Invisible Hayseeds

There is something about reading this story in this time.  I mean, Invisible Man.  Ralph Ellison.  The wunderkind of letters who penned only the one novel, prolific as it is. 

A moment comes in Ellison’s story when our main character, the nameless Brother, eulogizes the dead Tod Clifton.  He advises the mourners to go home and mourn no more as their mourning is impotent.  He chides them their inaction, their inability to organize and do anything, their complacency and willingness to be subjugated. 

Our nameless Brother, the Invisible Man, is a hayseed, too.  His every circumstance is a product of innocence, which underscores the fact the world has always suffered a dearth of real teachers. 

I prefer the classics and Invisible Man is just one I never happened onto previously.  However, my reading it coincided with the fact I have been in Chicago recently; the city of brotherhood.  The city of unions.  The city of high values and organized corruption.  The people are angry.  Every political discussion I was privy to, on the ‘L,’ on the tv, in the office, at the barbecue with so many Eastern Europeans, was derailed, derided, divisive, dehumanizing. 

My friend said all the violence is happening in six square blocks.  Someone else referred to it as black on black crime.  The morning after the President made a speech as part of the procession of speeches nominating Hillary Clinton for President I told my classroom I was back in a bromance with this President.  I had endured a season of disillusionment but now I was back.  I believed he was honorable.  80% of my classroom was black women and they practically cooed at me.  After all I was in the land of Obama. 

Dee, in the front row, smiled slyly at me and confirmed she would have been nowhere else but in front of her tv the night before. (That she said that felt like an unexpected surprise, like someone coming up to me standing in a long line and offering me a chair on wheels and a cool drink.  I needed to hear that from the people and Dee was the people.)  Dee being short for Deahjahnay, which is of course a pretty name, French sounding and unique and in no way obnoxious.  Other black women in the room nodded approval and I mentioned to Dee directly that President Obama had somehow regained my respect through no fault of his own but as my knowledge and insight grew and shrunk and changed and morphed. 

I am pissed about drones.  I don’t like that he appointed Federal Reserve Insider Timothy Geithner. He was the product of a corrupt campaign finance reform system, too.  He negotiated with unreasonable cavemen who were themselves products of a corrupt campaign finance system and who acted from every interest other than altruism. 

In this speech however he reminded me why I voted for him twice.  He is after all, an honorable man.  He operated within a corrupt system and ultimately succeeded beyond his rivals from the other side of the aisle, they the purveyors of a cruel sense of justice and morality.  He found a Xanadu of middle ground that seemingly did not exist between the establishment of corporate America and the moral right.  He pulled socially to the left.  He followed through on some truly noble ideas slam dunking gays in the military and re-opening relations with Cuba.  There is a real litany of good things this President’s legacy will include. 

On this night he spoke to me and a million other Bernie Sanders supporters of campaign finance reform.  His words?  He said, “Don’t Boo.  Vote.”  Three fucking words and he overwhelmed my ideas on this subject. 

Like many I am so indignant at our system.  How unjust.  How unrepresentative.  Like so many of the falsehoods I was given as an American born child here was another case that might cause so many to throw their hands in the air and choose to just fly off the rails or join the parade of soiled, silly, suckers of greed.  “Don’t Boo.  Vote,” he said.

He is right.  In the end it does come down to more than voting.  We have to work at voting.  We have to get others to vote.  We have to work fiercely.  We have to educate the electorate.  We have to invigorate the masses and create a social responsibility that becomes a cultural sea change. 

The people are mad now at Hillary Clinton for being yet another product of a corrupt campaign finance system.  They don’t know how to direct their anger.  They’re so pissed about how powerless they feel with their one vote-they are mad at the one person who has been fighting for the values they espouse, (discounting a few errors in judgment,) and who wins against the truly corrupt fascist pigs of and on the right.  It is as if they are mad at Hillary Clinton for being good at what she does.  They’re mad at her for playing their game and winning as if they want Donald Trump, or John Boehner, or Mitch McConnell, or Lindsay Graham, or any of these other creeps who hate fags, detest welfare, love war, want to sell America for their own personal gain, cheat to win, gerrymander, play to the lowest common denominator, use fear, race bait, bible thump, parade around in sheep’s clothing seeking whom they may next devour. 

“Don’t Boo, Vote,” he said.

Guilty.  I am guilty as charged by the President of the United States.  He got me.  I’m so indignant and yet, he is so right.  (And she is too.)  What a buffoon I am.

Not really.  My error is one of altruism and of not being satisfied with the slow pace of progress.  (I forgive myself.  I’m so big like that.) 

And so in a way we’re all hayseeds, we supporters of Bernie Sanders.  We are noble hayseeds.  Everyone should be a hayseed but still, we are hayseeds. 

This voting President Obama refers to will happen.  Campaign finance will change like Citizen’s United will be overturned like a woman’s right to choose will be safeguarded like our military budget will decline.  Eventually.  Change is slow, however in spite of corrections, moments of retrograde activity, things are getting better and history shows us this is true. 

Ellison’s great novel is as relevant today as ever. Similarly, it is as colorful and engaging and modern as ever.  The enmity between law enforcement and the people they are meant to protect and serve remains a constant in our society.  The hayseed is invisible.  Who listens?  Who knows?  What’s the quote from Baudelaire?  “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”  (Okay, so I looked.  It’s WB Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming.) I always took that to mean the pure of heart have nothing to feel convicted about or for, while the liars, cheaters, connivers, the unjust and unkind, the wicked and inglorious, petty,  dishonest mother fuckers of the world tend to yell and scream because they're trying to convince you of something beyond fantastic.  They are trying to sell you a bill of goods.

Brother is treated with indignity after indignity in The Invisible Man.  His best nature, his altruism, his earnestness, they’re all fodder for those who would devour.  His intentions are golden at every turn but he is seen, in the South and in Harlem, as breaking from cherished norms or wanting to place himself above others. 

Obama chided us in the same way Ralph Ellison chided us.  Ellison understood what it meant to be invisibly black in America, to be absorbed into a socio-cultural belief system.  Obama understood what it took to ascend to high office in America.  He knew of what he spoke.  “Don’t Boo.  Vote,” he said rightly.  He was telling the hayseeds in the room and across America watching on their televisions, stop talking and go do.  He must have had this awakening at one time too, right?  The day he decided if he wanted to do something altruistic, if he wanted to help the under-served and underrepresented black communities on the south side of Chicago he had best go there and try to put some of his Harvard education into practice in the real world for the purpose of helping people better their lives. 

On a night that underscored the ultimate failure of the Bernie Sanders campaign and feeling like an insignificant hayseed I understand Obama’s message, (and Ellison’s too.)  I have to find ways to go do.  We all have to do that.  Ours is a utilitarian society and in so many ways the pressures of life, of economy, will pin us to a station, but the true hayseed must find ways. 

And so, Brother is a hero.  I admire him his gift of altruism.  I absolve him of whatever he has been accused of or blamed for.  Moreover, I am so thankful for reading this book now and not because some professor forced me to read it when I was 20-something and a different sort of hayseed altogether. 

Obama too, is a hero.  His dignity in the face of so much racism and ignorance is an example I hold up to my kids when I speak of emotional intelligence.  He is and has been for my family the Commander of Emotional Intelligence in Chief.  His ability for candor, his grace under attack, his empathy, they all were and are downright Presidential.  Hence why I adore him anew, in spite of the frustration I felt almost from Day 1 of his Presidency.