos and doing interviews with a half dozen Chinese media outlets. Many of you know I recently wrote about my love of travel and particularly my experience teaching and living in China. Now many of my students will have this same opportunity, decades younger than I was when I caught the bug. I hope they grow to love travel as much as I do. I hope it changes their lives as much as it changed mine and I hope that this week is more calm than the last.