Saturday, March 27, 2021

Tom Sawyer and the Politics of Failure

 

Tom Sawyer and the Politics of Failure

Peter Schultz

 

            Tom’s antics at the end of Huckleberry Finn are in the service, ostensibly, of freeing Jim from his imprisonment and his slavery. But Jim is already free and Tom knows it. Tom antics than willingly prolong Jim’s imprisonment in order to demonstrate Tom’s intelligence by engaging in pseudo-events, as they would be called today. Tom demonstrates or thinks he demonstrates his power, playing at Jim’s liberation, but Tom’s machinations fail and almost get Tom, Jim, and Huck killed.

 

            Not only are Tom’s antics un-necessary, even farcical, but fail on their own terms. Tom doesn’t demonstrate intelligence, if intelligence is understood as leading to success. Tom’s attempts to free Jim fail, even fail miserably.

 

            Tom’s antics are thoroughly determined by his “book learning,” by his “education,” as it were, in “the classics.” So Tom’s education also doesn’t lead to freedom for Jim. Tom’s education is also a failure as he doesn’t accomplish, perhaps cannot accomplish what he wants to accomplish. His education is essentially sterile, even impotent.  

 

            Tom practices what might be called “a politics of failure.” That is, Tom does not achieve success regarding Jim’s liberation, even while achieving success in the sense of gaining an enhanced, even premier reputation, becoming famous, being quoted, and having his life glorified – a process that Twain accomplished with his novel insofar as Tom is seen by many as a model that Americans should follow. Ton is, in the minds of many who have read Twain’s novel, rightly “the model boy of the village.”

 

As this indicates, Tom’s failures, his deceptions, his frauds, even when revealed don’t undermine his reputation. “We the people” like Tom and his actions even though these actions are deceptive, fraudulent [his winning the prize Bible and like his “death” and “resurrection”], and even dangerously farcical [like his attempts to liberate Jim]. And for some reason, my imagination runs to people like Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, as other deceivers and frauds who became “the model boys of the village.”

Sunday, March 7, 2021

Hostile Work Places: A Traditional Value

 

Hostile Work Places: A Traditional Value

Peter Schultz

 

            Below is a link to an article in the Washington Post, March 7, 2021, about how Andrew Cuomo and his “aggressive style” is said to have created a hostile work environment that encompassed charges of sexual harassment. Here is one quote from one of Cuomo’s aides, Peter Ajemian:

 

“This did not happen,” he said. “Karen Hinton is a known antagonist of the Governor’s who is attempting to take advantage of this moment to score cheap points with made up allegations from 21 years ago.”

 

            Most people accept the implication that what Cuomo did was something of an aberration whereas Ajemian’s quote reveals that this was not the case, that the hostile work environment Cuomo embraced was, in fact, quite normal given how we Americans think about and do politics.

 

            That Karen Hinton was “a known antagonist of the Governor” who sought “to score cheap points with made up allegations” from a long time ago is course a good description of how Americans think about and do politics. Antagonism is the life-blood of American politics, and perhaps of any politics. And, of course, it is to be expected, as Ajemian’s quote implies. In other words, the hostility that Cuomo is said to have embraced is anything but aberrational. Hostility is what antagonism begets, always and everywhere.

 

            This is the problem with the arguments that what is needed is a return to “traditional values” in order to solve the problem of hostile work environments. It is precisely those values that lead to, that facilitate the creation of such work places. What are needed are non-traditional values, new or different values, if the phenomenon like hostile work places are to disappear or be reformed.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cuomo-toxic-workplace/2021/03/06/7f7c5b9c-7dd3-11eb-b3d1-9e5aa3d5220c_story.html