The kids were playing coach-pitch, Cubs vs. Astros, a late season Saturday morning T-ball game near Hums Elementary.
There was plenty of contact – choppers through the infield, swinging bunts and bloopers to shallow left – and very little defense. Late, wild throws into the moms behind first, the gang-tackle of a grounder toward short, non-catches that never had a chance. A soft parade of errors and oopsie-daisies.
But all in good fun. Everyone scored. Everyone got a snack.
We wrapped it up in the handshake line and huddled for a team cheer. One of the other dads, a thirtysomething named Zach, handed out cookies and the team began its slow dispersal – players and families moseying off into the weekend.
Zach stuck around. He was wearing a t-shirt with a color photo from China’s Cultural Revolution, a sea of Red Guards waving Little Red Books at a mass rally in Tiananmen Square. Over the image a quote, “It is right to rebel,” attributed to Chairman Mao.
Not the kind of thing you see much in Mishawaka sports.
I asked Zach if he was a Maoist. He said yes.
I looked around. The guys in fire department and Grunt Style t-shirts were all out of earshot.
Very interesting! I mentioned the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which had recently passed.
Zach said there was no massacre in 1989. That whole story was a “psy-op” – his word – by Western powers to discredit the Chinese Communist Party. The reporters who pushed this “narrative” – his word – were agents or run by agents of U.S. and European spy shops. Including the guy who photographed Tank Man.
Behind us, the White Sox and Rockies were warming up for the 11 o’clock game. Teenage umpires milled around the outfield.
I had a lot of questions. Zach answered some of them. He used the phrase “manufactured consent” several times. He asked if I had the intellectual courage to challenge my narrative. Did I know Nancy Pelosi was in Tiananmen that June?
Our families were getting antsy. I gave Zach my number. He said he would send some links but never did.
I looked him up and he’s pursuing a PhD.
It’s not in history.
***
In his Trump-era pamphlet, “On Tyranny,” Yale Historian Timothy Snyder encourages readers to “[a]void pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking.” Snyder is a student of Eastern European authoritarianism. His entreaty echoes George Orwell, who in a famous essay about the power of language in politics wrote, “bad habits … spread by imitation.”
Manufacturing Consent was a big book on campus in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. It’s a critique of corporate media and American propaganda. Anyone following the horse race reporting this year will recognize some themes. But the book’s title is not a useful noun. Used this way, it’s a shorthand or a slogan. An example of what Orwell called “ready-made phrases.”
Coins of the social media realms.
Woke. MAGA.
Stochastic terrorism.
Settler colonialism.
“Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet,” writes Snyder.
***
We spent another week in the UP this summer and ran into an acquaintance at the fudge shop. She is a retired Indianapolis school teacher and wanted to talk about the Trump shooting.
“Can you believe these female Secret Service agents?” she asked.
I said, “Belinda, you are watching too much right-wing TV.”
“No, I thought that myself,” she said. “Maybe he should hire private guards.”
I said, “That’s a bad idea.”
We ran into Belinda later on the beach. She likes to fish and said the herring run heavy in early July then school north up the St. Mary’s River. If you follow them out toward Canada, she said, around the points on Drummond Island and into the big water, you’ll see the nets. Stretching to the horizon.
“Nets?” I asked.
Belinda made a pinched face.
“Indians,” she said.
Music: “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow” by The Rivingtons
