The Better Angels of Our Nature
"My hope is that
the love and desire for scientific knowledge will cause unborn thousands to
throng the hall of Cooper Union to learn the beauties and to obtain the
benefits provided in nature for the use and elevation of mankind. These will be
known and enjoyed where men keep, subdue and hold dominion over the world and
all that is in it. I trust the young will here catch the inspiration of truth
in all its native power and beauty and find in it a source of inexpressible
pleasure to spread its transformed influence throughout the world."
~ Peter Cooper, 1882
~ Peter Cooper, 1882
Miss O’, as faithful readers know,
is, in the name of social joy and justice, a political creature, and an art
creature, possibly past all reason. Especially financial reason, what with the charitable and political
money-giving I do every year. And being a woman of lower middle income in the metropolis that is New York City, I can’t help noticing that too many of the
wrong people have money. Sure, some of them “made it,” or were born into money made by a relative, but the question is, what are
they DOING with it? And why does the making of money elude so many of us who would gladly do good with it? One
recalls the character Mr. Bernstein’s comment to the reporter in the Orson
Welles classic film, Citizen Kane, “Well, it’s no trick to make a lot of money, if
all you want to do is make a lot of money.” And there it is. If you don’t care
whom you hurt, or about ethics and morality, or about the social contract, or
the law, you can make hand over fist wads of cold, hard cash. Is this wise? Is this good? “For the love of
money is root of all evil,” says the Bible. It’s possibly the truest thing
in that old book. At the point where Timothy goes on to explain that lovers of money, after
coveting, have “erred from the faith,” I think it’s a fair metaphor to
substitute social contract for faith.
I can think of one awesome example
of an old industrialist tycoon who did not stray from a love of the social contract during or after his
accumulation of wealth through his own ingenuity. Peter Cooper (see link above after the
epigraph), about whom I learned only a year ago or so, was (among a whole heap
of other things, such as inventor of the first locomotive steam engine) the
founder of Cooper Union, a hall where Lincoln spoke, and a school for artists,
the promise of which was tuition-free study in perpetuity. My friends Steven
Arcella, Lisa DiPetto, and M’Liz Keefe have been among the beneficiaries of this marvelous
150-year-old art school, and without that place, these working class kids could
never have made art school an option, whatever their prodigious gifts.
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| Cooper Union, NYC, Google Images |
Ah, money. My old nemesis. Here we go again, and this time, it's personal: It
seems the Board of Trustees of the aforementioned Cooper Union Art School here in the heart of New York City overspent on real estate and foolishly invested in
a Trustee’s own hedge fund, and kinda went broke. And now they have decided to
change the tuition from $0.00/year to $19,500/year. Just like that. It is no longer being
“true to the vision of its founder”—not remotely, at nearly $20,000 a year,
vs. FREE.
Here’s the cool new building that the trustees apparently forgot they would need to, you know, pay for:
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| NEW Cooper Union, Google Images |
A court here recently sided with the Board,
of course (because that’s who we have become in America), and now the
professors and alumni of Cooper Union have filed a lawsuit against the Board
with the Manhattan Supreme Court. You can read
about the lawsuit to learn more. The plaintiffs have a good case—the founding tenets
are on their side—but no money. And here is where you can help, should you wish
to.
You can learn more about this cause
on
Save Cooper Union; and if you are so moved, you can go to IndieGogo at the
link below and pledge some cash—$5, $10, or, as Miss O’ did yesterday, a
grand. (Painter M’Liz Keefe is donating four
of her astonishing Fogo
Island paintings, to be completed next season, each for a $1,000 donation,
and I bought one for the cause.) I’m not rich. Sometimes I just look at my bank
account and say, “Fuck it. This matters.” So I cut back on wine. My liver will
thank me, and maybe those prospective students will, too.
SAVE COOPER UNION LEGAL FUND:
Any amount helps. And thanks.
CALLING IN THE TROOPS
Something about the injustice of
Cooper Union gives Miss O’ pause today. Instead of going outside into this
beautiful weather, I’m flipping back over news stories, and my eye keeps
landing on a particular word: Thai troops; Russian troops; Egyptian Troops, Turkish
Troops, Worldwide troops, going after their nation’s own; remembering Kent
State and Selma, Alabama, American National Guard troops; the NYPD troops and
Occupy Wall Street. And in 2014 Miss O’ asks: How many troops does it take to
make the world governments realize that if
you have to call in the troops against your own people, you are on the
WRONG side of the debate, the wrong side of history, the wrong side of
morality? Just fucking wrong? Because
you are. And the history books will prove it, the laws will prove it, the
day-to-day life of society will prove it. Remember Alabama. Remember Ohio. Sending in the troops against your own?
You might as well bring in a neon sign that says, “You win.” Because no matter how many guns you brandish, how much
pepper spray or tear gas you unload, or how many billy clubs you beat into the
faces of the citizenry, “might” will not make “right,” and we all know it. Yes,
we do. YES. We do: You turned weapons onto your own citizens, who are
peacefully protesting the turning of weapons onto themselves for protesting
peacefully. You see how this works? It doesn’t work. It will ever be wrong.
I see a hand back there.
“Miss O’,” says the hand,
“[Obama/Hitler/Climate Hoax/NRA/Constitution].”
And here we go…again.
Fallacious Reasoning and You
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| The information in this cartoon card from Occupy Democrats is factual. Note that there is no commentary, but there is an implied accusation. |
A Facebook friend, my cousin Bill in Iowa, responded to the above cartoon (on another wall, not mine) with typically
Republican fallacious reasoning to excuse Dick Cheney's sending 5,281 troops
(to the present) off to Iraq to die in a war he trumped up to benefit a company
he once ran: "Al Gore got rich on global warming." (Whether or not
this is true can be researched. Despite the accusatory tone of a half dozen "stories" from 2009, in rightwing publications, this quote from the U.K. Telegraph (also from 2009), stood out:
[Gore] has made significant investments in environmentally friendly projects like carbon trading markets, solar power, biofuels, electric vehicles, sustainable fish farming and waterless lavatories. He has also invested in non-climate change related investments, including putting money into Google and Apple.
And Miss O' asks, What's the problem? Investment in good things is how we move forward. Right? Ask Peter Cooper's beneficiaries.)
And I also ask: Has Al Gore used a position
of power awarded by an electorate to deliberately put into harm's way, and in fact lead to the deaths, of 5,000 American troops
while working to solve the world's climate crisis? Of course not. In addition, there's nothing illegal (and in fact something deeply moral) about the investments Gore is making; in fact, his investments are in line with this values: solving the climate crisis. The subject of the cartoon is not, "Making a profit is bad." The subject is the immorality of how the profit was made. And it's that sort of shape-shifting and subject-changing that you see in my cousin Bill's comment up there that is a hallmark of Republican debate tactics, is why nothing can get accomplished with the right wing running anything in the
U.S. It's staggering, this level of lousy thinking, and Facebook comments
notwithstanding, it is just as pervasive in our halls of power. That's the
shame.
(P.S. Bill's other favorite bugaboo is Benghazi, so herewith a little reminder about this drama of nothing if not fallacy and folly: Since "Benghazi," (one attack during the entire Obama Administration, leaving four Americans dead, whereas the Bush Administration experienced 12 attacks, including 9-11, with over 3,000 Americans killed, not including the 7,000+ Americans dead from the wars) there have been 81 American school shootings, 145 American children shot, and 66 American children killed. Somehow, the Republicans can't manage even a teensy bit of outrage. What are this nation's values?)
I’d rather buy a great painting for a good cause, is what I’m saying, that cause being to reason with traitors in a court of law. And I’d rather not watch idly while the troops or the Trustees are called in to annihilate righteous citizens/students in the (often fallacious) name of "freedom." Fallacious reasoning also goes something like this: "The Board entrusted with the running of Cooper Union blew the money, and so we will put the problem on the backs of the poor students, because they were supposed to get that money."
Miss O’ Asks Her Readers: Do
you have symptoms of fallacious reasoning?
A Quiz for Republicans: When
you hear a point of view that you disagree with, is your response
a) a knee-jerk hatred of Obamacare;
b) to turn on Fox News to learn the
truth;
c) to make an analogy between that
point of view and something to do with Al Gore;
d) more guns;
d) more guns;
e) all of the above, plus Jesus
A Quiz for Democrats: When you hear a point of view that you
disagree with, is your response
a) an
inward journey to see if in fact you’ve been wrong all this time;
b) an
outraged letter to the editor of the New Jersey Herald;
c) to
turn your outrage into a meme and post it on Facebook;
d) organic
cooking
e) all
of the above, plus wine
A Quiz for Libertarians:
When you hear a point of view that you disagree with, is your response
a) You’ll
have to pry the answers to a quiz out of my cold, dead brain
b) Oh,
and fuck stoplights
Curiously, Miss O’ does not know it
all. I know this is a stunner. So when Miss O’ hears a point of view she
disagrees with, the first thing she does—and I know this sounds crazy—is get to
work doing research. What with Google, what could be simpler? First things
first: My FIRST response is that my heart begins to race and I get the shakes,
and so this is how I know a boundary of good sense and common decency has been
crossed. I honor that feeling by deciding to embark on a confrontation. THEN I
do my research. I am willing to be absurd as I figure it out. I’m not sure this
is a virtue, but it’s who I am. And I am occasionally knee-jerk, and I
apologize for it, and try to learn to stop doing it, but my apology is by way
of evidence. Dispatching facts in the face of stupidity is more or less wasted
on the fanatical, but if we give up, we might was well call it a life, curl up,
and wait for the sweet, numbing peace of death.
I cannot do it all. And so today I cry, merely, Here's to Saving Cooper Union!
This is Miss O’s word for today,
the first day of June, the year of 2014, C.E., after 200,000 years of “anatomically
modern humans” inhabiting Earth. Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art, as theater genius Stanislavsky admonished his actors. And give generously to things that matter. Dammit.
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| Miss O', Standing up for what's right, or at least standing, since 1964. |
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