Free People Do Bad Things
by Joe Bageant
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 26, 2005
A while back there was a wrestling promotion campaign in which young children were encouraged to attend local wrestling bringing weapons of their own creation. The weapons would later be used in the ring. One small boy returned with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. Asked about the wisdom of encouraging the child to create such brutal weapons, the kid’s father appeared dumbfounded: “This is just entertainment! It's fun!” World Champion Wrestling’s Vince McMahon’s indignant response was, “This is still a free country. I will not let anyone stop me.” The implication being of course, “I am a great defender of freedom against evil liberal regulation.” Then he looked into the camera to his fans and said: “DON'T LET ANYONE STOP YOU!”
Well kick my ass and call me Henry! Spare us all from liberal sissies unable to see the good clean family fun in clubbing folks bloody with barbed wire wrapped baseball bats. About the only consolation here is that, were Vince McMahon to be pulverized by the very same bat on TV, the same people whose basest instincts he exploits for profit would LOVE IT. Hell, I’d love it. At any rate, McMahon is an example of true, unregulated “freedom-in-business.” And to think that we once thought football was about as bad as America’s bread and circuses would get.
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For now though, our attention is absorbed in the efforts of our armed and clueless youth who, rather like pit bulls, are turned loose on the rest of world. About 1,500 of them have been killed, but not before killing a hundred thousand or so Iraqis, nearly all of them civilians. The carnage in Iraq is not a problem. “Free people do bad things,” said Donald Rumsfeld (referring to the murderous Iraqi clusterfuck masquerading as a government over there). But at least we are returning to our violent roots. As any indigenous person can tell you, we are coming home to the values that made America great. Abu Ghraib was a fresh start at reestablishing our violent national heritage that began with Indian slaughter and seemed to stall out a bit after Vietnam. But we’re baaaaaack! And we’re as bad assed as ever.
Presiding over all at this critical but vulgar time in our history is, rather appropriately, a vulgar idiot whose second bogus inaugural was hosted by Trent Lott, a deliberate “fuck you” precisely equivalent to those Mississippi men groping themselves for the cameras of Life magazine back in the 1960s. Our esteemed president IS one of those men. Things smell more ominous by the day, and to quote the late Dr. Thompson, “Big darkness, soon come.” Feels like it’s already here. Hunter also said “a man with a greed for the truth should expect no mercy and give none.” Damned good advice, I would say. Because from this desk at the edge of Washington D.C., it looks like we are not about to get any at all. (Bear with me; there is a theme in here somewhere. I promise to find it.)
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Bageant0526.htmSimply the best writer on the internet essay circuit.
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