A$$hole of the Week

Maybe it's PMS, maybe it's the time of the semester, maybe it's the time of year; but I have to get this rant off of my bitchy, pissed-off chest.

At work, I occasionally participate in these community engagement discussions about random subjects, usually connected to politics in some way or another. I'm not a particularly political person, and I don't particularly follow politics. My blood pressure can't handle it. This group tends toward the left, although not too left because my occasional comments are probably reinforcing the stereotype of the radical commie professor indoctrinating the students.

In this group there is the one dude who just hit my last nerve this week. He's pissed me off before. Once, a year ago, when I facilitated a discussion on Catherine Clinton's Mrs. Lincoln, and opened the discussion by giving some background about the field of women's history. The women in the group were fairly receptive, and I wanted to engage their interest. It wasn't necessarily a feminist interest, but they were more than a little curious as to how women lived and functioned in the world in the past, and they all had a tremendous sympathy for Mary Lincoln.

That's not the way that the discussion went. Our Asshole of the Week derailed the discussion with the typical opposition cry of, "why does it have to be 'women's history' or 'black history'? Isn't it all just 'history'?" Like I wrote at the time, I've heard this before. Anyone who specializes in anything that challenges the Whig view of traditional political and military history gets that question. I know that it is really a dismissal of the fields and, indeed, a dismissal of the people whom the field covers. Still, I try to engage it as a serious question, and developed an analogy that I deployed at this point in the conversation.

"Medical doctors specialize," I replied. "You have cardiothoracic surgeons, oncologists, pediatricians, dentists..."

"Yeah," he said, "but they are still all 'doctors'."

"And we are still all historians," I said.

"The why don't you call yourselves that?" he said. When I said, "we do," he waved his hand dismissively, as if brushing me away. He was not someone who might have a real curiosity about how the historical profession works. He knows it all, and we people with PhDs in non-technical subjects (unlike his own very technical subject) who work in academia instead of the private sector, know nothing. He made that pretty clear through the next hour. Only people who do big, important things qualify as valid historical subjects, in his point of view. The rest of us are just wasting....something, time, money, paper, whatever. We are an affront to him.

When I told this story of "they are all still 'doctors'" to the Gentleman Caller, the Gentleman caller said, "I hope he remembers that when he goes to a podiatrist for prostate cancer. After all, they are all 'doctors'!"

Then, a couple of months ago, our Asshole of the Week facilitated a discussion of an excerpt from a book that had a thesis that went something to the effect of "if we all just trusted our instincts and acted on them then we would all be safer from crime."

Really.

The excerpt focused on the example of a woman who, while carrying her groceries, was accosted on the sidewalk outside of her apartment by a man who forced himself into her apartment, raped her, and was probably about to kill her before she escaped. In the interview with the author, the author actually coerced the woman into saying that it was her own failure to act on her instinct from the beginning that placed her in that situation.

Yes, he blamed the victim and got the victim to blame herself.

While every woman and even some of the men in the room had a problem with the argument, our Asshole of the Week agreed. When I pointed out that the selection seemed to blame the victim, he waved his hand at me in dismissal. The book had a chapter on how women should say "no" and mean it, he said. "Yeah," I said, "and what about the men who won't take 'no' for an answer." He shrug and said, "well, too bad."

Both of these scenarios pissed me off; but for some reason, this week, I took it way to personally and actually felt violence toward this man.

The discussion focused on philanthropy, with readings from Andrew Carnegie and Bill Gates. The Carnegie selection included a quote in which he actually endorsed (at least on paper) an income tax. The Gates selection included a portion in which he admitted that the private sector does not respond to public need (unless it will make them a profit) and that philanthropists should listen to the needs of the people that they hope to serve.

I had no intention of attending this discussion since I have a ton of other work to do, not the least of which was preparing for my class that evening. The woman who organizes these discussions is a friend, and she asked me if I could attend to give some historical background. I agreed, but warned her that I know nothing about Carnegie or philanthropy or anything like that, and most of what I know would more likely be in the grain of Howard Zinn rather than "wasn't Carnegie wonderful for giving away so much cash for so much good."

Our Asshole of the Week took the discussion in this direction (and I do quote): "stop punishing the rich for being wealthy. People out there out of jealousy just want to punish the rich by taxing them." In other words, the Have-nots are angry at the Haves for being Haves and take out that anger through taxation.

A woman across the table, a bulldog of an attorney in the juvenile courts (seriously, don't fuck with her!), saw my hackles go up and insisted that I say what I was thinking. I didn't really want to participate because I didn't really have the time to soften my gut reaction, and I didn't want to make my friend look bad, and I felt that my role in the room was to be an educator and provide background commentary, not jump out and say what was on my mind which was, "you hypocritical idiot!"

I tried to point out that, first of all, taxes are not punishment. They are part of your responsibility as a citizen in a society. As a woman across the room put it, "they are the price of civilization." The majority go for such things -- which are expensive to run -- as roads, libraries, schools, including the very one that we were all sitting in that was getting 12% of its budget cut on top of an already proposed 10% cut. The very institution in which he was sitting was giving its employees pay cuts via furloughs. Someone else in the room pointed out that several of us, not just the teachers in the room, were paid from public money.

Damnit. I mentioned public schools.

"The public schools aren't doing their jobs!" he said. Then he went on a rant about how standardized testing shows that, even in the wealthiest of school districts are doing poorly, therefore more money won't do anything, and that the private sector would do a much better job at education. If you are in the education field, you have been subjected to some version of this rant that usually comes down to an attack on teachers and a defense of standardized testing.

Well, that was the day that the College Inc. story was in the news and blogs (and blogs ). I used that in my argument, including the part where these institutions receive a large share of public money via student loans. The attorney backed me up because she had dealt with such institutions in the past and knew their dubious record. Fortunately, other people in the room were ready for a pile on from different angles, so I didn't have to force myself to control my "tone." My tone would have been dripping with contempt and disdain and would have turned into this sort of an apoplectic attack:

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Dear Mr. Old White Man:

How dare you? How dare you defend less taxation on the Rich? How dare you speak of it as "punishment"? How dare you dismiss all publicly funded institutions as being incompetent and controlled by politics? How dare you insist that we rely on the kindness of the hearts of the Rich in order to operate? How dare you do that here, in our college, that is funded by the public -- by taxes?

Are these Rich jumping in to donate the $12 million that has already been cut from our school's budget? Are they jumping in to donated the additional $14.5 million that we are facing being cut? Are they donating the toilet paper that a local library that has had to reduce such things in its budget cuts? Are they donating the dollars to keep those libraries from cutting their journal subscriptions, book purchases, hours of operation? Are they donating the funds to the youth organization that keeps teenage kids off the streets and engaged in civic improvement? Are they filling potholes? Are they donating a dime toward operations? Are they donating a dime that doesn't have some assumption of control over the institution to which they are donating it? How, in fact, does that assumption of control not stifle the innovation of the institutions receiving the donations?

How dare you sit in this building on a public campus and say that publicly funded institutions and the people who use them are punishing the wealthy by taxing them in order to keep the county and its services running? How dare you say this to three people sitting within ten feet of you who are facing their third year without a cost of living increase in their pay, and now a pay cut (and we are well aware that we are the lucky ones)? How dare you say this when one of those three is most vulnerable to a lay off? How dare you say this to yet another person who not only serves as a public defender but who also cannot afford to retire right now? How dare you say this when the students outside the door of this room will soon be paying much higher tuition and receiving fewer services and sitting in larger classes -- not classrooms, but with more students? How are WE not being punished? How are WE being punished LESS than the Rich?

How dare you say that to a room full of people on some sort of public assistance like, say, Social Security and Medicare? Are you willing to give that up yourself, mister?

Didn't you, after all, drive here on publicly funded roads? You didn't have to pay a toll on any stretch, and you passed construction at least once. Didn't you park in our garage, without having to pay a dime, while people who work at and attend this school do pay every semester? Didn't you walk from the garage to the building on publicly funded sidewalks? Don't you go home and use publicly regulated utilities that ensure that your water is drinkable and that your lights do, in fact, turn on when you flip the switch on? Don't you put your garbage on the corner where it will be picked up? Don't you do the same with your recycling? (Or do you recycle?) Don't you attend arts and culture events -- like this very one at this very college -- that receive grants and funding from the county, state, and federal governments?

How dare you sit in the middle of this economy in which the un-punished private sector ran everything so effectively that we are now in something akin to the Great Depression, then suggest that the private sector knows how to run everything best? Where did all of those businesses, those rich people, run for rescue?

How dare you expect the poorest, the ones struggling to try to make ends meet, to have the hope of not a better future but of a survivable future, to shoulder this burden alone? How dare you suggest that we expect the people who will use more of these resources than anyone else, who have managed to convince the schools that they should not educate but train students for the needs of the "business community," who will use our schools, our expertise, our students, our citizens, our roads, our utilities, our environment, our arts, our culture, our police force, our fire departments, our ambulances, our hospitals, our political system (where do you think the corruption in politics comes from?), and who expect them to respond to their needs faster and better than to anyone else's -- how dare you expect them not to have to pay for that proportionally? How dare you suggest that their taxes are punishment while ours are a duty?

You have some gall, mister, and you clearly know so very little about how a society and a republic functions. As one of the other people in the room said, you are naive and foolish. I take that personally in this case, mister, because you are hitting me at home, at where I make a living, and where the people whom I work with and for make a living. On top of that, you use what we have to offer and you don't think that the Rich -- and aren't we really talking about YOU here? -- should have to pay for it.

I'm not sure that I can forgive you for that opinion, to agree to disagree, or even to respect it, not unless you demonstrate that you are, in fact, giving away money in the kind of amounts that you think are sufficient for running a tax-free society. Not unless you can prove that you are, in fact, doing something constructive and productive for our community, rather than simply using it's resources and expecting to be taxed less while receiving more.

In the meantime, please, let me know how it works out with that podiatrist. Will you be paying for that with private insurance or Medicare?

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ETA: I just realized that 4 out of my 5 most recent posts are bitching posts. You think I'm a little stressed out? Or just generally unpleasant?

ETA 2: By the way, I'm hoping to put this bitching tendency to good use by putting in my request to be appointed as an at-large union rep for my campus. I hope that my blood pressure can handle it.