This post is a little bit different. It’s a little bit more sarcastic, and a little bit less serious. However, given the ridiculousness of the whole situation, I’m not sure that the folks involved, who appear to be acting in bad faith, have earned a more serious or thoughtful post. So, instead, the tone of the post is humorous. Or, at least, I found it funny and cathartic while I was writing it.
The below represents a hypothetical scene from a fantasy. To help keep things grounded, I’ve interspersed some notes throughout to explain how my fantasy likely differs from real life and/or to provide more explanation.
SCENE: A university classroom full of students excited to learn, thirsty for knowledge. They all have laptops, tablets, or good old-fashioned paper and pencil in front of them. They all have arrived prior to the official start time of class, eager for class to begin and not wanting to miss a moment of learning.
Note: The classroom is half-full. No one has paper, but many students may have cellphones out. Those using laptops or tablets likely are using whatever kids use instead of Facebook these days, something like Twitchat or Snapster or the other. Students trickle in. Some are eager to learn, and most just want to make sure they earn points for attendance. Also, this describes a classroom of undergraduates, and Prof Kyle teaches med students, so this isn’t particularly realistic in its inception anyways, but apparently that isn’t going to stop the author of the blog post.
In walks Professor Kyle, to the tune of Pomp and Circumstance. The classroom erupts into spontaneous applause. Prof Kyle is smartly dressed in fresh-pressed khakis, a checkered shirt and solid tie, and a brown sports coat with patches on his sleeves. He sets down his sleek leather brief case, pulls out his iPad Pro, fires up the projector, and the learning commences. The students have paid for the whole seat with their tuition, but they’re only using the edge of it, as they lean forward in anticipation of the knowledge bombs that are about to drop.
NOTE: There is no Pomp and Circumstance, though someone’s ring tone with “Gucci Gang” plays around the time Prof Kyle enters. Prof Kyle is dressed in whatever clean clothes he could locate in the morning scramble, which today is a pair of khaki pants, a blue shirt he’s owned since grad school, a tie he inherited from his wife’s grandfather, and a cardigan sweater that makes him look like someone’s grandfather. But, it is comfy AF (I think that stands for “as fleece”), so there is that. He sets down his trusty old briefcase, held together with duct tape, and takes out his trusty old MacBook. The classroom technology takes a while to boot up, and half the class falls asleep in the interim. One fellow near the front in a hoodie begins to snore quietly.
PROF KYLE: Good morning class. Much like I used to tell my foes on the junior high basketball court, pull up a desk, sucker, because school is in session.
NOTE: He has never said this unironically in his life. He loves basketball, and he is horrible at it. Much like a bus with a flat tire, he’s not taking anyone to school.
PROF KYLE: Today, we’re going to continue our study of defense mechanisms. First up will be projection. Who here can tell me about projection from the reading? (Everyone, of course, has done the reading, but no one raises their hand because they following joke never gets old)Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
NOTE: Few, if any, of these students have seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; they don’t get the joke. Even the ones who do get it also agree it got old after the third class of the semester. And, it should go without saying, no one has done the reading.
PROF KYLE: Okay, guys, I’ll go ahead and fill you in. Projection is when you take something internally you’re experiencing, perhaps something you feel guilty about or ashamed of, or something you’d never want to admit to, and then claim someone else is having that experience. As a way of thinking about it visually, imagine you have a projector inside of you, showing the movie of your internal conflicts. You shine the projector light on someone else, and it looks to you like they’re guilty of what you yourself are actually thinking and feeling. You’re projecting onto them. Questions? None? Great. (Everyone is quiet because everyone understands.)
NOTE: Few students understand, most weren’t listening, and many are surfing YouFace or whatever website/app. They’ve learned that if you just keep quiet, Prof Kyle can go on until the end of class. It’s best not to encourage him too much. Also, Prof Kyle is a behavioral, not a Freudian or psychodynamic, psychologist, so he may be a little inaccurate in his description, but we’re just gonna roll with it.
PROF KYLE: How about an example of projection? Let’s say someone accuses their boyfriend or girlfriend of cheating, even though there is absolutely no reason to think this. They keep claiming the other person has a wandering eye, lusts after others, and is unfaithful. None of this is true. However, it turns out later that the person who was doing the accusing ends up cheating. They were experiencing their own wandering eye and lusting heart, and they felt badly about it and didn’t want to acknowledge it, so they projected this onto the other person. Make sense? Feel like you’ve got the concept? (Crickets chirp, as again, everyone is on the same page. Somewhere in class, a student says a silent prayer of thankfulness for having such an awesome professor who explains things so well.)
NOTE: Again, few understand, most don’t care, and many are seeing how many “likes” their latest thirst trap selfie – it’s a thing, I think, look it up – on Instagram has gotten. Somewhere in class, a student says a silent prayer of thankfulness because they just remembered it’s mug night at the local bar. Oh, and there are no crickets, which is actually a good thing, as any attempts at Jiminy Cricket-ing and pushing “conscience” would likely literally be squashed. “Let’s see you wish upon a star when I smoosh you flatter than a pancake.”
PROF KYLE: Okay, here’s one more. Y’all have been following the recent election news, right? As you well know, there are several races of national prominence that still have not been able to officially declare a winner, including for the governor and US Senate in the great state of Florida. As pollsters continue to work to count ballots, several Republicans, including the President, the governor of Florida (who also happens to be the Senate candidate with a vested interest in if he won the election or not), and the other Senator from the state have expressed concerns, explicitly or implicitly, that the Democrats are trying to steal the election. Who can tell me how this could be an example of projection? (Several hands shoot in the air).
NOTE: No hands shoot in the air. Few of the students follow the election news, and sadly, many did not even bother to vote in the recent election. They are woefully ignorant of the state of politics or general current events, save for a few that are “woke” and a few that are disciples of Turning Point USA. The latter two groups have almost no overlap with the people who have been both paying attention and who get the meaning of the example. Instead, his spirit and morale crushed under the severe cuts in state funding for public institutions of higher learning, Prof Kyle has finally lost his mind. He is hallucinating the below student.
HALLUCINATION STUDENT: This is a great example. See, for years, the GOP has been working hard to suppress the votes of people who may be most likely to vote Democrat, including people of color. Various efforts have included voter ID legislation, reduce early voting, and perhaps worst of all, gerrymandering the electoral map through a partisan process to make sure they are likely to retain their majority into the foreseeable future, as long as these districts are drawn as they are.
NOTE: Sadly, though this student is a hallucination, all of what they say is correct. It is debated how much voter ID legislation impacts overall voter turnout, but it does seem clear that it disproportionately affects people of color, according to this reportfor Five Thirty Eight by UPenn political science professor, Dan Hopkins. And just as bad, even if we’re unsure about the precise impact of voter ID laws, we know that it appears the intent of the GOP in states such as North Carolina has been to suppress the votes of people of color by studying voting patterns and then passing legislation designed to counteract it through measures such as voter ID laws and limiting early voting, according to the US Appeals court, as reported by NPR (BTW, the SCOTUS declined to consider the NC GOP’s appeal of this decision, as reported again by NPR). But, again, perhaps most frustrating is gerrymandering. Although this is a problem in states across the nation, and it is a tactic that has been used by both parties, we can certainly cite North Carolina as an example of how gerrymandering has been used as of late by the GOP to essentially disenfranchise millions of voters. It goes well beyond the scope of a blog post to explain the rich history of tomfoolery the NC GOP has been up to in drawing districts, but here and here are articles from Vox that break it down nicely. A quick and simple point that can easily be made is this: if you go by voter registration data available from a government website, North Carolina is a purple state that leans slightly Democrat (2.7 to 2.1 million). Yet, until this past election, the GOP had a veto-proof supermajority in the state legislature, and 10 of 13 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are held by Republicans. Certainly, voter registration records are not the same as who actually shows up and votes or how they vote, but someone would have to do an awful lot of explaining as to how this happens fairly, ethically, and justly. So, even if you’re Black and a Democrat in North Carolina and able to vote, your vote essentially can be made meaningless.
PROF KYLE: Exactly right. And, please, go on and continue explaining how this fits with projection.
NOTE: Prof Kyle is now interacting with his hallucination. Most of the class is checked out, so no one is much taking notice, and those that do just assume Prof Kyle is interacting with a student who speaks really quietly.
HS:Well, see, the GOP is the party generally trying to swing elections in their favor through interfering with the fairness, equity, and equality of the voting process. Yet, to listen to them tell it, you’d think they’re the real victims of electoral shenanigans. Claims of voter fraud just won’t die, with wholly unsubstantiated claims of millions of people (typically undocumented immigrants) voting illegally for Democrats. These false fears are based on nothing more than alternative facts. Now, when Democrats and their legal representation are asking simply that we make sure that every vote is counted, the GOP is claiming that they’re really trying to steal the election. Thus, the GOP is projecting their own shame and guilt about electoral wrongdoing onto Democrats.
NOTE:Again, though a hallucination, this student is spot on. If you’re not familiar, there are a slew of articles/writings/studies that repeatedly explain voter fraud is rare, and the voter ID laws passed in most states would have minimal impact on the fraud the GOP claims to be concerned about. You can read more about it here and here and here and here and here and here and here. Hopefully, the irony is not lost on you, but just in case it is, allow Prof Kyle to be as boring and un-fun in his “NOTE” as he is in real life: the same party whining about the other party trying to steal the election is the same one that has been hi-jacking elections through nefarious means for years.
PROF KYLE: That’s absolutely right! Although the GOP has, for years, worked to influence voting outcomes in their favor through devious methods, they now have the gall to accuse Democrats of trying to steal an election, when all they’re asking for is to make sure each vote is counted.
NOTE: At the mention of the truth about the GOP, one of the Turning Point USA students in the class speaks up and unloads on Prof Kyle with a barrage of alternative facts, including claiming that Hillary Clinton didn’t even really win the popular vote once you subtract all the undocumented immigrants who voted, as well as how Roy Moore would have won the Alabama Senate seat if George Soros hadn’t paid to bus in voters from out of state. They also threaten to add Prof Kyle to the Professor Watchlist– sadly, not kidding, this is a thing. Thankfully, in a way, Prof Kyle has generally lost touch with reality and doesn’t hear a word of this. Instead, he’s invited his hallucination student to share a cup of coffee after class while he mentors them in considering a career in psychology and/or higher education. It’s almost like A Beautiful Mind, but without the Nobel Prize. Or the good looks of Russel Crowe. Okay, it’s less a beautiful mind and more an above average mind of average good looks sitting in a campus coffee shop talking to himself, but it wouldn’t fit on the movie poster. What about Dangerous Minds? Is that title taken? It is? Oh, that’s right. You know, I loved “Gangsta’s Paradise. Whatever happened to Coolio…
You’re still here? It’s over. Go home. Go.
scholarandgentleman 