Rand Paul’s going to be teaching a course on “dystopian visions” at George Washington University next fall. Because of course he is.
The Kentucky senator and libertarian gadfly is a toned-down version of his former congressman father Ron, whose 2008 presidential campaign won the Reddit vote and filled stadiums with young supporters, mainly young men—an early evolution of the “Bernie bro.” Dialing back his father’s radical appeal helped him win a Senate seat, from which the the younger Dr. Paul (he’s an ophthamologist, dad’s an obstetrician) has deftly drawn the spotlight, most recently casting himself as a camera-ready resistance Republican.
His condemnations of Trump’s strike on Syria were rote catechism from a member of the Paul clan, not ordinarily so newsworthy—but simply being an isolationist opposed to the nascent Trump doctrine made Senator Paul a hot topic. And, a month earlier, cameras and clicks followed when he led a wild goose chase through the House of Representatives to hunt down draft health care legislation (which, former Hill staffers were swift to point out, he was not actually entitled to). On an otherwise busy news day, Senator Paul’s protest won an outsize headspace. Taking to Twitter with his theatrical hardline against insurance subsidies won’t help Rand worm his way into the millennial milieu, though. A surprise professorship and an of-the-moment elective course, on the other hand …
The fall semester’s dystopias elective, for which registration has (alas) already closed, rings true to his professed core beliefs. His interest in dystopian lit and belief in its relevancy is well-established—he told Vice in 2013 that he wanted to teach just this kind of class, adding that “I think dystopian novels are a discussion of politics, and sort of what happens if you let a government accumulate too much power.”
Senator Paul’s dystopia class is not only on-trend, what with fascist hellscape being the hottest (non-)fiction genre in Trump’s America. It’s also a clever way to draw a great big line between himself and a not terribly literary commander in chief—and to let that big beautiful line lead him to a generation of former socialists with short attention spans on the rebound from the Bern.
To best endear his brand to the hearts and minds of the impressionable youth, there are a few slick moves a senator from Kentucky might consider.
Livestream every class session. Sure, this may seem at first like the sort of thing a socialist would do. But it takes a techie libertarian to share everything on the internet until e-commerce (nowadays, we call it commerce) is a thing of the past. When we talk about ed-tech overturning higher ed, we’re really talking about the impending obsolescence of tuition and credentials—we’re talking about the free online frontiers of autodidactism unseating institutions of higher education. And when institutions, plagued by decadence and infighting, fail to prepare for these encroaching advancements? Well, at the very least, it’s a perfect discussion topic for Day 1. Plus, enough students clamored for seats in the class—it filled up rapidly despite its 8 a.m. slot—that not livestreaming would create an unseemly aura of exclusivity.
Invoke Dad. Oddly, many of the potheads I met in college were registered Republicans. Because they’d voted for Ron Paul in the 2008 Republican primaries. Professor Paul should not for a moment underestimate his dad’s appeal to the very same Berned-over undergrads now seeking a new senator to idolize. Nor should he feel particularly hemmed in by his political office; there’s no reason, in other words, at the head of a lecture hall, not to go full kook. The soon-to-be adjunct should feel free to assign—at least on the supplementary reading list, for a uplift from the dreary dystopias—his father’s 2008 best seller Revolution: A Manifesto. Yes, young people are fickle, freedom-loving, and pot-smoking, particularly in D.C. where it’s not even a controlled substance. And, they’re fairly predictable: What can we count on if not millennials’ infatuation with a senator who panders to their fondness for revolutionary ideation?
Don’t just focus on the predictable dystopias. According to a news release from GW, “The course will delve into the history of dystopian outlooks and its application and intersection with current events and political discourse.” Senator Paul’s students would draw parallels to the world around them. He should challenge them to look beyond the popular consensus that Trumpland will turn out like a cross between Winston Smith’s London and Doremus Jessup’s Dartmouth (or Offred’s Gilead, for the ladies). Amazon shoppers may have snatched up 1984, It Can’t Happen Here, and The Handmaid’s Tale in order to study up on the totalitarian regime to come. “Newly relevant” and newly best-selling speculative fiction—with the exception of Aldous Huxley’s 1931 satire Brave New World—fails to match course, closely as fevered comparisons claim, with our collective lurch toward Idiocracy. A guest lecture from Idiocracy filmmaker and sharp satirist Mike Judge, come to think of it, would be terrific idea—and in all likelihood a big hit. Also, Senator Paul would be remiss not to invite a guest lecture from Roscoe Bartlett, the former Maryland congressman who now lives all the way off the electric grid, prepared for what he has been warning us about for decades: dystopic descent after the imminent doomsday when an electromagnetic pulse, a nuclear weapon detonated by an enemy, wipes out the entire power grid.
Needless to say, I’ll be waiting for the livestream.
