You know what class is, right? Sure you do: a social division based on social or economic status. Right? And status?: the relative social, professional, or other standing of someone. You know I’m not lying, right?
Along with the rest of this preliminary stuff, let’s get clear on another thing. These distinctions don’t live in some empirical hierarchy. Some guy or gal who fixes telephone lines or whatever … and someone who works in a school office or something … clearly these two stripes of livelihoods are distinctions that are just like: that thing … is different from that other thing. Classification for enhanced clarity and so on.
And yet, what is irrefutably quantifiable, and as such — stacked in a vertical hierarchy — would be the do-re-mi-factor of money, ergo power. Enter ‘toothpaste tube theory’, or at least my little vision of it, which goes something like: We come of age having been messaged around every corner that we ought to have “champagne wishes and caviar dreams” … whatever in the f*ck that is. Me, I first went to places like Sausalito and Carmel California as a teen, and I’m not sure how anyone would have experienced these places without an impression somewhere between, “Golly! I’ll take some of that!” and “Holy shit! That’s WAY different than those hungry kids in Africa with their distended bellies!”
Er, what about toothpaste Dare? You know, the jocular metaphor part? So, you live your life … you fashion your worldview … eat some chips — consider your dashed hopes, like some caviar that has crashed upon the same rocks that pummeled your heart. You know. The usual stuff. And in all this, your consciousness assumed new forms. Indeed it squirted right out of the tube … and it ain’t going back in. It’s like unseeing that heinous Zapruder film. Just now you probably saw that poor man and his wife go from one of their best dates to arguably … well, you get it. That’s just shitty toothpaste.
Let’s bring 2020 into this. It too, like that Carcano rifle, has just insisted on being included in the parade. But more to the point, we’ve had ample opportunity to mull over what the great America makeover would look like. Ever think about the class that ought to be called: The Messenger Class? I haven’t. However, as a schoolteacher for a long time, I figure I’ve been a member without knowing the name. I come from folks who have been edu-this and edu-that. Is not “educator” a subset of this messenger class? It is.
Caveat: Good people can and must message good words. It’s how we teach and learn and survive. The reality is that: in and out of schools, and government, and business, and religion, and so on … messaging for manipulative chicanery and exploit of all sorts has been one of the greatest vehicles for engineering the sicker aspects of societies. But hold the phone! In our own post-WWII society, we’ve been operating with the propagandist techniques and media tools that have brought the messages and messengers into a WAY higher status than say, just some assh*le screaming in a church. Now assh*les scream with the force of all the financialization that is in play. There is a LOT of money on the table.
Schools have long run a credentialing racket that ensures that the “messengers” will behave as intended by their handlers writ large. And politicians? Need we even go over the bullsh*t involved in how it’s ended up the corporatized and corrupt government before us? Probably not. But messengers and their messages is a thing. So toss in access to any possible information and tutelage, of which the internet avails, get your popcorn, stand back, and watch the rackets charged with supporting economic hierarchy flail and fall — or double down on their available means. Bullsh*t is gonna be called and cascade from all sides. Some are gonna be way pissed. Some are gonna be a little less comfortable. Worry will be commensurate with what you have to lose.
Fug … ever write yourself into a stanky corner that is darker than you prefer?
So J (dear messenger friend and fellow parent), to try and answer your question: hell if I know. I tend to think that public schools, along with other institutions, need drastic reform that’s more enlightened than fire and pitchforks. Public community health conflated with mendacious messaging have no place together in a public sector worth caring for.
How about the ‘Department of Public Messaging’? It’s mission is to promote fair and equal access to educational and political ‘messaging’ as regards — you got it — the public’s well-being. It’s nationalized commercial-free social media among other things. It serves as the only allowed platform for seeking elective office. It’s free and neutral. The cost would be perhaps 1% of the F-35 program ($1.5 trillion) with the exception that it will enhance and promote unified constructive work rather than destroying life and our environment.
But what about the middle-men and women? What about admins? How do they get paid? Well they don’t. BUT, they can join the ‘Department of Learning and Eating’ if they care to. I’ll bet you know what goes on there.
Dreaming you say? Could be. But you’d asked about “communicating vision” and “essential messaging”. This is what I got. Comments welcome.
Island Notes 