Tomorrow's Election, the Threat of Fascism, and the Great Disruption

Fifteen years ago, only a few months prior to 9/11, I argued in an article in Change Magazine http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ635340  that with the precipitous decline of organized labor and the shift from genuine news reporting on TV to info-tainment, it fell to higher education to champion "Truth, Justice and the American Way."

A decade and a half, and a War on Terror, later... the Internet has changed the paradigm yet again.  The World Wide Web has eliminated the filters through which the liars and the crazies had to pass in their efforts to get their lies and their mad ravings through to the ignorant and the gullible.  Now they come to the American people directly and unedited.

Professor Clay Christiansen has made a fat living as the prophet of disruption theory.  He has pronounced on-line learning to be the technology that will disrupt higher education as we know it.  And, while many forces are at work undermining higher education as we have known it since WWII, the Internet is indeed the most disruptive force.

This has been clear to me for some time.  What was not clear to me until this election is how disruptive of democratic discourse the Internet is.  We foolishly thought it was a facilitator of free speech: every man, woman and child her/his own free press.  Instead, in the cacophony of fools and ignorami and charlatans and nuts, a demi-god --- in Lenin's words, a "useful fool" --- has been able to rise and reduce political campaign rhetoric to vulgar, insulting, offensive and insensitive gibberish.  And he has been able to reach the gates of the White House in the process.

If those of us disinclined toward fascism vote in large enough numbers tomorrow, we may drive the barbarians from the White House gates... this time.  But the fascist urge is flowing in the blood of tens of millions of our fellow Americans.  Their blood will grow hotter, not cooler, in defeat.  We --- and I mean especially we in higher education --- must gird ourselves to counter that challenge to our liberties and our Democracy.

But first we have to win.  Get out there and vote!