F/k you and the Enlightenment you came in on
I didn’t go to any of the rallies today because I was picking up my kids from camp. That being one of my many privileges: I can give my kids an enrichment experience away from home, and when my kids are gone, I know exactly where they are, and I can get them back.
So I donated Stacey Abrams, Democratic Candidate for Governor of Georgia. State Governor and legislative races are incredibly important. They build the bench for national office, and it’s how the racist reactionaries were able to make so much progress after the outrage of electing a moderate, intelligent black man in 2008.
Abrams epitomizes the shell game/double or triple standard for women and people of color. A white man with qualifications and experience as remarkable as hers would already be a figure on then national stage. So I’m resurrecting a rant about the anti-competitive resistance to excellence inherent in our national leadership.
April 12, 2017 — Sean Spicer and his shocking ignorance and inability to handle the pressure of his job with anything resembling grace are the natural and probable outcome of 200+ years of social and economic history. Bear with me on this….
The American Revolution required the New England shipping magnates and Southern planters to give some political power to working class white men, so they’d be cannon fodder for the war to avoid sharing resources with European elites.
This worked well for quite a while because there was a massive excess of resources due to indigenous depopulation by disease. For the first hundred years or so it worked great for white dudes. And it was okay for Lincoln and whoever to drag himself out of poverty with his strength and smarts because if you don’t have to share power with well over half the other humans (ALL the women and nonwhite men) there’s plenty to go around.
When the shipping magnates and planters got pissed at each other in the 19th century, black men got briefly brought into the mix, to be booted after the white men made up some of their differences, but the seeds of equality were there in the amendments to the Constitution, just as they were in the expansive white male suffrage of the revolutionary constitution.
For another few generations White men still only have to compete with other white men, so Irish, Italian and even some Jewish white men get to benefit from meritocracy, education, hard work and whatever. White upperclass women get brought into the voting pool to reinforce upper and middle class white votes. It’s okay for Harry Truman, a bootstraps type of guy, to succeed a hereditary ruling class guy like Roosevelt. Then you start getting some real problems.
A critical mass of black people and women start using the nominally neutral provisions of equality (like the Constitution!! I mean I know it says “everyone” but c’mon, we all know y’all aren’t really “people”). The notion that all you need to do is work hard and get ahead actually starts working for a few women and brown or black people. Just a few. If you’ve been a woman or a person of color you know damn well “work three times as hard to be considered 1/3 as good” still applies. But at least in theory some people who are not white dudes get to try their hand at the game. And then it goes to shit.
For two hundred years totally mediocre white men have only had to worry about actual smart, hardworking white dudes. Now, a really really smart black dude or woman could actually be in room with a lackluster white man.
It still takes a couple of generations for raw, unashamed bigotry and sexism to erode even a bit, but the unintended consequences of meritocracy/GI-Bill/14th amendment rhetoric and policy start to have effects. Society can now detect the presence of people who have always been there, and white men who are merely average now might have to get compared to smart black people and women. What to do?
Hating on intelligence, education and actual competence are a start. If Sandra Day O’Conner and Thurgood Marshall can succeed, there’s something wrong with “success”. So you get people sneering about Bill Clinton being “elite” because he went to Ivy League schools (even though he was basically a cracker with a dead-beat dad). Clinton, for all his repulsive flaws, is exceptional. He was intelligent, hardworking, and charismatic.
George Bush is not exceptional. He was personally charming but professionally and intellectually mediocre in all respects (at best). However, the hereditary privilege that swept him into office also came with people who knew the system and how it was supposed to work (and even still it cost us incalculable losses in unnecessary wars). Then came Barry O and everything went to totally to hell.
Barack Obama is not just exceptional, he is a unicorn: feel-good life story with all the bootstrap elements of Bill Clinton, plus squeaky clean marital history. Intellectual powerhouse, education, credentials, the works. (All you non-lawyers out there may not truly appreciate the Peak Meritocracy of Harvard Law Review. That’s some Apex white achievement shit). Plus he’s a kind, articulate human being. I’ve got plenty of beefs with his actual performance as president but in terms of the normal “objective” social measures of merit, he’s pretty remarkable. And he gets to the pinnacle of American success and has the audacity to do it while being BLACK. The sloshing undercurrent of racist fear and filth splats out and suddenly being the actual POTUS (never mind working hard and being smart) is no longer inherently worthy of respect. If mediocre white guys have to compete with the likes of that, in addition to actual high functioning white dudes, screw it, they’re tearing all this shit down!
Then we get to fill the spot. One applicant is a woman who has more of the usual qualifications than any candidate in modern history. Again, not getting into her specific merits or even the “soft skills” so much as the black and white CV you see in possible presidents. She’s already lost out once to the unicorn and it’s been a full generation since her less qualified husband applied for the same job.
But meritocracy isn’t meant to be for everyone (as all of us women and POC who have job skills, credentials, experience and a proven record of success know). So we pick a white man who is not just mediocre but is far below average in every personal or professional criteria we have ever used to measure a president. And not only that, unlike Reagan, Bush, or even Nixon (who was vile, but not stupid or useless), he can’t bring a professional to his starters, never mind his bench. Darth Vader doesn’t want to work for the Joker. He’s not only a malignant human being, he’s a crap professional, so all he’s got are people like Stephen Miller and Spicer, who’ve made it this far in their life by working for people who won’t even pay lip service to inclusive meritocracy (waves — heeeyyyy Jeff Sessions!). Plus Bannon (who’s the actual Joker, cuz the man himself isn’t that focused or intelligent). And the Zombie Barbie of White Femininity.
So there’s Spicer: A stressed out mediocre white dude doing a job that would be hard for anyone, even a smart someone who did not have a really, really bad boss. He doesn’t have the chops for the job, at any level. But by god, he didn’t have to compete with any non-people to get it, so it’s legit. The vampire ghost chickens of Enlightenment imperialism and the industrial revolution are coming home to roost and they are NAAAASTY.