The Nation – August 12, 2019

8 The Nation. August 12/19, 2019

my studies are important and can help

people? Is it OK if that’s part of what I’m

going to school to figure out, or should I be

able to explain this now? Are my studies

important only if nonpolitical people can

see them as such? —Aspiring Academic

Dear Academic,

Y

ou didn’t ask me if this relationship

has a future, but I have qualms.

Having a lover who doesn’t respect

your ambitions is demoralizing. It doesn’t

seem fair that you value her work and she

doesn’t value yours. Sure, partners should

challenge each other, but at this exciting

time of life, you deserve a girlfriend who

supports your career explorations with en-

thusiasm and curiosity. I’m not convinced

she can become that person.

But perhaps she’s the problem you need

right now, Academic. We sometimes (mostly

unconsciously) choose rela-

tionships with people who

force us to face crucial issues

in our lives. You—not just

your girlfriend—are doubt-

ing the political value of an

academic career, asking big

questions: How should we

understand the social contri-

bution of intellectual work?

How do we share it with oth-

ers, especially working-class

people?

Studying climate change

seems indisputably important

to me, but your effect on the

world as a scholar will be slow

and subtle. Consider another

field in which you might feel

more immediately useful,

perhaps in advocacy, policy

research, or environmental

education. Or embrace the

academic path you desire

while finding other projects

with more direct impact

(like volunteering to help

kids get outdoors, teaching

your community to compost,

organizing environmental

direct action, and building

a socialist organization). We

can’t make the revolution in

our jobs alone. Q

(continued from page 5)

The ThinkProgress article also mentioned a March New

York Times piece re veal ing that the recently promoted

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former lobbyist

against the Endangered Species Act, intervened to quash

a study that found pesticides threaten 1,200 endangered

species. At the same time we were being distracted by

Trump’s racism, the Environmental Protection Agency

was refusing to ban chlorpyrifos, which the Times de-

scribed as a widely used pesticide that government “ex-

perts have linked to serious health problems in children.”

The EPA also declined, yet again, to ban the cancer-

causing substance asbestos, ig noring just about every

reputable scientific recommen da tion, including ones

made by its own researchers. This kind of thing is almost

certainly happening in every government agency but re-

ceives an infinitesimal amount of attention relative to

Trump’s verbal vomitus. (Read Michael Lewis’s invalu-

able book The Undoing Project if you doubt this.)

Trump presents us with a conundrum. We can’t ig-

nore a president who spews Ku Klux Klan–level rheto-

ric that could get people killed and maybe already has.

But neither can we allow him to colonize our collective

imagination. Elizabeth Warren put it well in tweet:

“This president is desperate. Calling out his racism, xe-

nophobia, and misogyny is imperative. But he’s trying

to divide us and distract from his own crimes, and from

his deeply unpopular agenda of letting the wealthy and

well-connected rip off the country. We must do more.”

She’s right. We must demand more of our media and

ourselves—more clarity, more balance, and more time

focused on what the Trump administration is actually

doing to our country than on his latest stupid, racist

tweet. Democracy is not a reality show, and our media

needs to stop treating Trump as if he’s still a TV host,

lest we end up, in the late critic Neil Postman’s pre-

scient phrase, “amusing ourselves to death.” Q

We can’t ignore

a president who

spews KKK-level

rhetoric. But

neither can we

allow him to

colonize our

collective

imagination.

C

O

M

I

X

N

A

T

I

O

N

PETER KUPER