Could a Reversal of Reaganism be the Silver Lining in COVID-19
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, we need to realize that we are all collectively taking a class. I hope most of us brought paper and pencils in order to take notes. Some of these lessons need to go into our personal libraries when the virus breaks, so that we will not forget as soon as we can return to the mall.
Last Thursday, my son sat at this computer for most of the day. Like millions of other school children across America, he is now taking classes online. I have been teaching distance learning classes and editing a book. So, I was not as structured with him as I should have been last week. We unwittingly let all of the work pile up and he had to complete most of his assignments in one day.
Around 8 p.m., my son breathed a sigh of relief, said “Yes! I’m done,” and asked me for tacos. I know that we are under a “shelter-in-place” order, but I went out anyway. My son had worked hard and steady all day, and if tacos were what he wanted, tacos would be what he would get. I went to Taco Bell, but it was closed for ongoing renovations. Sonic is right across the street, and I figured my son would like a cheese burger. So, I crossed the street for a №1 with no mayonnaise, his favorite. I pulled into parking lot, found an ordering station, and had a WONDERFUL experience.
The order station looked much the same as those in the picture above. But there was something different going on: I saw some of the car hops (as they are called), going around all of the vacant ordering stations cleaning them with a sanitizing solution. I saw another car hop wiping down the few outdoor tables at this drive-in. I thought, “Wow, it is REALLY clean here.” After I received my food and left a tip with the car hop, another car hop skated up and cleaned the button I’d used to order BEFORE I could get my window up. As I drove back home with the unhealthiest meal on earth for myself and my son, I had an epiphany: “Wait, no one was cleaning those places after each order before COVID-19? Were we pushing a super-germy, booger-tainted, feces-containing button in order to place our orders, then sometimes eating a fry/tot or two with contaminated fingers?” I don’t want to answer that.
From there, my mind went to Reaganism. Don’t ask: my mind just wanders that way. For almost 40 years, we have been gripped with increasing individualism, a disrespect for any professions that are not easily measured and monetized, and economic policies that are downright condescending to American workers. Could this virus, at long last, reverse some of the damage ravaged upon America by Reaganism? I have always felt that Reaganism was a rather strange and selfish mode of thinking. How could Ronald Reagan, who was an actor, put forth so much vitriol against teachers and non-business/STEM professors and careers? Plus, his nickname was “The Great Communicator.” Acting and speaking effectively are typically not skills learned in the business school or engineering department. They are learned in the humanities — classes that Reagan apparently took seriously and used to help propel him to the presidency.
My experience at Sonic made me think of how much I hear people complain about over-regulation and big government. Points of red meat for Conservative politician are deregulating the economy by tossing out “unnecessary” and “burdensome” governmental departments like the Food & Drug Administration and dismantling the Environmental Protection Act. They passionately cry that over-regulation is killing our economy while failing to mention why those regulations were created in the first place. And since Americans have criminally short memories and a disdain for the humanities, most of us have forgotten and will never learn why we have things like the EPA and Clean Water Act, for example.
Millions of us were born after the Cuyahoga River Fire in Ohio, and unless you take a college class like the sometimes strange interdisciplinary ones that I create, you may never hear of it. From my African Americans in science lecture, here’s an example of why we need some regulation in America. One day in the late 1960s, a train passed over this very polluted river, dropped a spark from the rail, and caused a body of water to explode into flames. Sadly, this was not the first time that this river burned due to pollution. Sadly, my class is the first time that many students, some of them from Ohio and the greater Mid-West region, have never heard of this incident. It’s not covered in most history books and is not a standardized test item, so no one bothers to teach that this river, in which a person falling in only had a 20 minute time window to make it to the emergency room in order to be decontaminated, is the reason why we have the Clean Water Protection Act. It was filthy and not from the trash of citizens, but from industrial waste.
And am I the only one who thinks the very name, “trickle down economics” is offensive, let alone the policies that continue to support a 40-year-old economic policy that was ineffective when it was rolled out? One of the points that House Speaker Pelosi made was that the COVID relief package WOULD NOT BE a trickle down bill that gave the biggest tax breaks to businesses and left the workers to receive the crumbs. As Americans, we have watched businesses take these tax breaks, complete huge stock buy-backs, and sometimes, pack up our jobs and move to other countries. I listen to politicians blame this group or that group (right now, it’s Latinos) for the disappearance of American jobs, when in reality, their policies have encouraged American jobs to leave for cheaper wages and looser human rights restrictions. Last week, Gov. Cuomo asked repeatedly, “How did we end up here? How did we end up having to buy ventilators from China?” The desperation in his voice was palpable. Well, everything else is made in China because of outsourcing, Gov. Cuomo. I feel that it is quite hypocritical of America to forego any dealings with Cuba while China, a Communist country with a poor human rights record, owns our debt and almost all of our manufacturing.
Thinking about my experience at Sonic made me think about COVID-19 virus and the things that we have taken for granted: like e. coli-free lettuce. In my humble opinion, I feel that Donald Trump’s chief job has been retrenchment (a reversal of rights gained) and dismantling of Obama’s legacy. Well, one of Obama’s policy concerned how produce is watered. Since those rules have been reversed or dismantled, how many e.coli outbreaks have we had? Now, more than ever, it has become important for me to have a conversation with the young man who stocks the produce at my local grocery store. Where did this lettuce come from? Who grew those oranges? How long have you all had them in the store? Is this lettuce included in the e.coli recall?
Do you see those little labels on the oranges pictured below, reader? Yes, I stand in the grocery store and read them if the produce manager is not available. Now, more than ever, it has become important for an actual butcher to work at a store, because fruit and produce are not the only grocery items susceptible. Again, how many ground beef or sausage recalls have we had in the past two years?
On a personal note, I am a professor — not a k-12 teacher. But, a professor is first and foremost, a teacher. Primary and secondary school teachers are taken for granted. I have seen parents “cuss out” teachers and principals micromanage and harass them. I have even seen students physically attack teachers, because they were emboldened by parents who inadvertently students to disrespect authority when they talk trash about the teacher, and administrations who wan to keep “control” over the teachers, so turn students into spies and secret agents against certain disliked teachers. And the disrespect continues into college, but for particular majors rather than individual professors (though I have been the target of administrative disrespect and workplace harassment, even from a group of freshmen who were being coached to set me up). It has been really difficult to be called into a profession that the whole country has disrespected, undervalued, and underpaid. While I can teach African American and gender studies, my home department is English. The English department is the most overworked department on campus, and our major is one of the most disrespected majors in America. I was once reading an article that was titled, “The Ten Most Useless College Majors,” and English was number one. As I read, I thought, “Didn’t the journalist have to take English class in order to write at that level?” And when the college needs to save money, often times the English department and library are the first two budget areas that take a hit. The rise in the use of adjuncts to teach composition, something that all freshmen must take, is now deplorable. Those young scholars who work the adjunct circuit can qualify for food stamps, and they teach the work-intensive classes that no senior professors want to touch.
It seems that since the time of Reagan, teachers have been classified as overpaid babysitters. Now that our children are at home with us all day long and we have to help them with their online instruction, I hope that we can all appreciate teachers as professionals and not our babysitters. All day long, our elementary teachers see our children’s faces and must learn the personalities of at least 20 different young minds. They must deal with discipline issues, and energetic bodies who sometimes refuse to sit still at times. On top of that, they have to deliver instruction. These are the real teachers (please see a previous post called, “When Educators Behave Badly” for the teachers who are just doing it for the paycheck/social outing) who spend countless hours designing lesson plans, creating interesting PowerPoints, grading papers, and answering student emails.
Second, since the time of Reagan (and certainly with a lot of help from the now-deceased former president) humanities on college campus has been seen as a safe-haven for ex-hippies who have a secret, America-hating agenda that we force upon young, dirigible students (Yes, I just used a big word, and if you don’t value English class, you don’t know how to use context clues in order to guess it’s meaning). Check any conservative list of America’s most “dangerous professors” and you will find that most of them are humanities professors and almost none of them are in STEM or business. I guess teaching people to read and think critically in America, appreciate art, that women contribute to our well-being in significant ways, and that non-white cultures have contributed something of value to the history of mankind is dangerous? Now that all of us are sheltering in place, I hope that some of us are reading. Now that many of us can no longer leave the house to make money, I hope that we’ve found value in things that money cannot buy: a smile from our children, a report of good health from our family and friends, a documentary about North and South Dakota, a well-cooked meal, or a kind word from the people who pick up our garbage cans. As it turns out, greed is not good and not everything can be about making money. There are other things, like being healthy and able to breathe, that are just as enjoyable.
Third, (and this is a difficult point for me to make, but I’m going to make it) I work with many Baby Boomers who see people born after 1970 as nothing but “chaps” and babies who have nothing to teach them. And our culture encourages this. How many articles have I read from Baby Boomers who complain about the “laziness,” “irresponsible” group of young slackers that they must tolerate at their jobs. What if I were to write about the obstinate, egotistical Boomers that I have endured? I would be charged with age discrimination, kicked off of Medium, and probably fired. Because most Boomers in my profession have crossed into the glorious halcyon of being tenured, they have ROUTINELY resisted learning new technology, refused to do any more continuing education sessions, and brushed us off when implored them to take at least one class for online learning. I have been in the company of other academics who have condescendingly dismissed online learning, even from brick-and-mortar institutions, as somehow incomplete or faux. Well, as those of us who teach have to adjust to online learning systems, I hope that my older colleagues have learned to stop dismissing anything that anyone who is 50 and under has to share with them. Many of my older colleagues have really struggled with Canvas, Blackboard, P.A.W.S./D2L, Moodle, and other learning systems. They have had to rely on their younger colleagues, children, and even grandchildren to help them upload lectures and grade papers. Tenure does not guarantee that we never have to learn again and that we know it all. At most, it’s job security and a raise, but the learning must go on.
Fourth, when was the last time any of us thought about the people who stock our grocery shelves, put out our produce, scan our grocery, clean our hospital rooms,or deliver our mail through the post office? There are many people who complain about the post office, but the tiny one near my house is clean and efficient, and the people are nice. Throughout this crisis, they have continued to deliver the mail, pick up packages, and save the pretty stamps for me. I have also noticed that during this crisis, several major chains have simply REFUSED to stock toilet paper. As there is not much grocery store competition here, their refusal has been very crippling and their customer base is going to shrink. I was in one of the stores and this lady lost her mind on a poor cashier. The cashier, who was a very tired teenager, simply cried. I had to step in. If the managers want to be stupid and not stock the shelves with toilet paper, that’s their dumb decision, but the young lady was trying her best to be courteous through her exhaustion. In between each customer, she sprayed her belt down with sanitizing solution and there was a display of hand sanitizer free to the customers who passed through her line. I stepped in, because the woman yelling at her was about 50 or so. While the lady had a right to be angry, her anger was misplaced. We do not have to be rude to people who are on the front lines handling our food and wiping down surfaces that we touch mindlessly every day.
As this pandemic releases us from its collective grip, there are some things that I feel have changed for the better. One of them is a slow reversal of Reagan-era thinking. I reiterate: greed IS NOT good and we do need some regulation. Secondly, everybody’s job is important: from the hospital orderly to the brain surgeon. And human life is precious. Seeing the numbers on the nightly news is hurtful and downright depressing. As we try to see a silver lining in this very dense, gray cloud, I hope that one of them is more respect for our democratic processes and our neighbors who work (often invisibly and underappreciated) to make our lives better every day.
As usual, if you like this story, clapback at me (press the hands). Or, I’ll see you in class — online for now. This is from a class that I taught at a robotics camp and personal experiences.
