Questions No One is Asking
Are "kitchen table issues" the only important ones?
Hey, folks, during my publishing hiatus, I’ve been working on new posts on artificial intelligence and the “New Rules” we apparently have to follow if we want to protest the administration’s attempt to eliminate government oversight by We the People.
But the latest news (gift link) about yet another respected cultural institution being driven from our national center for the arts by people with zero qualifications to run it makes my blood boil, because no one is asking the pertinent questions.
Why are we not asking Trump, Inc.: “Is art important? Why do we value art?”
Why are we not asking, “Is creativity important?”
Where in professional development design for teachers are questions like, “Should we be teaching students how to access their inborn creativity? How should we do that?”
Why is this question not on top of the conversation over education, immigration, science, and international relations: “How does thinking like an artist lead to solutions that benefit everyone?”
I participated in a panel discussion with chemists from a major textile and chemical manufacturer in South Carolina. Those experienced, hard-nosed corporate employees said out loud that their job is “designing new molecules.”
You can’t get to “new” from “now” without radically re-imagining what is possible. Artists excel at that. It’s our mission.
American society puts a lot of weight on a “businesslike” approach to problems that business never has to deal with. Government is a fundamentally different critter from business, yet many people nod and smile when presented with a “businessman” who plans to “fix” government.
We saw how well that turned out with DOGE and Elon Musk’s corporate cost-cutting approach. Hundreds of thousands of lives lost, and more money spent fixing the results of cost-cutting than saved by it.
Folks, there should be artists in every statehouse, every legislature, every corporate boardroom, every school board, every scientific review panel, every financial regulator, every environmental protection agency, every park administration, and every city council.
Artists think sideways. We see connections that could never work… except when they, inexplicably until later, actually do work.
To deny the human drive to create, innovate, break rules without breaking laws, and the drive to re-frame experience in tangible, memorable form is to follow a road that leads only to ruin.
The arts speak to everyone, not just the chosen few. And that’s why they are a threat to the hegemony.
It’s time to reassert our heritage as humans. Create art that once again changes what is possible.
Dance on!
Speak on!
Paint on!
Sing on!
Play on!
🦉
And just after I published this post, Trump confirmed everything I assumed about his blurry vision of "art."
His handpicked and completely unqualified director has no idea how to run a nonprofit organization, and everyone they brought on board administration was chosen for their opposition to "woke" art (whatever that is) and their willingness to do whatever the boss says.
When that predictably resulted in the Center's booking and finances going down the toilet, Trump's response was to close the place down entirely. Tellingly, he's promising a "world-class entertainment center."
The word "entertainment" is doing a lot of work there. It reassures MAGA that no "elites" will be presenting anything remotely uncomfortable to a Southern white audience. (It's no longer a secret that MAGA is the Lost Cause reborn.) It suggests that the Opera House will be replaced by a UFC cage arena, and the basement parking area will become a bumper-car attraction, alongside a video arcade. The grassy open space of The Reach will be a monster truck course. And they'll show the "Melania" infomercial 24/7/365 on the outdoor projection screens.
Just like the NFL players quoted about Bad Bunny's upcoming Super Bowl appearance, Trump's cult only wants "Americans" performing. They conveniently forget, just like he does during hurricanes, that the people of Puerto Rico are US citizens. Their preference: someone from the Country & Western world who won't remind them that there are other people with other traditions and cultures.
Actually, don't be surprised when the "reconstruction" is becomes an abandoned pipe dream, because there's no money to pay for it.
When the current Kennedy Center site mimics the former East Wing of the White House, and pallets of marble armrests are stacked up outside a gaping hole in the banks of the Potomac, with the whole project summarily abandoned, Trump will have successfully destroyed another former symbol of true US greatness, reminding us that the barbarians have occupied government and barred the rest of us from any say in the matter.
Randy----you big thinker, you!
Think on!
stay warm!