In the UK, it's not Brexit: "It’s a much deeper crisis. An existential crisis.”

"What Brexit has shown again is our inability to think anew about what the state and the economy are for, to sketch out what a different future might look like."

It's no great stretch to suggest that Americans resemble these remarks, and best not be chortling with more of the same tired exceptionalism. I'm reminded of the recent quip to the effect that the Democratic National Committee is 100% in favor of reform, so long as nothing changes.

Britain is in the grip of an existential crisis that reaches far beyond Brexit, by Aditya Chakrabortty (The Guardian)

Nearly three years after the referendum, Westminster has still not come to terms with the grievances that drove the result

The person who is best qualified to hold up a mirror to British politics today is neither a minister nor an academic. He is not even British. No: he is, of course, Michel Barnier, the French-born servant of Brussels. In his 1,036 days as the EU’s chief negotiator, he has sat for numbing hours opposite Theresa May, haggled with David Davis and Dominic Raab and their junior ministers and faced down countless Whitehall officials. He is the outsider who knows our system inside out. So when he popped up right at the end of the BBC’s fly on the wall Storyville documentaries on the Brexit negotiations, I leaned in to listen.

Filmed in March, as it became clear that Britain would not be leaving Europe any time soon, Barnier is shown briefing senior European parliamentarians. This latest breakdown is “more than weariness”, he tells them. “There is a very serious crisis in the UK which … isn’t linked to the text of Brexit and even less to the Irish backstop. It’s a much deeper crisis. An existential crisis.”

Barnier doesn’t do florid, so his words leapt out. After almost three years with his eye pressed to a microscope trained on the British elite, here was one of the EU’s finest declaring that the real failure wasn’t this clause or that loophole. It wasn’t even Brexit at all. The UK is in a crisis as big as the country itself.

There are times when some politicians and pundits remember this, when they jerk awake to the reality that the country stands at a moment of reckoning more profound than Suez – one in which our institutions, our economy and our system of representation are all being shown up as simply not up to the job. This week is plainly not one of those times. I watched Barnier’s remarks on Sunday night, as the first UK results from the European elections began to roll in, showing a far-right party as the clear winner. I woke up to a righteous hailstorm of commentary about What Jeremy Must Say Now and Who Replaces Theresa. Such debates can satisfactorily steam up the sash windows of central London, but set in any context they seem almost recklessly marginal ...

ON THE AVENUES: As a new year dawns, I’m existentially yours.

ON THE AVENUES: As a new year dawns, I’m existentially yours.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

In 2019, ON THE AVENUES moves to Tuesday -- unless I change my mind again.

According to the dictionary, an existential crisis is a psychological episode in which a person questions the meaning of their life, and of existence itself.

Okay, but to me the word “episode” is misplaced because it implies an exception to the everyday, and an event occurring rarely or even randomly. I firmly believe that for most of us, an existential crisis is ongoing and everlasting. “Episodes” are those special times when we’re able to ignore this existential condition, and for a short while at least, to enjoy a little peace.

Since you’re probably already jumping to conclusions, kindly heed the advice of Archie Bunker and stifle yourself. I’m not depressed or morose, merely surprised at anyone being so sure about the meaning of life that they’re not questioning their premises every single day spent in it.

For those responding to this provocation with an affirmation of one or the other religious belief systems, thanks but no thanks. I know you mean well – now please, vacate my internet porch.

However, now that YOU’VE brought up religion, and not li'l ol' heretical me, here’s a brief excerpt from a book I recently read: To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949, by Ian Kershaw.

Where a significant threat from the Left posed itself, however, the Churches of both major denominations invariably backed the authority of the state. And the more extreme they perceived the threat to be, the more extreme was the reaction they were prepared to support.

Nowhere was the reaction more extreme than in Germany. Here, the Protestant Church – actually divided doctrinally and regionally but in its various forms nominally embracing more than two-thirds of the German population – had since Martin Luther’s time seen itself as closely aligned with state authority. The revolution of 1918, the removal of the Kaiser and the new democracy that replaced the monarchy brought widespread dismay in Church circles. The perceived ‘crisis of faith’ (Glaubenskrise) promoted hopes of the restoration of the monarchy or a new form of state leadership that would overcome Germany’s moral as well as political and economic plight.

A true leader was needed, in the eyes of many members of the Protestant clergy. He would be, in the words of one Protestant theologian writing in 1932, a ‘true statesman’ (as opposed to the mere ‘politicians’ of the Weimar Republic) who holds ‘war and peace in his hand and communes with God’. In line with such thinking, Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933 was widely seen by Protestant clergy as the start of a national reawakening that would inspire a revival of faith. There was even a Nazified wing of the Protestant Church. The ‘German Christians” rejected the Old Testament as Jewish and took pride in being ‘the stormtroopers of Jesus Christ’. Such extremes, the preserve of a minority of the clergy (though with substantial support in some areas), were rejected, however, by most Protestants, whose ideas of a revival of faith were for the most part both doctrinally and organizationally conservative.

Imagine it: an unfettered strongman boasting pure power, as better to interpret the prince of peace’s musings. Not that I’m suggesting something like this could ever “happen here” – wink wink, nudge nudge.

Just the same, be still my quivering middle finger!

--

If travel doesn’t induce a frenzied whiplash spate of good, hard thinking, then chances are you’re doing it wrong. Even if your holiday of choice is on the beach at a tequila-soaked resort in Cancun, there should be something there to ignite the synapses.

If not, why bother going away in the first place?

For me, books and travel collided during the fourth quarter of 2018, combining to create the feel of a graduate-level history course, albeit without the obligation of writing a term paper.

Except for today's column, of course.

In October, I read The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. It’s a novel, although much of the story takes place in pre-WWII Danzig (subsequently called Gdansk), and the author masterfully evokes a place and time on the verge of being lost forever.

November brought our pilgrimage to the Gdansk of today, with visits to the Museum of the Second World War and the European Solidarity Centre. I was deeply moved by both, and they contributed to a broader understanding of present-day Polish culture and politics.

Upon returning stateside, still in November, there were midterm election results to interpret and Kershaw’s text to begin reading. I finished it prior to embarking for Munich just before Christmas, where Bavaria’s history was revisited against a backdrop of Mexican walls, government shutdowns and Trumpolini’s latest Twitter meltdowns.

It was intense, to say the least. Past seemed to meet the present, and the process proved exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure.

The blurriness went beyond too much exquisite pork and too many full-throttle beers. I’d been bingeing on knowledge, and it made me tired. Perhaps my body and brain are trying to tell me it’s time to read a romance novel – with a side of steamed vegetables, a six pack of ice-cold Miller Lite, and lots of television.

But then again, no. These milquetoast habits might make me depressed and morose.

---

Ironically, the first use of the term “existential crisis” was recorded during the 1930s, as it became increasingly clear to reasonable people that Nazism in Germany posed a very real threat to the very existence of Jews, Slavs, gays, the Roma, developmentally disabled persons and others landing outside the addled perimeter of Hitler’s crackpot racial theories.

Eight decades later, these tidbits of lunacy are enjoying a renaissance among mouth-breathing devotees of a president who’s never met a book he actually read.

But as Kershaw observes, science isn’t always the cure for stupidity. It’s important to remember that Hitlerian doctrines of racial purity flowed quite naturally from seemingly legitimate doctrines which had been venerated by polite society in Europe and America prior to the Great War, in particular the “science” of eugenics:

(Eugenics was) the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis.

Not to exclude something almost as bad, phrenology: "The detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities."

The terms ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ come from phrenology, the nineteenth-century science of regarding the shape of the skull as a key to intelligence. A ‘high’ forehead meant intelligence; a ‘low’ one meant stupidity. Phrenology thrived as a popular science in the late nineteenth century and led eventually to the racial theories of the Nazis, for whom the Jewish cranium and pale, sunken face were clear indications of Jewish racial inferiority.”

Our days in Munich in December were a time to reflect on all these themes of 20th-century history, to observe how much (and how little) the city has changed since my first visits in the late 1980s, and to ponder certain existential questions – as opposed to crises, strictly speaking.

In the 1980s, World War II was only forty-odd years removed. These days, living memories of the era are confined to a fast receding generation of 90-year-olds. What we’re witnessing in Brexit, Trump and the rise of authoritarianism around the world, whether we approve or not, is the final dissolution of the post-war international order. It lasted a scant 70 years, which isn’t much of a run by the standards of the Dark Ages or Pax Romana.

The difference: this is the one we’re living through, if not grasping particularly well. Maybe it’s always been like that. Not everyone alive today has time to think about history, or cares to learn more about the past. However, it might be helpful to think more about the real world and less about those diversions intended by the architects of capital accumulation to keep us numbly quiescent.

In the 2012 book Thinking the Twentieth Century, the late historian Tony Judt and his co-writer Timothy Snyder discussed the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and Judt made a point that I think covers more ground than he intended.

The vast majority of human beings today are simply not competent to protect their own interests.

Granted, the context of Judt’s remark was financial decision-making. Before the modern advent of easy consumer credit, it was so difficult for ordinary people to borrow that they simply couldn’t, and were confined to the bare necessities of life. There were other problems then as now, but a crushing burden of personal debt tended to be avoided simply because society kept it off-limits to ordinary people -- prior to concluding it was an ideal way to maintain control.

I believe Judt’s words apply to other aspects of contemporary life. It might help to know that our food doesn’t come from Kroger, but through it, and when you rail against multinational corporate tyranny and still take the kids to Disney World … well, you know, debt isn’t the only potential entrapment. Governing one’s life by pervasive fantasy is an impediment to activism, too.

I regularly take a few days off from competitive drinking, and these are the times when my existential crises exit the carefully curated lock box and creep back into view.

After a day or two of detox, I notice myself becoming more organized and efficient, like my mother, who was obsessively such. By the third or fourth day, clarity and perception have re-emerged to such a disturbing extent that I can look around me and see this place for exactly what it is: Nawbany as a grassroots component of L’America, both right here in broad daylight, the flaws of neither in any way capable of being cloaked.

My friends, that’s an existential crisis – and that’s also why I always crawl back into the beer mug, where it's safe.

---

Recent columns:

December 29: ON THE AVENUES: Another year older and deeper in debt, so let's doo-doo it all over again.

December 20: ON THE AVENUES: Truth, lies, music, and a trick of the Christmas tale (2018 Remix).

December 14: A joyful noise? The six most-read ON THE AVENUES columns of 2018.

December 6: ON THE AVENUES: Straight tickets, unsociable media and whether Democrats should rally around Gahan's gallows pole.

Hello Wendy, Part Two: "Are dissidents born or made? A humanities major examines his life and locale."

Gibberish, isn't it?

Previously: Hello Wendy, Part One: In which we are properly warned not to heed the oligarchs' call to discount the value of liberal arts degrees.

As originally published on May 18, 2017, this column explains why I feel this need to say hello to Wendy Dant Chesser, the president and CEO of One Southern Indiana ... and why I have no plans to "let it go" anytime soon.

Note also that many of the same thoughts were repeated a few weeks later, prior to the council's annual rote approval of One Southern Indiana's tithing request.

(2 of 2) My comments at tonight's city council meeting, during public speaking time prior to A-17-02 (funding for One Southern Indiana).

---

ON THE AVENUES: Are dissidents born or made? A humanities major examines his life and locale. 

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Since my mother died in mid-March, I’ve experienced periods of intense introspection.

Are these signs of depression?

Maybe, although I don’t think so. In all likelihood, periods of reflection are natural manifestations of the grieving process. The cosmos can be disorienting even in the best of times, and our reactions change with them.

I believe that it’s never too late to learn something, and accordingly, these past few weeks have struck me as an opportunity to relax and see where these evolving thoughts are leading.

One very big question has moved to the front of the cerebral queue. It’s something I’ve often asked myself through the years.

Why am I here?

Mind you, not here on Planet Earth. There’s no need for existential musing about the nature of origins, at least yet. I’m perfectly content to allow theologians, philosophers and even humanities majors to earn their meager pay, but looking through old photo albums is evidence enough for me.

My parents met, and one thing led to another. Suddenly there I was, all created, pouring pints of Guinness for a living and plotting a beer revolution.

Rather …

Why am I still here, continuing to live in New Albany when I might be residing in another part of the state, country or world?

(Reader’s note: The axiom known as Thrasher’s Razor fully applies to this rumination, because now more than ever, we’re all here because we’re not all there.)

As the missus reminds me on widely scattered occasions -- basically, every morning at breakfast -- I’ve never been much in sync with the sort of polite poseur’s society mores craved by the likes of Bob Caesar. They're far too banal an ordeal for me.

After 57 years of give and take, it’s evident that I have lots of buttons – and the reigning poltroons have even more fingers. I’ve never been able to swim a lick unless it’s against the metaphorical tide. Contrarianism fits me like a well-tailored suit, which of course I’d refuse to wear, because you can’t trust anyone who does.

They’re just hiding behind those fashionable costumes (seriously?), anyway.

I trust it isn’t time to face the final curtain, and yet the years dwindle down. Wouldn’t I be happier elsewhere, in a place with a cultural climate more in keeping with my personal value system, as opposed to one that prompts severe allergic (read: aesthetic) reactions?

Might I manage to find the zip code for peace and harmony, even at the advanced age of “I can remember the first moon landing”?

Haven’t “they” always told me to leave town if I didn’t like “their” toxic farrago of ignorance and anti-intellectualism?

To which I’ve always succinctly replied: “You first, my dear Gaston.”

---

The most recent resurgence of these locational culture reflections came during our April visit to Portland, Maine.

It was a Friday morning at the estimable Tony’s Donut Shop at the corner of Bolton and Congress, and we were equipped with cream horns, black coffee and the bakery’s gnarled regulars seated at an adjacent table, talking current events.

As noted previously, Tony's is somewhat reminiscent of New Albany’s venerable Honey Creme Donuts, albeit three or four times larger, with more production capacity as well as a half-dozen cozy tables for visitors to sit and converse.

It was impossible to avoid overhearing the amiable patter as locals came and went with their carry-outs, nor to ignore the booming voices of the senior citizens seated nearby. They were talking hockey when we sat down, then shifted to politics -- and I caught myself cringing involuntarily, as though expecting to be savagely beaten.

After all, back home again in Indiana, where I’ve insisted on remaining amid the raging right-wing proclivities, this conversational shift inevitably would have segued into the parroting of conservative talk radio bromides.

Or, just the thing inspiring me to respond loudly from the left side of the aisle, a scenario usually culminating in rancor, disharmony and “if you don’t love it, lump it” -- or worse.

And so there I sat at Tony’s Donuts like Pavlov’s drooling mutt, conditioned to imagine a fine day about to be ruined, all the while thinking that I can’t seem to escape the mentality of Redevelopment Commission meetings no matter how far I travel – except this time, it wasn’t that way at all.

Instead, these retirees in Portland fiercely criticized Donald Trump’s buffoonery. They mercilessly ridiculed the Republican Party, and scoffed openly at the very idea of a theocratic creature called “Mike Pence” reposing within spitting distance of power.

Me? I’m from Chicago. Never heard of Indiana.

Awestruck, yet aware it would have been impolite of me to kiss these strangers, I settled for stuffing another nut-encrusted Bismarck into my gratified pie hole. Still, it started me thinking.

I’ve lived in Floyd County my whole life, and in the city of New Albany during the latter half of it. Even when Barack Obama won the state of Indiana in 2008, John McCain beat Obama more than comfortably in both my county and city. So did Mitt Romney in 2012, and of course Trump easily carried them, too.

Yes, so-called Democrats have “controlled” municipal government for much of the same period, although it is painfully clear that the retirees at Tony’s would take one pained look at Caesar and accurately place him somewhere to the right of George Wallace.

Back to my original question. If I’ve never been into S & M, why have I punished myself these many decades?

As an old-school Red (Commie) marooned in a new-age Red (Conservative) sandbox, and generally outnumbered, I’ve been compelled for thirty-five or more years to inflict my liberalism on the prevailing Falangist orthodoxy by means of guerrilla warfare, destined almost always to lose, and just as often reluctant to compromise.

Why am I like this?

I don’t know. After I’m dead, the psychoanalysts can study my brain for causes of contrarianism. In my experience, it’s incurable.

All I know is for as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with the notion that opposing points of view deserve a hearing, especially as they pertain to politics, civil rights, religion and individual conscience.

The bland respectability of Babbitt-style conformity invariably tramples “other” competing sides of the story, and so when disposed to tilt, my windmill of choice flies a banner reading “we’ve always done it this way.”

On the other hand, if I’ve been of assistance just once to someone by helping them see that it’s okay to be different, and it’s possible to be responsible, productive and ethical without being duped and hornswoggled by delusions, fantasias and superstitions foisted by the usual suspects, then my career in contrarianism has been well worth it.

---

As a relevant postscript, I cannot attend Thursday evening’s city council meeting owing to a conflict with my Leadership Southern Indiana graduation ceremony. As you may recall, I’m a proud member of the Discover class of 2017.

Leadership Southern Indiana’s mission is to engage, develop and mobilize regional leaders who will serve and transform our community.

Ironically, the council’s Thursday evening agenda includes A-17-02, an ordinance documenting our legislative body’s annual tithe to One Southern Indiana – and coincidentally, 1Si’s President and CEO, Wendy Dant Chesser, spoke to my class last week during our concluding Community Leadership Day.

Ostensibly Dant Chesser was there to outline steps for effectively leading a non-profit organization, and this she managed to do with requisite efficiency.

However, the second half of her presentation quickly digressed into the customary advertisement for 1Si, although this time with a novel twist.

According to Dant Chesser, the large manufacturing conglomerates most eagerly courted by 1Si (as opposed to independent local businesses and grassroots entrepreneurs, who must settle for trickle-down) prefer employees holding one of the six “top earner” university degrees, including engineering, computers and electronics.

However, according to her PowerPoint slide, higher education insists on disgorging twice as many graduates who’ve been awarded the six least “useful” (and lowest paying) degree choices: English, philosophy, history and the like.

It would seem that both Dant Chesser and the fluffed and subsidized multinational beneficiaries of the neoliberal order, upon whom 1Si depends to make payroll for 14 staffers, are offended by this ratio.

She made no effort to conceal her disdain for those viewing education as anything other than glorified vocational training, and considering the fact that I wasn’t the only humanities major in the room, her summarizing anecdote of choice was tellingly errant.

Dant Chesser told us of her recent chat with an art history major who was having trouble in the job market. Well, what did he expect? Art history? What sort of guidance counselor would recommend studying subjects as perennially useless as art history?

Well …

Perhaps those guidance counselors grasping that the object of education isn’t always to match obedient hamsters to their proper wheel, but to produce humans capable of thinking. The fact that “fake” news is such a concern these days might enter into this paradigm, wouldn’t you … think?

Seemingly nowhere in Dant Chesser’s narrowly defined (read: confined) world exists the type of broad, individually tailored choices of human aspiration that depart from economic development of the “we’ve always done it this way” variety, which by breathtaking coincidence is the type best calculated to advance the specific capitalist format to which 1Si has attached itself like a leech – hence the blood money of its council funding request.

The real problem might be that humanities majors have been made aware of different trends in the history of thought, and as such, they’re the ones most likely to question Dant Chesser’s premises.

Which I did, aloud and joyfully.

Bizarrely, another of her slides testified to the critical importance of every Southern Indiana resident meekly accepting 1Si’s version of the Regional Cities Initiative, so as to provide unanimity in pursuit of a “collective” path forward – and yes, “collective” is precisely the word this crony capitalist enabler used.

Irony is dead, but Trumpolini didn’t kill it.

As a direct result of past concerns proffered by anti-establishment dissidents, at least the money 1Si is requesting of our council will be put to a specific, directed use: WorkHub, a workforce training initiative.

That’s all well and good, but is this workforce training available to art history majors, or must we collectively denounce the pursuit of non-vocational education before disbursing the dollars to applicants?

Until Dant Chesser answers this question (a contrite public apology would be more suitable, but I’m a cynical realist), I recommend to council that the money be withheld. It won’t, and I can hear the backslapping already.

This admittedly has been a long read, so thanks for persevering.

You know, if dastardly parasitic humanities majors like me didn’t combat the angst with alcohol and stick around places like Nawbany, confident that any reasonable definition of leadership includes transparency, the ability to hear opposing viewpoints, to weigh available options and to filter the incessant bilge before charging across open ground toward the machine gun nest – tell me, would anyone bother challenging Wendy Dant Chesser and Bob Caesar when they begin spinning those “our way or the highway” whoppers?

That’s okay. You needn't answer. It’s my conscience, and it’s not for sale. However, I’m not going anywhere, and you can buy me a beer any time you like.

ON THE AVENUES: Are dissidents born or made? A humanities major examines his life and locale.

ON THE AVENUES: Are dissidents born or made? A humanities major examines his life and locale. 

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Since my mother died in mid-March, I’ve experienced periods of intense introspection.

Are these signs of depression?

Maybe, although I don’t think so. In all likelihood, periods of reflection are natural manifestations of the grieving process. The cosmos can be disorienting even in the best of times, and our reactions change with them.

I believe that it’s never too late to learn something, and accordingly, these past few weeks have struck me as an opportunity to relax and see where these evolving thoughts are leading.

One very big question has moved to the front of the cerebral queue. It’s something I’ve often asked myself through the years.

Why am I here?

Mind you, not here on Planet Earth. There’s no need for existential musing about the nature of origins, at least yet. I’m perfectly content to allow theologians, philosophers and even humanities majors to earn their meager pay, but looking through old photo albums is evidence enough for me.

My parents met, and one thing led to another. Suddenly there I was, all created, pouring pints of Guinness for a living and plotting a beer revolution.

Rather …

Why am I still here, continuing to live in New Albany when I might be residing in another part of the state, country or world?

(Reader’s note: The axiom known as Thrasher’s Razor fully applies to this rumination, because now more than ever, we’re all here because we’re not all there.)

As the missus reminds me on widely scattered occasions -- basically, every morning at breakfast -- I’ve never been much in sync with the sort of polite poseur’s society mores craved by the likes of Bob Caesar. They're far too banal an ordeal for me.

After 57 years of give and take, it’s evident that I have lots of buttons – and the reigning poltroons have even more fingers. I’ve never been able to swim a lick unless it’s against the metaphorical tide. Contrarianism fits me like a well-tailored suit, which of course I’d refuse to wear, because you can’t trust anyone who does.

They’re just hiding behind those fashionable costumes (seriously?), anyway.

I trust it isn’t time to face the final curtain, and yet the years dwindle down. Wouldn’t I be happier elsewhere, in a place with a cultural climate more in keeping with my personal value system, as opposed to one that prompts severe allergic (read: aesthetic) reactions?

Might I manage to find the zip code for peace and harmony, even at the advanced age of “I can remember the first moon landing”?

Haven’t “they” always told me to leave town if I didn’t like “their” toxic farrago of ignorance and anti-intellectualism?

To which I’ve always succinctly replied: “You first, my dear Gaston.”

---

The most recent resurgence of these locational culture reflections came during our April visit to Portland, Maine.

It was a Friday morning at the estimable Tony’s Donut Shop at the corner of Bolton and Congress, and we were equipped with cream horns, black coffee and the bakery’s gnarled regulars seated at an adjacent table, talking current events.

As noted previously, Tony's is somewhat reminiscent of New Albany’s venerable Honey Creme Donuts, albeit three or four times larger, with more production capacity as well as a half-dozen cozy tables for visitors to sit and converse.

It was impossible to avoid overhearing the amiable patter as locals came and went with their carry-outs, nor to ignore the booming voices of the senior citizens seated nearby. They were talking hockey when we sat down, then shifted to politics -- and I caught myself cringing involuntarily, as though expecting to be savagely beaten.

After all, back home again in Indiana, where I’ve insisted on remaining amid the raging right-wing proclivities, this conversational shift inevitably would have segued into the parroting of conservative talk radio bromides.

Or, just the thing inspiring me to respond loudly from the left side of the aisle, a scenario usually culminating in rancor, disharmony and “if you don’t love it, lump it” -- or worse.

And so there I sat at Tony’s Donuts like Pavlov’s drooling mutt, conditioned to imagine a fine day about to be ruined, all the while thinking that I can’t seem to escape the mentality of Redevelopment Commission meetings no matter how far I travel – except this time, it wasn’t that way at all.

Instead, these retirees in Portland fiercely criticized Donald Trump’s buffoonery. They mercilessly ridiculed the Republican Party, and scoffed openly at the very idea of a theocratic creature called “Mike Pence” reposing within spitting distance of power.

Me? I’m from Chicago. Never heard of Indiana.

Awestruck, yet aware it would have been impolite of me to kiss these strangers, I settled for stuffing another nut-encrusted Bismarck into my gratified pie hole. Still, it started me thinking.

I’ve lived in Floyd County my whole life, and in the city of New Albany during the latter half of it. Even when Barack Obama won the state of Indiana in 2008, John McCain beat Obama more than comfortably in both my county and city. So did Mitt Romney in 2012, and of course Trump easily carried them, too.

Yes, so-called Democrats have “controlled” municipal government for much of the same period, although it is painfully clear that the retirees at Tony’s would take one pained look at Caesar and accurately place him somewhere to the right of George Wallace.

Back to my original question. If I’ve never been into S & M, why have I punished myself these many decades?

As an old-school Red (Commie) marooned in a new-age Red (Conservative) sandbox, and generally outnumbered, I’ve been compelled for thirty-five or more years to inflict my liberalism on the prevailing Falangist orthodoxy by means of guerrilla warfare, destined almost always to lose, and just as often reluctant to compromise.

Why am I like this?

I don’t know. After I’m dead, the psychoanalysts can study my brain for causes of contrarianism. In my experience, it’s incurable.

All I know is for as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with the notion that opposing points of view deserve a hearing, especially as they pertain to politics, civil rights, religion and individual conscience.

The bland respectability of Babbitt-style conformity invariably tramples “other” competing sides of the story, and so when disposed to tilt, my windmill of choice flies a banner reading “we’ve always done it this way.”

On the other hand, if I’ve been of assistance just once to someone by helping them see that it’s okay to be different, and it’s possible to be responsible, productive and ethical without being duped and hornswoggled by delusions, fantasias and superstitions foisted by the usual suspects, then my career in contrarianism has been well worth it.

---

As a relevant postscript, I cannot attend Thursday evening’s city council meeting owing to a conflict with my Leadership Southern Indiana graduation ceremony. As you may recall, I’m a proud member of the Discover class of 2017.

Leadership Southern Indiana’s mission is to engage, develop and mobilize regional leaders who will serve and transform our community.

Ironically, the council’s Thursday evening agenda includes A-17-02, an ordinance documenting our legislative body’s annual tithe to One Southern Indiana – and coincidentally, 1Si’s President and CEO, Wendy Dant Chesser, spoke to my class last week during our concluding Community Leadership Day.

Ostensibly Dant Chesser was there to outline steps for effectively leading a non-profit organization, and this she managed to do with requisite efficiency.

However, the second half of her presentation quickly digressed into the customary advertisement for 1Si, although this time with a novel twist.

According to Dant Chesser, the large manufacturing conglomerates most eagerly courted by 1Si (as opposed to independent local businesses and grassroots entrepreneurs, who must settle for trickle-down) prefer employees holding one of the six “top earner” university degrees, including engineering, computers and electronics.

However, according to her PowerPoint slide, higher education insists on disgorging twice as many graduates who’ve been awarded the six least “useful” (and lowest paying) degree choices: English, philosophy, history and the like.

It would seem that both Dant Chesser and the fluffed and subsidized multinational beneficiaries of the neoliberal order, upon whom 1Si depends to make payroll for 14 staffers, are offended by this ratio.

She made no effort to conceal her disdain for those viewing education as anything other than glorified vocational training, and considering the fact that I wasn’t the only humanities major in the room, her summarizing anecdote of choice was tellingly errant.

Dant Chesser told us of her recent chat with an art history major who was having trouble in the job market. Well, what did he expect? Art history? What sort of guidance counselor would recommend studying subjects as perennially useless as art history?

Well …

Perhaps those guidance counselors grasping that the object of education isn’t always to match obedient hamsters to their proper wheel, but to produce humans capable of thinking. The fact that “fake” news is such a concern these days might enter into this paradigm, wouldn’t you … think?

Seemingly nowhere in Dant Chesser’s narrowly defined (read: confined) world exists the type of broad, individually tailored choices of human aspiration that depart from economic development of the “we’ve always done it this way” variety, which by breathtaking coincidence is the type best calculated to advance the specific capitalist format to which 1Si has attached itself like a leech – hence the blood money of its council funding request.

The real problem might be that humanities majors have been made aware of different trends in the history of thought, and as such, they’re the ones most likely to question Dant Chesser’s premises.

Which I did, aloud and joyfully.

Bizarrely, another of her slides testified to the critical importance of every Southern Indiana resident meekly accepting 1Si’s version of the Regional Cities Initiative, so as to provide unanimity in pursuit of a “collective” path forward – and yes, “collective” is precisely the word this crony capitalist enabler used.

Irony is dead, but Trumpolini didn’t kill it.

As a direct result of past concerns proffered by anti-establishment dissidents, at least the money 1Si is requesting of our council will be put to a specific, directed use: WorkHub, a workforce training initiative.

That’s all well and good, but is this workforce training available to art history majors, or must we collectively denounce the pursuit of non-vocational education before disbursing the dollars to applicants?

Until Dant Chesser answers this question (a contrite public apology would be more suitable, but I’m a cynical realist), I recommend to council that the money be withheld. It won’t, and I can hear the backslapping already.

This admittedly has been a long read, so thanks for persevering.

You know, if dastardly parasitic humanities majors like me didn’t combat the angst with alcohol and stick around places like Nawbany, confident that any reasonable definition of leadership includes transparency, the ability to hear opposing viewpoints, to weigh available options and to filter the incessant bilge before charging across open ground toward the machine gun nest – tell me, would anyone bother challenging Wendy Dant Chesser and Bob Caesar when they begin spinning those “our way or the highway” whoppers?

That’s okay. You needn't answer. It’s my conscience, and it’s not for sale. However, I’m not going anywhere, and you can buy me a beer any time you like.

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Recent columns:

May 11: ON THE AVENUES: Would a Canon candidacy compromise Deaf Gahan's and Mr. Dizznee's shizz show? A boy can dream.

May 4: ON THE AVENUES: Under the volcano in Catania, Sicily (Part One).

April 27: ON THE AVENUES: Dear Mr. Dizznee: Can you hear me now?

April 20: ON THE AVENUES: The Weekly Wad? It was a modest start.

Krugman: "The modern Republican Party’s grand, radical agenda lies in ruins."

Other examples of Republican distemper include Mitch McConnell's already famous self-filibuster, the party heroically banding together to reject a UN treaty on the rights of the disabled, and its local arm retaining Dave Matthews as party chairman in Floyd County.

But here's the kicker: Here in Floyd County, the Democratic existential crisis is even worse. There is no platform, no direction, and no desire to articulate something -- anything -- that might differentiate the local donkey from the local pachyderm. As our GOP sprints pell-mell for the 1950s, our Democrats conclude their best alternative is to get there first.

Why is that?

At some point, the external pressure from the blue states in the north will outweigh the sucking sound emitted from the south via McConnell's fiefdom, leading to progressive reform in Hoosierstan. Until then, we've no choice but to drink liberally.

The G.O.P.’s Existential Crisis, by Paul Krugman (New York Times)

We are not having a debt crisis.

It’s important to make this point, because I keep seeing articles about the “fiscal cliff” that do, in fact, describe it — often in the headline — as a debt crisis. But it isn’t. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its deficit. In fact, its borrowing costs are near historic lows. And even the confrontation over the debt ceiling that looms a few months from now if we do somehow manage to avoid going over the fiscal cliff isn’t really about debt.

No, what we’re having is a political crisis, born of the fact that one of our two great political parties has reached the end of a 30-year road. The modern Republican Party’s grand, radical agenda lies in ruins — but the party doesn’t know how to deal with that failure, and it retains enough power to do immense damage as it strikes out in frustration.

Before I talk about that reality, a word about the current state of budget “negotiations” ...