Protocol 2/15

Ben enters the room and it is noted that he got a haircut. “The puffiness” got to be too much for him.

The blog is pulled up on the screen and then taken off

Program:

1. Housekeeping

2. Authority and legitimation:

a. Two exercises in the Socratic method

3. Difficultation

Ben passes out a long reading (Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and says:

· Feel no need to read it as closely as Ranke or Hegel

· Read until the end

· At the beginning, some of the materials are included from the back of the book

· This is a big, fat book

· Oh my god, is this a piece of crap?

· This book has been a bestseller for decades. Why?

· In the front: information about Ian Rand from the back of the book

Ben: Is everyone clear on the distinction between uninterested and disinterested?

· Uninterested: you don’t care.

· Disinterested: unbiased. You don’t have an interest in one side or the other of the debate.

Ben; Rand is mentioned a couple of times in Zernike

· Readings are together for a reason

· Everything is in there for a reason, at least in my own manic logic

Attendance.

Ben: We need to leave two spots until Shukri and Liz come. All right.

Ben: Quick Matters of housekeeping.

· External writing #1 is due by 11:59 Thursday night

· Peer Edit sheets: I don’t think that I really need them. Don’t worry about turning them in.

· I will not have office hours on Thursday

· I will stay a little bit longer at office hours today

Ben: Eventually this will all happen naturally. Please read and annotate Ian Rand. I’m going to send you a couple of other articles.

Ben: To start off:

· We are going to do a difficultation on the tea party soon, but I want to do a difficultation on my own first

Ben: Emily what is the Socratic method

Emily: there is a circle in the middle and a circle on the outside and people in the middle grade the outside.

Ahmed: a method taught in Law School

Ben: The Socratic method is the beginning of what we now think of dialogue based education. In the Socratic method the teacher knows the answer. It is an exercise in eliciting truth out of the student. Its dictorial and not respectful of the student. In certain small cases, I find it very useful.

2 short exercises in the Socratic method:

· Heidi has performed a series of actions such as talking when I asked, being silent when I asked, etc. Why?

· Heidi: because its rude not to. There is a certain standard.

· Ben: focus on the societal expectation that you do what you are told. What does it mean that I am your professor?

· Heidi: that you are an authority figure

· Ben: if a random schlub came off the street...

· Heidi: we as your students enrolled in your course expecting cultural studies and comparative literature material. We expect that we learn that from you rather than some schlub off the street, he does not hold that position that you do.

· Heidi: your being paid, your name is on the syllabus, you introduced yourself as our instructor...

· Ben: there is an assumption that you should do what I tell you. What Heidi said is that she is listening to me because I command bureaucratic authority and legitimacy. The point is the reason that I have legitimate authority is because of the position that I hold. My name is in the right place on the syllabus, on the website, etc.

Exercise #2

· Ben: where was Obama born?

· Hallie: Hawaii. I have seen his birth certificate online.

· Ben: do you believe all the photos you see online?

· Hallie: I think that there is a very low chance of a government conspiracy.

· Ben: there are so many people who don’t believe it.

· Hallie: many people think evolution is wrong

· Ben: would anyone else like to jump in?

· Ben: Alexander Hamilton example

· Hallie: he was never president

· Hallie: have you ever seen drunk history? (Explains drunk history on youtube)

· Ben: Anyone else want to add on? I’m still not convinced that Obama was born in this country.

· Ben: lets look at Zernike. Take a look on page 11. Bottom of page 10. This is all from the CBS Poll. “Though tea partiers told the times poll that they were devoted watchers of Fox News, they also said that the information they trusted most of all came from others in the movement, not from the mainstream media.....”

· Ben: continues to read bottom of page 10 and top of 11 in Zernike. Please give Hallie a round of applause.

· Ben: I don’t care about the facts, what I care about is something else entirely. Charismatic Authority legitimation versus bureaucratic authority legitimization.

o Bureaucratic authority legitimization. I have read the sources, I know as much as a historical fact can ever be known, that Obama was born in this country.

o I don’t care about the facts! I’m talking about a different kind of authority. Sarah Palin is up there, Beck is up there, I am feeling united with my people, I feel that for the first time in my life I am doing something for my country, and if that means that Obama was not born in this country than damnit he wasn’t born in this country! That is charismatic authority.

Ben: Flip back to Vaber

· Course packet page 181

· “The natural leaders in moments of distress- whether psychic, physical, ethical, religious, or political- were neither appointed officeholders nor professionals in the present-day sense....

· It feels wrong. Don’t give me facts, qualifications. It feels wrong.

· Glenn Beck does not have a PhD in history. We have no idea who corrected the Glenn Beck video

· I hold with Zernike that we really have to understand the Tea Party

· If we just say their dumbasses...

· “They are considered supernatural”

· Comparison with Hitler- that feeling

Ben: Is this making sense? I don’t usually lecture this much.... Bottom of the page.... The university of Minnesota is going to exist whether I’m here or not. In a bureaucratic sense the class would go on. If beck and palin died, who knows what would happen to the Tea Party. That’s basically the point. Theres more I could say about this, but thats basically the point.

Mandi: it’s basically the difference between the mindset of the scientist and the mindset of an artist.

Ben: as a kind of icons, thats not a bad way of looking at it

Hallie: they don’t have such a close race; he must not be a citizen.

Ben: hallie is absolutely right....

Hallie: its just people who are angry and don’t want to accept the truth....

Ben: what is the truth? You mean bureaucratic truth. God created the world. Where’s the evidence? People believe that science is always right.

Hallie: triceratops never existed. Science could be wrong about everything.

Ben: the truths produced are human. Was bush legitimate? Categorically different from the question: is Obama a good or bad president? Historians in the Rankian model will fight all the time. What they both are agreeing on is that that is a primary source and is a legitimate source of knowledge. What we are talking about here is a fight over facts: over what is real. In a good history class, you will learn all sorts of debates. For those debates to happen, you have to agree about certain facts. What is real is being contested. What is a fact is being contested. Fundamentally the terrain we are fighting over is charismatic vs. bureaucratic authority.

Ben: Anything else on your minds?

Sophie: I just feel that most people in the tea party don’t recognize the difference between bureaucratic and charismatic authority.

Ben: thoughts? Its an important point but I have been talking too much today.

Mandi: I think people in the tea party are very diverse. Theres always stereotypes but theres nothing wrong with that.

Ben: what would you say to tom grimes?

Sophie: he doesn’t trust where they’re coming from.... he won’t accept them as facts

Jordan: we wont have time to do our difficultation.....

Difficultation: Go!

Ben: You guys can start, ill instruct Kate in the use of this....

Everybody partner up with the person next to them: do a bubble map of the tea party and off of it put characteristics of it. We are going to do a big one on the board. Do all the groups have a few ideas?

Hopefully everyones got a few ideas.

What were some of the things you guys put on your maps?

· Patriotic

· Conservative liberals

· Charismatic authority

· Misunderstood

· Young versus old disparity

· Educated versus uneducated

· Middle class versus the wealthy class

· Younger, well read had more ideological motivations

· Older had more economic motivations

· Ideology versus anger

How many people before knew a lot about the tea party?

Who knew about the tea party?

Were some people like, it’s really bad, but didn’t know why it was bad?

How many people actually know what their about?

We are going to watch a couple of clips, one of a tea party rally and one of an anti tea party rally.

First clip: tea party rally.

Second clip: anti Tea Party rally

Now we are going to separate into four different groups.

You are going to be doing a little role-playing. Groups one and two are pretending to be in the tea party and you have to make propaganda. Groups three and four are anti Tea Party. You have to use a quote from Zernike in your project.

The decision was made that presentations would happen at the beginning of Thursday because we ran out of time. Class ended.