The Mental Breakdown Of An Idealist - Down The Rabbit Hole Of Good Causes

Vicki Chandler, a white woman, had spent most of her professional career in a small, historically black college, appointed to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the heady days of integration and before the swing to identity politics, black solidarity, and racial separatism.  She taught English, but her premier Ivy League and top-flight graduate education overmatched the needs of her students, most of whom were enrolled in remedial courses, all process and procedure and no content.  These students had to learn how to read first. 

It wasn't exactly Fun With Dick And Jane, but close.  Students who had read the Bible at best, and even then the same hallelujah verses over and over again were totally unprepared for the rigors of college.  How they had gotten through high school with such a minimum of reading comprehension and writing skills was a mystery; but Vicki's job was not to question the deficiencies of the past, but to build able thinkers, readers, and writers. 

 

After a year or two, the dean promoted her to English I, a course which necessarily kept academic rigor to a minimum, and although Vicki protested the treacle listed in the curriculum - romance and Western dime store novels - the dean insisted that it wasn't the content of the novels that counted at this point, but text, language, grammar, and organization.  It didn't matter whether Lucinda fell in love with Bobby or if the high plains drifter was hanged for cattle rustling, it was all just getting students to be familiar with the process of 'processing'.  More serious works would come later. 

Vicki could never adequately explain why she had committed to life at an 'educational trade school', the unfair but true characterization of the college which was basically the academic equivalent of shop; and what there was about the Negro (the term used for black people during her early years) that so interested her, but in her increasing years teaching the most basic, simple, works she never doubted her mission. 

For mission was what her career had become - 'teaching the dim to shine' was a meaningful profession, she said, and all through English II and then the more academic-sounding Senior level courses ('Passion and Progress - Slave Journals of Heroic Black Women' or 'Barron Chumley's Apprenticeship - From Stable Hand To Groom'), Vicki never lost her way. 

As Dean of the Department she tried to upgrade the curriculum, but the more challenging courses she introduced were failed in such numbers that she was told to drop them, for they were lowering the grade average of the department, a figure needed to show the national administrators of the consortium of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) that the school was pulling its weight and then some. 

 

So reluctantly Vicki pulled back on Dreiser and Lewis - simple enough American authors with straightforward narratives and messages - and went back to more basic fare. 

Her department was running smoothly, without internal conflict, and with each new matriculating class as much in need of remedial education as those before.  Graduation levels remained acceptable although students were far less prepared for life outside academia than their shop classmates at the trade school across the river who after their two year course found well-paying jobs in carpentry, plumbing, and electricity. 

It was at about this time that Vicki's attention began to turn to extracurricular activities, and political activism was a natural outlet for her.  She had given her all to the black community at her college, but the black population at large was still an oppressed minority, still kept in subservience in hopelessly dysfunctional inner cities due to white supremacy.  She could not let this stand without remediation, and so she became a social reformer. 

Although she was initially welcomed in the struggle, the movement for black equality became almost exclusively African American.  To her dismay 'Whites Need Not Apply' was the sign posted on Black Lives Matter doors.  She had assumed that her academic credentials were all the bona fides she would need to become a member of the organization, and was sorely disappointed when turned away. 

Yet the liberal lamp had been lit and was still burning brightly - the specific cause mattered less than the engagement in progress towards a better, more verdant, more compassionate and unified world.  It didn't matter whether she worked to slow climate change, promote gender fluidity, or limit the predatory greed of Wall Street, progressivism welcomed her.  It was a big tent with environmentalists, Bernal Heights lesbians, socialists, migrant farm worker organizers ,and an assortment of sub-niches, each with their own particular liberal agenda but all subscribing to the same higher goal. 

Vicki, having for so many years been confined in the small world of academia, was overjoyed at the almost bewildering choices before her.  She was welcomed by her compatriots in arms, and encouraged to join this or that movement, rushed by sorority-like groups with their own iconic cause.  

Why just one? wondered Vicki; and with that she hurried to sign on to many liberal causes.  She, for example, was interested in the woman-to-man transgender flow, a far more challenging dimension of radical change.  For some reason there were far more sexually closeted men who wanted frills, pearls, diamonds, and high heels than  women who wanted work boots and tobacco chaws. 

Less interested in snail darters and spotted owls, she felt that the macro issues of rising seas and coastal destruction suited her more.  Capitalism was indeed the foundation for all American neo-colonialism and worker exploitation, but she was interested in Wall Street's vast manipulation of the American economy to benefit the few, the white, and the privileged. 

She became a whirlwind of social activism, available to all, compromised by none, and committed to revolution.  The movement could not rest on simple laurels - a few more black faces on As The World Turns and more gay couples in ads for Caribbean cruises.  It must be comprehensive, consolidated, and unified. Changes must occur everywhere, not just here and there. It was a revolutionary struggle, all or nothing.  

Progressivism was based on the principle that progress was possible and real, and that Utopia was reachable.  A new, better, more verdant, compassionate, and considerate world was the future if everyone put their minds and resources to it. 

The election of Donald Trump was a shock, a completely unexpected, harrowing event that threatened to set back progressive's hard won victories. In just one year the borders had been closed, the gender spectrum ridiculed, rainbow education dismantled, gays and lesbians sent back into the closet, billions of cubic feet of pollutants released into the air as environmental programs were eliminated, and Robber Baron capitalism was back. 

Yet for progressives like Vicki, it only meant more diligence, more investment, less sleep, and more determination.  It was now all the more important to effect the changes that would lead to a better world.  She renewed her efforts, was seen on daises and stages, at lecterns and in print.  She was a whirling dervish, a St. Vitus dancer; and before long had crossed the Rubicon into a kind of febrile hysteria.  'I must....I must....I must' she mumbled like The Little Engine That Could. 

Her adult children were concerned and her friends worried.  Worse, her fellow activists began to keep their distance.  Vicki was becoming unhinged, unaccountable, a volcano which could erupt one day into total madness.  She was giving the movement a bad name. 

'Focus, dear, focus', said her husband one day as she awoke frazzled, haunted looking, bedraggled, and red eyed. 'You can't do everything', but Vicki just looked at him with a vacant stare, uncomprehending, not even hearing. 

She shuffled over to the vanity table, looked at herself in the mirror, and sent it, her powders, blushes, and creams crashing to the floor.  She began tearing her hair, ripping her nightgown off and tearing it into shreds until her husband called 911 and medical help arrived. 

Her colleagues were commiserate but many said they saw it coming and should have stopped her before it was too late - not for her sake, but for the movement's which was getting bad press after every one of Vicki's hysterical outings.  They should have hooked her off the stage, done a dance routine to cover the damage, trucked her out of sight, and left her to recover her senses; but they let her rant and rave, for her passion was infectious and people still cheered.  They regretted treating her like a trained bear, but the ends justified the means, and if she was packed off to St. Elizabeth's, cossetted, drugged, and electroshocked, it was a worthwhile casualty. 

There were plenty of Vicki Chandlers in the progressive movement, and because the cause demanded an almost hysterical passion, their encroaching mental debility went unnoticed until it was too late.  Yet as in the case of Vicki, such nearly demented madness was the fire that ignited popular support.  Calm, reasoned, temperance would get  you nowhere. 

Only a few colleagues asked 'Where's Vicki', but after a month or two she was completely forgotten.  Political activism, although a lifelong pursuit for some, is irrelevant for most, or at most a peek into a circus side show to see the two-headed baby and the bearded woman. 

No one missed Vicki and no one was curious enough to know her whereabouts, so she ended up a cipher, a bit of a smudge on the calendar, a broken reticule found floating in the Potomac, a nothing. 

She wanted to be thought of as a good ISIS soldier, fevered with the desire to create a progressive caliphate and who would stop at nothing to achieve it; but never quite made the grade, never could gin up that kind of virulent absolutism, that howling frenzy of intent.  Ending up in the loony bin and not martyrdom was her fate, and so be it.