THE DEATH OF CODES

Predictions about our current chaos began as soon as the demographics experts realized that growing populations were going to meet social change in a way that put a LOT of insufficiently-educated and uncultured men out of work.  We all knew what "the men leaning against the wall" for lack of work, family, and basic attention would do to public order.  We have never been able to find a way to see them as an undeveloped asset and resource instead of obstacles.

Maybe some people who knew our dependence on international gig workers for harvest and recreation seasons thought that these men could pick up that work.  They refuse, considering it demeaning and underpaid, which it is.  Also not considered is what it means to be people who must constantly move to go where the work is.  In spite of financial arrangements for selling/buying houses, rental furniture, and standardized religious and eating establishments, the cost to humans is major in terms of security, life fulfillment, and building families.

We talk about the Code of Law, and it is the only restraint against taking Trump out of his Oval Office by the scruff of his neck, though he ignores the law, tramples it, reverses everything he can.  What we haven't spent much time talking about is the parallel Gentleman's Code of Decency.  It lies sprawled dead on the White House lawn, wearing a badly fitting rented tuxedo.  We just didn't realize how important it was and how much it made the Code of Law possible, workable, believable.  It was the fish's water, ignored.

Partly this "death" is due to the desire to change the government for moral reasons and cultural fittingness.  Feminists and dark people have been pointing out injustice with increasing power and meaning, but they have made vacuums that were filled by white male resentment and revenge.  Two demographic groups have an interest in throttling democracy.  One is this percentage of men who have no place in the world except rioting in the streets or jobs they think are beneath them.  Younger versions of them have disrupted every classroom where I've ever taught.  The other is arrogant, clever, sociopathic dominators whom I've often met in the religious world where they thrive by victimizing soft liberals.

Trump has always been a moral and economic disaster, a Smoke-and-Mirrors millionaire.  We've been shocked to find out how little he resembles the person we thought he was.  Looking at old vids, now we can see how he was gaming us.  Looking at new vids, we can see that he's rotting before our eyes.

But we had not understood the level of corruption that can be reached by a Senate of lawyers who make a career of becoming wealthy through raiding the government.  Not the work of the country, but all the opportunities that arise when ignoring the Code of Gentlemen.  Why do they tolerate the rules that empower Moscow Mitch?  Now that the female Squad of Color is eloquently able to express that old understanding of gentility that once made order possible -- and even include a little justice --those senatorial seemingly Russia-lovers (whom Russia has not yet realized only love their nice clean fortunes) in the Senate are revealed.

Another systemic factor (and I'm sure there are dozens) is the "greatest generation" who elected Eisenhower, partly out of respect for the military that blocked the Nazis and partly out of the organizing skills that created the national highway system and other engineering feats like dams and the power grid. Losing them lost much of the Code of Honor.  We didn't know in wartime that Ike was sleeping with his pretty chauffeur.  If we had, we wouldn't have seen it as a perfectly logical arrangement customary in many countries.  We're such fucking anthropological narcissists.  The men who have been dying over the last years have taken much with them.  It wasn't money. They were abandoned.

"What will you do when people begin dying on the sidewalks," we were asked decades ago. Now we know. Just step over them.

I want to tell an anecdote.  During the winter of 1972-73 which on the rez was more storm-bombed than any other winters I know, the teachers were trapped in their classrooms.  It was impossible to get to homes in East Glacier where many teachers lived.   High wind made it even impossible to cross the street or to start a pickup with a snow-packed engine compartment.  So I had brought a sleeping bag and stashed it in the closet.  For some reason I left the high school classroom for a few minutes and some jokester -- I think it was Liz Coburn -- had gotten the bag out and was snuggled in it on the floor.  

Just as I opened the door to return, a boy began to kick the girl in the bag. He was yelling, "Heil Hitler" and making the straight-arm gesture.  She could hardly move and no one else tried to intervene.  The boy was "triggered" by the opportunity and was nearly out of control, but I yelled loudly enough to stop him.  Everyone jumped for their assigned seats.  

Now I was triggered.  I was born in 1939 and grew up believing that Nazis were the embodiment of evil, never really gone so needing permanent vigilance and opposition.  I launched into a tirade, becoming more explanatory than enraged when I realized that the kids had no concept of war, Nazis, biological rage, oppression of the vulnerable, etc.  In the twenty minutes before the bell rang, I ripped them as hard as I could, including those who had just stood by and watched.

I expected irate parents on my doorstep the next day but none came.  Instead the kids said,  "Mrs. Scriver, would you lock the door and yell at us again?  That was pretty good."

I've thought about it ever since.  The Stanford Experiment.  The comedy TV series that mocked Nazis.  Rez violence.  A strange thing called "spaniel rage" in which a dog goes berzerk.  Wikipedia:  "In the Old Norse written corpus, berserkers were warriors who purportedly fought in a trance-like fury."  The anonymous writer translates the word as "bear fighters."

Why would the kids want me to lecture them passionately?  At least they felt something.  At least someone was paying attention to them as their parents had not done since they stopped have toddler tantrums.  At least it was real, present, and among them.

We are acting this out on a national level.  We are trapped in a sleeping bag.  So far no one has been able to become a bear warrior but the incels are trying.  Neither has anyone been the eloquent leader we crave -- several are rising, none are there so far.