Reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed like it's the very first time

I have a friend who has called me "half-full" in the past because there can be really messed up situations and I'll crank out a Bill-Murray-as-Karl-in-Caddyshack-sounding "but I've got that going for me" kind of line. That's sort of how this next statement is going to sound: I lost entirely too many brain cells in my youth and have forgotten huge chunks of what I learned in my undergrad years -- that's great news because now I'm reading "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire as if I've never seen it before. How delightful!

Given the political turn of events in the past 24 hours, the timing of my reading the first chapter is pretty freaky. For months, I've seen more than my fair share of emails and web postings and overheard enough conversations to pick up that a not insignificant number of Americans look at the prospect of President Obama with a great deal of fear. I've seen and heard many (what I consider to be) outlandish statements. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across some eerily familiar-sounding phrases in the reading I did tonight. Here's a sampling (from the 30th Anniversary Edition, which has different pagination than the one the class was assigned, but was available at the library, so we didn't have to buy it)...

For the oppressors, however, it is always the oppressed (whom they obviously never call "the oppressed" but--depending on whether they are fellow countrymen or not--"those people" or "the blind and envious masses" or "savages" or "natives" or "subversives") who are disaffected, who are "violent," "barbaric," "wicked," or "ferocious" when they react to the violence of the oppressors. (56) [Lefty notes: all that's missing are the phrases "that one," "marxist," and "socialist" and we could be looking at last week's headlines]

But even when the contradiction is resolved authentically by a new situation established by the liberated laborers, the former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. Conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less listened to Beethoven. Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors as a profound violation of their individual rights--although they had no respect for the millions who suffered and died of hunger, pain, sorrow, and despair. for the oppressors, "human beings" refers only to themselves; other people are things." (57) [Lefty was going to note something here, but either you, the reader, sees what I see today locally, nationally and globally or you won't and any further commentary isn't going to illumine you any more if you don't see it.]

For the oppressors, what is worthwhile is to have more--always more--even at the cost of the oppressed having less or having nothing. For them, to be is to have and to be the class of the "haves." (58) [Lefty notes: Joe the Plumber would hate Paulo Freire]

One more and I'll drop it, but man this is good stuff!

For them [the oppressors], having more is an inalienable right, a right they acquired through their own "effort," with their "courage to take risks." If others do not have more, it is because they are incompetent and lazy, and worst of all is their unjustifiable ingratitude toward the "generous gestures" of the dominant class. Precisely because they are "ungrateful" and "envious," the oppressed are regarded as potential enemies who must be watched. (59)

I know someone else would pick this book up and absolutely hate it and not see anything in it that relates to modern day America, but maybe because I saw a bunch of signs in front of my polling place yesterday that said things like "Obama = Marxist" and the like, I really wanted to create a bumper sticker yesterday that said "Another Socialist for Obama" -- but here's the deal. Obama isn't a socialist. He isn't really going to redistribute the wealth. For me to get all self-righteous about the upper 5% of American incomes getting taxed more and saying, "Yeah, they can afford it, selfish bastards!" doesn't really address that the number is probably some unsubstantiated but astronomical number like the upper 95% of Americans live better than a good chunk of the rest of the world. I am just as culpable.

Knowing doesn't fix things, but it does get me to move on to the most logical question, "Now what?" To steal a phrase that'll be familiar to those alive in the 80s, but in a totally different context, "It's morning in America" -- we can look at this slight tipping of the scales as a fresh start, or we can roll over and hit the snooze bar. We're burning daylight.