The Personal Is the Political Is the Psychopathological: The Politics of Contemporary Psychopathological Double-Binds
Midterm Examination
Ms. THODE
November 7, Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment
KEEP YOUR ANSWERS BRIEF AND GENDER NEUTRAL
In David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest, students enrolled in the above-mentioned course were asked, as the midterm examination, to solve a Double-Bind. If on one hand you were a kleptomaniac, pathologically driven to steal everything you could, but on the other you were also a crippling agoraphobic, paralyzed by the fear of ever leaving your home, how could you satisfy these two totally opposing and overwhelming compulsions?
Over the previous two weeks I’ve been able to categorize my own opposingly pronged problem thus: I take my history very seriously. As I have argued in this space I am convinced that every clear thinking person needs to cease with the equivocation and rationalization and prepare for very serious fight ahead. This fight is going to face us off with some very powerful, very disgusting people. The offensive line of the electorate has opened a huge gap through which neo-fascism may burst into the open field. The tailback could trip and fall down. There may be a flag for holding. But the lane is wide open and the end zone is in sight. No matter how the drive was sustained to this point. We are here now.
I have had two physical altercations along these lines in the last 10 days. Feel free to judge or scold me if that’s what you feel you need to do. I am not embarrassed by my actions. I’m putting the deplorables on notice and in public that the so-called bleeding hearts will stand up. Just a cursory review of the career of our next Attorney General should be enough support my actions. His full given name being an unfortunate coincidence I suppose. Since witnessing an insidious, belligerent America First/Law and Order movement achieve the ultimate political success my first thought is something like, don’t the great artists steal?
As a counterweight to my desire to return contemptibility in equal measure, my more “rational” friends find these incidents understandable, but unproductive. The main task as they see it is one of messaging and persuasion. With a measured approach based on reason, they plead, we may convince those who are angry and confused and left behind by globalization that the prescriptions of left-leaning social policy can better address the struggles corporatism and capitalism has wrought.
The anxiety and misery experienced by many in this country (especially in the rural areas and the so-called ‘Rust Belt’), brought on by an ever-expanding economic inequality (see also, Piketty, Thomas), is very real. The troubling thing is that these folks seem to have determined that authoritarian crypto-fascism is the remedy for what ails them.[1] This seems as misplaced as treating a brain tumor with the guillotine. I recently heard political scientist and professor of international political economy at Brown University Mark Blyth relay this factoid; in 2015 bonuses paid to Wall Street financiers, not regular wages mind, bonuses, totaled $28 .4 billion. (This was seven short years from a bailout funded by you and me.) At the same time the aggregate compensation paid to every single person in the United States that earns a minimum wage was $14 billion. How a Donald J Trump administration ameliorates this situation I haven’t the foggiest notion.
Sunday’s News Journal catalogued some concerns of these voters on the Delmarva Peninsula in an article titled ‘Trump Voters Send Message.’ I ask that you read it and help me with my seemingly paradoxical bind. If you prefer a broader look read the cover story of yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, ‘This Land Is Your Land: Reflections From Trump’s America.’ How do we develop a lesson for an audience of students who appear to have a different agenda than governing and who intrinsically don’t trust the know-it-all teacher with all the bias of the media?
The answer to the puzzle posed in the novel is mail fraud. I think our predicament is quite a bit more tricky, and dangerous.
In the meantime I’ll be reading and writing (and attempting to cut out the actually fighting) and resisting.
Speak to you again soon.
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[1] This seems to be an even more relevant double-bind from the perspective of the “disenfranchised working class voter”™. I think I’ll need more time to reflect on it before commenting further.