It Was Capitalism All Along

One of my favorite discoveries of the pandemic was the podcast You’re Wrong About. I describe it as MythBusters for the major media stories, scandals, and moral panics of the 1980s to 2010s. On one episode co-host, Sarah Marshall, uttered an exasperated throw-away line that has stuck with me for nearly two years. After a long retelling of a sensationalist moment of media coverage by her co-host, Sarah retorted, “come to find out, it was capitalism all along.” She nailed it, perfectly. 

So much of what we argue about in the US: the culture wars, climate inaction, housing policy, health care access, school privatization, policing, etc. are just capitalism doing its exploitive thing. The dominant class and their interests drive policymaking. When we take our eyes off that, we can end up in all sorts of weird places and tirades. I have fallen for this at times and this week I want to offer a bit of a mea culpa.

I wrote a piece in 2017 that got a fairly large online response. It  was a critique of Boomer politics but on revisiting it, it misses the mark. The culprit is neoliberalism and imperialism, not just the Boomers. Yes, the last forty plus years of US politics are basically inter-generational theft via tax cuts. Yeah, Reagan ushered in an era of disinvestment in infrastructure and the commons that leaves our roads jammed and bridges crumbling. Sure, we spent 8 trillion dollars (8,000,000,000,000 USD) on Forever Wars that could have gone to education, transit, climate mitigation, or countless other things. That’s a pretty damning list and what really irks me is that collectively we haven’t learned much of anything from any of it. 

On the other end of the generational hot-take spectrum from my piece, are people who should know better writing “what’s the matter with kids these days?” articles in US media. A generation of journalists that carried around Tamagotchis in the 90s and spent countless hours in AOL & ICQ chats unironically bemoan Gen Z’s embrace of TikTok. Listen, there’s  nothing wrong with “the kids” except what is being perpetrated on them by the exploitative practices of late-stage market capitalism.

For example, I offer you the triannual national panic over PISA scores. Each time the numbers are released the usual suspects, who want to dismantle or as they put it “reform” schooling in America, try to collectively rub the noses of the teaching profession in the wet spot of criterion-referenced test scores. These scores aren’t rocket science—they are more a manifestation of what’s happening in society than they are of what’s happening in classrooms:

Fifty-nine percent of kids from low-income families said they’d gone to school hungry, and 46% of those kids said that hunger had hurt their performance in school. Hunger impacts learning and academic performance throughout the year, not just on a specific date. Kids shouldn’t have to worry about hunger on any date—high stress, low stress, test day, normal class day. We have the tools and the resources to ensure every child in this country gets the nutrition they need to learn and grow…

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed millions of families into unemployment, food insecurity, and hardship, exacerbating already unacceptable levels of hunger and poverty. As a result, 1 in 4 kids could face hunger this year. - National Honor Society

I have seen this particular PISA scores panic cycle at least five times in my career. It’s the same routine every time: scores come out, the media runs headlines decrying American ruin, corporate reformers blame unions (even for scores in non-union states), and months of headlines and whitepapers fly to and fro. Can you tell that I am tired of it yet? 

It’s a tired merry-go-round and I want off.

As the new year approaches, I’m making some resolutions and I am going to ask you to join me (if you want):

• Let’s retire generational hot-takes. Yes, there is very likely mass lead-poisoning among Boomers but even that was due to capitalism. 

• Let’s also stop blaming individuals for systemic problems. I think I will write more on this next week.

• Lastly, I was really bothered by some of the Islamophobia and racism that I saw from self-professed progressives during the Qatar World Cup. Let’s stop holding individuals responsible for the actions of the regimes they live under. No, it wasn’t my fault that George Bush (both of them) invaded Iraq. Why should a random Qatari or Russian, for that matter, catch hell for the actions of their states? 

Giving Flowers

This week the dean of US soccer journalism, Grant Wahl, passed away unexpectedly while covering the Argentina vs Netherlands quarterfinal match at the World Cup. His passing was sudden. He was eulogized by many. I appreciated Dave Clark's tribute in Sounder at Heart. Notably, there was an outpouring from corners of the internet I never expected and a tearful farewell on the Athletic's soccer podcast.

Each time we lose someone like Wahl, gone far too soon, I am reminded that we shouldn't wait until people are no longer with us to give them their flowers. So this week I decided to praise some folks; I want the important people in my life to know how much I appreciate them.

Flowers for Trusting Leadership - When I worked at Lincoln High School, my principal Pat Erwin, had a simple leadership style. He scouted out teaching talent: hired hard-working, committed educators, and empowered them to run the school. He acted more as a GM for a pro sports team than a principal. Our staff planned our own PD, based on our needs. If we needed money for a field trip or a classroom resource he’d find money somewhere in the budget. Major decisions around things that impacted the entire school were made collectively by a site-based decision making committee. He had an open door and faculty could come see him at any time with concerns or ideas. I didn’t appreciate it as much then as I do now, but he often served as a bulwark between teachers and the decisions made by other power centers outside our building. The Lincoln staff under Pat was the best teaching staff in the state of Washington and it wasn’t particularly close. He assembled a great team and gave them a sense of ownership–every student deserves that in their school. 

Flowers for Excellence and Professionalism - I have an amazing pair of colleagues in Abu Dhabi, to protect their privacy we’ll call them LeBron James and Minnie Driver. My admiration for them is bottomless. Jord… er… LeBron might be the hardest working person I have ever taught with.  She leaves me in the dust when it comes to organization and long-term planning. I love to sit with her and revise unit plans and assessments. She’s a good thought partner, principled but also pragmatic. Our collaborative sessions are efficient, productive, and (I think) we maintain a good distribution of labor and responsibilities. I can be honest with her if I think a task is wack and needs to be redesigned;  she is honest with me, if she thinks I am being ridiculous (which I often am). 

Minnie Driver is perhaps the most efficient person the Lord has ever created. She is the consummate professional–she knows when a meeting should be an email–when she has a meeting they are brief and focused. When I go to her with a professional dilemma or seeking a sounding board, she provides nuanced takes that are grounded in best practices and her deep experience in the classroom. She's the only person in my professional life who regularly makes me go "man, I gotta get my stuff together." She is organized in ways that I don’t even bother to aspire to, because there’s no way I’ll ever be on that level. Minnie is that dude. If she decided to leave our school, I’d start shopping around myself.

Flowers for Courage - Anti-Blackness is real. Sexism is real. People who hold anti-Black and sexist views online are often very loud about their opinions and travel in rabid digital packs. Few people I know have faced more abuse from online mobs than Shana White. She is the moral compass of the faction of justice-centered educators that I view as my fellow travelers. She is courageous–I am constantly in awe of her dogged commitment to speaking truth to power. In the face of threats, waves of harassment, even a months long suspension from Twitter for fighting back against a particularly egregious right-wing troll, she remains unbent and unbowed. If everyone in our profession had her courage, our schools would be a much better place. We need more people like Shana.

Dune Hits Different When You Live in Arrakis

Being from Tacoma, there’s a near civic obligation to like Frank Herbert’s Dune. He has roots in my hometown. He went to the high school where I used to teach. There’s even a park named after his book. I think the park was going to be directly after him but he was posthumously milkshake ducked.** 

Unlike the rest of my nerdy adult friends, I didn't read Dune at thirteen. Instead, I spent my teens reading Tolkien (like a respectable person) and then took a very regrettable near decade slide into the Ryan-verse (I acknowledge the error of my ways). Okay, that’s not quite true. I tried to read Herbert when I was younger and found it dull and impenetrable. I also vaguely remember watching David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of the book. It was bad then; upon revisiting it last year, it aged like buttermilk.

I have a theory about great books: You have to read them at the time it’s right for you. I loathed Gatsby in grade eleven. But when I picked it up while backpacking in Colombia, it became one of my favorite novels I ever read. I couldn’t read Dune when I was younger. Now that I’m older, living two hours from the desert that serves as Arrakis, it hits different. Herbert imagined an entire universe and a history (spanning 15,000 years) as deep as anything ever put to paper. Dune is remarkable–it’s white-savior nonsense, but it’s white savior nonsense par excellence.  

But however good the book is, Denis Villeneuve’s film is better. When it came out, we went opening night… and the next day… and then the following weekend. I was absolutely mesmerized by the way the film looked and sounded. This wasn’t how I envisioned it from reading the book, it was better. That never happens! The sets, the music, the costumes, the dampness of Caladan, the Zimmer score, the menace of the Sardaukar–all of it, perfect. 

They started shooting Dune II in UAE’s remote Liwa Desert earlier this month. So the cast and crew are all  in town. My wife and I even made a half-hearted effort to find the set deep in the desert. This past weekend, I went to a talk given by Patrice Vermette. He’s the Academy Award winning production designer for Dune and the sequel. 

Vermette, during his talk - Photo by Yer Boi

He was joined by Mary Parent, who co-produced the film. I was struck by Parent’s immersion into Herbert's lore; she talks about Dune with the depth of a r/FrankHerbert moderator. The two hour talk was a treat. Vermette is the MJ (or choose your own G.O.A.T.) of what he does. It’s rare you get to be in the presence of literally the best person in the world at what they do, especially not in such an intimate setting.

I have been thinking about the talk all week. He contrasted, with some pride, his work with some of his contemporaries. At length he discussed his hesitancy to use CGI, instead preferring to use practical effects when possible, but also how this clashes with the realities of modern studio filmmaking. It was a good metaphor for the everyday compromises and tradeoffs we make in life. Trying to please everyone is a one-way trip to an ulcer and an aneurysm. We have to make the decisions that work and sometimes make peace with the results.