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| Basketball Coach Bobby Knight, Photo Wikimedia Commons |
At least that’s what Bobby Knight is
doing. He says he supports Trump because
he’s the candidate who’s most likely to make our Nation great again. If life is like sports, greatness assumes
dominance, there can only be one world champion. But it can still be us if we can muster the
commitment to hold on to the title.
There will be costs, the players all
need to be prepared to rise to the challenge.
And even as they do a lot of them will get sidelined, or injured or
retired, or never make it off the bench.
But they’re still part of the team that breaks records and exceeds all
expectations. Great teams raise the level of the whole game to heights that
inspire multitudes.
I know I am a little susceptible to
examples where people define their interests more broadly than their personal
wealth and status, because I believe they help prove personal wealth and status
aren’t the real measures of value in human life.
That’s one of the reasons I appreciate Brian
Cerullo, who served as Field Manager for Theresa Mah’s (victorious!) campaign
for State Rep from the 2nd District.
[Candidate Mah was profiled on The Hardscrabbler in August 2015.]
Brian is also driven by a vision
greater than his own wealth and status.
It’s a different vision than the one you hear championed by Trump and
Knight, but not entirely different. He also reminds me of someone I knew 20
years ago. Brian might be something like
what Bill would have been like, if he’d arrived a couple decades down the road.
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| The Reagans at the 1981 Inaugural Parade, Photo Wikimedia Commons |
Brian was born during the Reagan Administration. That makes him a Millennial, the new generation everyone speculates about. They might be exceptionally socially accepting and community minded, but maybe also narcissistic (all that social media), or craving too much affirmation in the workplace (too many trophies when they were kids).
I’m from Generation X myself. They called us Slackers. We were known for living too long in our
parents’ basements, maybe also for our political apathy. We’re the generation who missed the threats
of widening income inequality and the growing power of corporations because we
were too wrapped up in the authenticity of our social markers -- our tastes in
alternative rock, the nuances of our identities. Maybe that was because we still assumed we’d
have access to the national prosperity, even if we hadn’t achieved it yet.
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| Young Goethe contemplating a Silhouette |
My friend Bill was the kind of young man Bobby Knight would want on his
team, or should have if he could see what he was looking at. He was raised Irish Catholic in a small,
hardworking town in Massachusetts. His
father was an argumentative drunk. His
mother struggled to raise 3 boys on her own.
Bill was the oldest, he kept his brothers in line. He’d tell them “You’re just going to have to
work a little harder than everyone else,” because it’s what he told
himself. He was smart, brave, determined
to make his mark in the world. But over
and over again, the world wouldn’t have him.
First he tried the football field, when that didn’t pan out he turned his
attention to his education – to the liberal arts in fact. Not the touchy, feely liberal arts, but the
most stern and unforgiving undergraduate program he could find. Great Books,
great souled men and all that.
His social markers expressed a little different because of it. He came out with a peculiar nostalgia for an
aristocratic society where men once had the courage to think and act
independently, as opposed to the society of obedient sheep where we find
ourselves now.
Partly, the change has to do with how in a society of equals, we’re left
struggling against the drag toward the lowest common denominator.
Partly, it’s the hazard of the modern world itself. As science extends its reach, life becomes
ever more technical, our field of vision narrows. We have to specialize. Burrow into the “tunnels of the specialized
disciplines” in the phrase of a novelist.
We lose sight of ourselves in context of the world, of history, we
forget the big questions, about meaning and dignity.
Bill used to drive me nuts, arguing the first part. It implies that people need the false
confidence they get from social distinction to think for themselves. Without it, they tuck their head down and
conform, and in a society like ours it’s not even because they’re afraid society will turn on them if they
don’t, they’re afraid it’ll just ignore them altogether.
As far as I was concerned, Bill defied his own arguments. In the Old World, wouldn’t he be
laboring in a field somewhere, without a lot of time to cultivate grand
thoughts? In this one, they saved
him. They lit up his conversation, they
sustained him through his struggles, they lifted his eyes to a horizon beyond where he was standing at that particular moment.
Bill graduated in the late-1980s, straight into the slough of a
recession, and he couldn’t find a job.
He was smart, articulate, though he wasn’t polished, he was always a
little rumpled, and he had an angry edge that might have been growing, getting
edgier. I thought Bill was better than
other people and I was always a little surprised when they couldn’t tell, but
then you could imagine reasons he might not rank a favorite among the be-suited
men of business who came recruiting at the university.
When the world seemed closed to him,
he made access to a wider one through novels – Emma Bovary yearning for something beyond the
ordinary, or those macho heroes from Joseph Conrad novels, facing the limits of
their moral fortitude in uncharted places outside the bounds of civilization.
Still, Bill freely admitted he’d been on the verge of desperation when he
finally got a job. It was a position as
a clerk on the trading floor at the Chicago Board of Trade. It was perfect for him.
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| Swirl of Action on the CBOT Trading Floor, Photo Getty Images |
At the time, a lot of the guys I knew seemed to pass through those
trading pits. They’d put in some time
clerking first, literally writing trades down on slips of paper and carrying
them across the room, and if they didn’t get fired for some catastrophic notation
error they’d graduate to a position as a trader where they’d have a chance to
make real money, to live the successful life – summer afternoons on a golf
course, maybe a boat with girls on it.
Bill had a lust for all those things that money could buy. He wanted to see the world, to travel, to
appreciate the best experiences the modern world has to offer. But the trading pits represented more than
that.
Electronic trading was in its infancy then, it would be another decade
before it emptied the trading floors, and the CBOT was still making the case
open outcry was the most efficient way for buyer and seller to arrive at a fair
price. It was also a hyper masculine
environment that reminded Bill of the locker room. It drew on his strengths.
In the commodities pits, traders stood shoulder to shoulder among peers, they
were a platform where a man of good character, strong nerves and trust in his
wits could assert himself.
Bill’s employer wasn’t sure of him at first. It took a long time before they’d submit the
application to graduate him to a position as a floor trader. And when they did, the CBOT shot it
down. They’d say it was on account of
his student loans, which Bill fumed was ridiculous, no one he knew had been
sidelined on such a flimsy pretext. To
hear him talk the floor was full of debtors and bankrupts scratching out second
chances.
Then, when his application finally cleared the hurdles at the CBOT, it
got hung up again by federal regulators.
Eventually they were telling Bill it was just one guy, one sanctimonious
bureaucrat with too much power on his hands.
Bill drank and he fumed, but he kept his head. It was like he’d woken up in one of his
favorite Eastern European novels, where men of courage and some sense are
perpetually thwarted by a great, stupid bureaucracy. And by the narrow minded functionaries who,
from a creeping sense of their own inferiority, perpetuate it.
At least the traders he worked for were behind him now. They floated appeal after appeal on his
behalf. And eventually his application
passed. He didn’t fly out to the coast
to assault that bureaucrat. He cleared
the hurdles, he started making the money.
Hopefully it afforded him the experiences he wanted, or at least the
sense of being able to take action, and have it come to something.
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Crain's Chicago Business features images and stories
from the last days of floor trading at CBOT
|
Today electronic trading has narrowed that particular avenue toward the national prosperity. The portals for entry to commodity trading are through specialized disciplines, like computer programming, writing algorithms.
I don’t think the specialized disciplines necessarily drive us into narrow tunnels, at least not so deep that we can’t step back, attempt to place our personal experience in a broader horizon. But they do limit access, raise the barrier to entry, make it harder for a young person with more nerve than experience to find a path.
And that is impoverishing. Because
even though it’s true that wealth and status aren’t the real measures of value
in human life, it’s also true that certain base levels are pre-requisites:
material security, but also agency, that sense that effort comes to
something. That’s the great advantage
those players trying their chances in the trading pits had over the hapless heroes
of the comic novels, struggling through syrup in an anonymous bureaucracy.
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Brian Cerullo, far right (in this photo only),
at a Rally for Mayoral Candidate Chuy Garcia
|
They share some family dynamics.
The angry father, the valiant mother, a little oppressed. Brian grew up in rural
Connecticut. His mother was an immigrant
from Malta, an olive skinned woman with an accent, struggling to raise sons on
her own, in close vicinity to a lot of privileged Yankees.
Brian’s father grew up blue collar in Buffalo, New York. Brian says there’s something about that
mindset he never lost, even though he went to school, became an engineer. He made a success of it. Today, he travels the world advising third
world governments on building power plants.
But he just spends his wages on dissolute pleasures – the international
business class version of a boat with girls on it.
And Brian watches as the tide has begun to turn against his father now,
late in his career, because the native sons who worked for him in those third world
countries, the ones who needed an American engineer to supervise their
technical projects, have sent their own sons to universities. Now their sons are engineers, they’re
supervising the projects Brian’s father once did.
Later, Brian would translate experiences he had visiting his father on
overseas assignments into his liberal education. He describes looking at pictures of childhood
birthday parties the family celebrated in Central American countries, and picking
out notorious generals from the crowd.
“That’s when it first occurred to me maybe my Dad isn’t just working for
the good guys.”
He describes being driven through teeming streets of an Indian city in a
chauffeured car, with the windows rolled up, and seeing a brown boy his own age
begging on the street. The boy was
crippled, his legs weren’t just broken, they were smashed like someone had
driven over them with steel treads. And
being told “No, you can’t give him money.
It just perpetuates the cycle.
His parents probably did that to him so he could collect more alms.”
Back in Connecticut, Brian was a troubled student. He had too much energy, too little self
control, he scored high on IQ tests but it didn’t do him any good if he
couldn’t sit still at a desk. He did
graduate high school; he did get a university education. He studied philosophy, psychology, sociology
– every possible approach to understanding human character aside from Great
Books.
Today when he goes out door knocking he says the conversation he still
wants to have with householders he meets isn’t just “What do you want to change
about your neighborhood?” but “How do you know who you are?”
He graduated from school into adulthood just after the economy
collapsed. He may not have struggled as
long as Bill to get his first job. But
it still took several false steps to find work where he could effect something,
if you ask him about it, he’s no stranger to the corrosive powers of self doubt
of joblessness and uncertainty.
First, he worked at a residential facility for disabled youth just
outside Boston – kids who fell somewhere on the autism spectrum. The facility used behavior modification
techniques to help them master simple life skills. The work was demanding; the progress was
incremental. The kids might never
function on their own. After a year and
a half he found himself wondering “Will my work in this field ever do more than
deal with symptoms?”
It occurred to him that if he went back to school to study social
dynamics his work might inform policy change that could make people’s lives
better on a larger scale. That’s how he
came to Chicago - as a non matriculated student in Sociology at Bill’s old alma
mater. It was just a shaky foothold, but
he came with all his determination to work his way in.
Close up though, he could see how tenuous academic life had become. Even if you were successful, you could labor
for a decade to get that doctoral degree, then work as an adjunct professor
pulling in a couple thousand dollars for each class.
Meanwhile, over the summer, he attended a weeklong organizing training by
National People’s Action, and it changed the way he saw his life. He looked at his father, his stunted world
view, and at his mother, struggling bravely but hemmed in by resentments. He saw the origins of some of his own. It’s
where he first began to put those pieces together in a larger context of
society and the world.
When Bill’s education lifted his eyes past his own situation, he set his
struggles in a world stage where noble individuals all struggle not to sink in
a sea of ignorant masses. Brian set his
in a world ruled by the opposite dynamic.
Part of that’s probably personal difference, but it’s also true that the
world has changed.
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| American Hostages in Iran, Photo Wikimedia Commons |
Today, conservative pundits sometimes trace The
Great Inflation of the 1970s back to Great Society excess:
overreaching unions and social welfare programs, too much prosperity for too
many people. They say economists were
stumped by the combination of stagnant growth and mounting inflation until President Reagan came in and let Volcker raise interest
rates, ignoring the
high costs in high unemployment, slashing social spending, making it up with
record spending on arms.
In the 30 years since, the recessions have been brief, the periods of
expansion have been long, the national wealth greater than ever before. All that helps disguise the fact that it’s
only making a few people richer. So that
even in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, as economists line up
urging governments to spend more to avoid a deflationary spiral, you’ve got
all these 50-somethings rooting for austerity.
They’re still running from the long inflation they remember from their
youth.
Brian’s cohort has come up in the environment Bill’s and mine helped
create. We liberalized markets, peeled
back the big government of the Great Society years, we let the New York bankers
drive. Now our wealth is built on a
financial system that races until it crashes and has to be bailed out by
millions of little guy taxpayers who won’t catch a break on their own
debts. And there might be no greater
glory to being the richest, most powerful Nation on earth -- just a series of
small wars, won quickly, without making anything better.
Brian spent some time in Zuccotti Park, back in the 2010s, where the
Occupy Wall Street movement camped out.
He remembers it being exciting, but it felt a little pointless, lots of
energy with no clear goal.
In Chicago, a few years later, things were different. That first spring after the organizing
training, Brian volunteered on Election Day for Will Guzzardi– one of a new
crop of independent democrats who’ve been winning races for local office. Guzzardi won his race for State
Representative that day, Brian still remembers the tremendous energy of the
group effort.
“Throughout our shitty, exploitative history, my people were good at
conquering other people,” he says now “good at storming beaches, raping and
pillaging.” In political organizing he’s found an opening to channel and transform
his aggressive energies into persuasive and developmental ones.
It was Reclaim Chicago – a joint project of The People’s Lobby and
National Nurses United – that brought Brian to Bridgeport. Reclaim Chicago works to elect “officials who
put the needs of people and the health of the planet ahead of corporate
profits.” They supported Maureen
Sullivan’s campaign for Alderman of the 11th Ward. Sullivan didn’t win that race. But not long after that Brian was hired as a
Field Manager for Theresa Mah’s campaign for State Representative.
Mah won the Democratic primary, as an independent democrat challenging
the presumptive heir of the retiring incumbent.
After the election, Brian says they knew it would be a close race, but
they’d tallied up their confirmed voters and calculated how many random ones
might choose her at the ballot box, and they thought she would win. They were just stunned by the turn out. They anticipated a modest turnout, tracking
with previous contests in that race; in the end there were over 20,000.
They say that was partly thanks to the Bernie Sanders campaign. Today, Brian is still working with a
coalition of progressive organizations trying to harness that energy, and to
keep those Sanders supporters engaged.
They’ve been orchestrating a series of monthly actions called “Moral
Mondays,” peaceful protests at the
doorsteps of big financial powers. They
want a state budget that works for the 99%, and makes corporations and the very
wealthy shoulder a fair share of the costs.
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| Public Action Outside the CBOT, Photo Moral Mondays Illinois |
Last time I met up with Brian, he’d just come from a meeting to train
leaders to play roles at the next Moral Monday event. He was working with a young woman who was
going to be negotiating with police – that is, try to engage in a calm dialogue
about whether the officers would make arrests, or just hand out citations. She’d let them know which demonstrators would
leave quietly after the police warning, and which ones would stand their ground
and go to jail.
Women can be good at it, they may be perceived as less confrontational. Brian was playing the cop in this particular scenario, he might have been drawing on that default aggression from his ancestor’s “exploitative history”. The young woman he was training started to cry. They talked it out, he says, and she’s ready to negotiate. “She might still cry,” he says, if some cop tries to intimidate her. “But she won’t stop negotiating.”
Brian says he doesn’t particularly identify with the Millenial label. He sees his peers as differentiated
individuals, working things out for themselves.
It may be too early to tell how they’ll take the reins of history. But if a lot of the guys who might have spent
their energies in the commodities pits throw them into organizing for political
change instead, it could mark some kind of generational progress.
When I think of how I’d like to see our nation made great again, I don’t
visualize an elite team prodded to excellence by a coach known for his bully
tactics, or a handful of champions at the very top. I’d rather see something more like a thousand
young women standing face to face with authority, even if it’s shouting at
them, and negotiating on behalf of their peers.
