#va07

The Tea Party, Heroin, and Fall 2022 Elections

Jack Trammell, Ph.D.

One of the most frightening days in my young teaching career was when I stared out at thirty restless, sometimes angry faces and realized: “If these students, wanted to, they could all act together and just standup and leave, and go wherever they wanted in the school, and there would be nothing that I could do about.”  As I continued to look out at them, I wondered what kind of trouble I would get in for doing something like that.  Something compulsive rose up inside of me and I said, “I know I’m a new teacher, and you don’t like things so far, and actually if you wanted to, there’s nothing stopping you all from acting together, getting up, and walking out of here.  I couldn’t write you all up.  I couldn’t stop you.”  I expected them to do it, and there was some new fidgeting.

But they didn’t.  They just looked slightly more annoyed than before.  They sat there, throwing trash, whispering to each other, putting heads down on the desk, etc.  They either didn’t care enough to all get up and walk out, didn’t want to, or—and this is what I think is the key—they had no clue about the power of acting together toward a common purpose which could disarm an entire, elaborate bureaucratic system.  They had no inkling of the collective power they could wield should they so choose.  If all 1400 of them arranged a walk-out to the outdoor park at 11 am, there would be nothing 100 teachers and a lone police officer could do to stop them.

Nothing quite that dramatic ever happened (so far) in my teaching career.  But now as a sociologist, I look back on it in amazement.  Our systems of power function precisely because people have absolutely zero idea about how powerful they collectively are.

That brings me to the politics of the present.  The Tea Party twenty years ago was the first political group in the new century to understand the power of collective action in our politics.  Although it’s easy to make fun of their yellow signs (I’ll do more in a separate blog on those…), and some of their more extreme ideas (like birds being tiny drones spying on people), I actually learned the hard way in my 2014 campaign for Congress about the spoiler power a rock-solid 20% actually wields. Metaphorically, the Tea Party DID decide to get up (all of them) and walk out of class—and no one did anything about it.

It took people a while to figure out why their power was so out of proportion to their actual numerical strength. 

Democrats are in a losing battle.  They are the party of diversity, the party of acceptance, the party of ideas that are broad and often intellectual (liberal in the classic sense)—but that means when someone says “let’s stand up and walk out of the classroom,” they all look at each other in confusion.  Some cautiously get up; others don’t; a few try to walk out and the principal shows up at the door and says “sit back down” and they do.  Some students protest and say “let the others walk out.”  But the whole thing degenerates quickly and the next thing you know all the “good” students are seated and learning again.

The lesson Ds: your 50% means nothing when you don’t act collectively.

Now the original Tea Party has been gobbled up by MAGA (and some Tea Party purists are drowned out in their unhappiness about that) and the granite block is now about 35% to 40%.  They represent the largest, least fragmented political block in America by a long stretch.  Tea Party purists are hoist by their own petard because they know the power is in the solidarity, and not often enough the power of the ideas, so they are trapped.  A little “Don’t say gay” here and a little “Control a woman’s body” there and most Tea Partiers swallow their libertarian visions of minimal government interference, without a glass of water, and choke it down to trade it off for the heroin they have grown addicted to—solidarity.

If Democrats lose in 2022, it won’t be because their ideas aren’t good.  Even the Tea Party has some ideas that are good (in 2014 I wanted to eliminate the federal Department of Education—they liked that); it won’t be because the majority of Americans don’t agree with their ideas—they do, in fact.  If they lose, it will be because they haven’t learned the very simple lesson the Tea Party grew famous for—solidarity.  If everybody gets up and walks out, there is nothing the rookie teacher can do.

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Special Letter to Supporters of Jack Trammell for Congress

By Jack Trammell

Dear Friends, Family and Supporters:

I have decided not to run for Congress in 2016 in Virginia’s 7th District, even though the temptation to knock heads again with my former colleague and basketball teammate, Dave Brat, is almost more than I can bear to turn down (remember my Madison and Monroe analogy—Dave and I were fated to oppose each other from the beginning, even before we were in politics).

There are a variety of reasons for this, but the two most important ones are that I am switching jobs at Randolph-Macon College (moving from administrator with faculty status and some teaching, to full-time visiting faculty with all teaching), and that the race doesn’t seem like the right fit for Audrie and me this year.

Many of you know about my passion for reading, writing, researching, and teaching, and this move into full-time teaching (and potentially a tenure track) has been an aspiration of mine for quite some time.  I actually turned down full-time, tenure track jobs at several fine universities a few years ago, in part because of the lure of politics.  This will now allow me much greater time to devote to my research and writing interests; it will be a year of transition for the transition specialist (a special education pun).

Speaking of writing and research, many of you know that my book (co-authored with Guy Terrell) on reforming our democracy is coming out this June: The Fourth Branch of Government: We the People.  It is a non-partisan effort to fundamentally change the way our democracy works for us. I had hoped that Dave would truly be a maverick of a different nature when he won, but alas, he has been an obstructionist and a gadfly, and now represents the very entrenched ideology and elitism that I am still fighting against.  Dave should be working with us, not “benevolently” on our behalf.  (Remember, Dave, you represent hundreds of thousands of us Democrats, too.) The Fourth Branch suggests ways to transform this gridlock, beginning with a National Constitutional Convention.

There are also a variety of dangerous forces swirling around in politics this year which make it difficult for a Democrat to run and win, even in the newly redrawn district.  The demographic of voter apathy has not been changed by the new map, and the detailed results of the Presidential primaries a few weeks ago confirm this.  In conjunction with the Donald Trump phenomenon, Democrats must find a way to motivate people to go to the polls, especially in this district.  If I ran this term, I would need to do more than I did before, rather than less, and even a full year in the call room and twice the money still might not make the necessary difference.

With all of this said, there are other fine candidates who are seeking the nomination, and I would encourage each of you to support the eventual nominee fully and enthusiastically. Although I will maintain a skeletal staff and finance structure intact for a possible run again in 2018, I would ask that your money and time go to the new nominee, so that we can push the envelope as far as we can.  Nothing stays the same forever, and although I feel the danger of an overall Republican victory in November is very real, the way to fight it is with a cohesive, united, enthusiastic Democratic front.

Many of you have volunteered to help and work again for me in 2016, and I thank all of you—I will see many of you soon and thank you in person again.  A list of your names here would take dozens of pages.  If I run in 2018, I will count on you!

Please, above all, make sure everyone you know goes to polls this November. It’s never been more important.

With best regards,

Jack Trammell, Ph.D.

Calling Names

By Jack Trammell

 Calling someone a name that insults, belittles, degrades, or distances is as old as time itself.  But in modern politics, calling someone names still (unfortunately) carries great power, and fits well within models of successful PR, propaganda and manipulation of public opinion.  Every political veteran discusses the question of “when to go negative,” and everyone knows that it takes telling the truth ten times to undo one convincing lie.

“Calling names” is perhaps one of the oldest tools in the overly-aggressive talker’s communication toolbox.  It’s arguably one of the least effective, however. Everyone knows: “Sticks and stones may break my bones…”  None-the-less, Sociologists and others might suggest that there are many complex hidden meanings to such name calling: overlays of distrust, tension over disagreement, insecurity about one’s own ideas, Machiavellian desires to dominate others, etc.

The power of “naming” itself is as old as humans and spoken language.  It was basically the first power that God gave Adam and Eve in the Old Testament/Tanakh/Koran tradition—the authority to name animals, places, people, and even more importantly ideas.  The power of naming works on a primeval level for humans even in 2016.  We feel insulted when someone can’t pronounce our name, or forgets it for seemingly callous reasons (woe to teachers like me who struggle to remember students’ names…)  And let’s remember that some name-calling is good—we all have our pet names for the people we love and care about.  It’s a term of affection or friendliness, and it’s the rosy side of that ancient power.

But we also intentionally name call for mean and destructive purposes.  Charles R. Anderson, literary critic, once said: “Observe which side resorts to the most vociferous name-calling and you are likely to have identified the side with the weaker argument and they know it.”  The 2016 Republican Presidential debates and primaries have been filled with name-calling, and Democrats aren’t immune either.

Where do we ultimately end up with that, however?  We can’t stop people from calling names, can we?  It’s happening with 8th grade girls in the hall at the middle school somewhere right now, beside the water cooler at work, and in the stadium stands at the Super Bowl.  In the current primary season, we are forced to watch Republicans, Democrats and Independents calling each other all kinds of names, some of them quiet stupid and overtly unfair.  Audrie and I began compiling a list of who called whom what, and it’s quite a rubric of absurdity.  Where is the red button for the majority of us to press it and say “enough is enough, please?”  

The truth is that our American president simply cannot afford to be someone who resorts to name calling; nor can our candidates be taken seriously if they do, either.  In fact, it should be a golden standard for all of our elected officials.  Our business, the people’s business, is too important for school yard antics.

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