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CounterPunch
October
30, 2002
Back Off or
I'll Snap
by DAVID VEST
Home from a four-day gigathon, from the Oregon
coast to Mt. Hood, with my ears still ringing, desperate for
shut-eye, and flat out of luck. Between the neighbor's crack-of-dawn
leaf blower and the morning headlines, who can fall asleep? Would-be
nurse on rampage in Arizona ... wild teen gunplay in Oklahoma
... states and counties in death-penalty feeding-frenzy in sniper
case ... murder rates up ... theft rising ... rape increasing
... Bush urging everyone to "do your job as an American."
Sniper bullets in Maryland and Virginia
killed 10 people. With the suspects in custody, things got "back
to normal" in a land where 10 children are shot to death
every day. And where upwards of 47 people a day shoot themselves,
not counting hunters.
30,000 Americans were killed by guns
in 1998. While Chief Charles Moose was hunting the snipers, roughly
450 other people were gunned down in the U. S., not counting
suicides. I don't know how many were garroted, smothered, duct-taped
to the railroad tracks or driven mad by rally monkeys and frantic
red plastic thundersticks while trying to watch a goddamn baseball
game.
"Back off or I'll snap," warned
Barry Bonds as reporters gathered around his locker. After the
infernal racket he had to endure for a week, it's a wonder he
didn't leave the field in a strait-jacket, bawling like Dusty
Baker's three-year-old.
Imagine what a real baseball fan, assuming
such a thing exists in Southern California, must have felt like,
sitting with scorecard in lap trying desperately to see the game
through a quaking bamboo thicket of red nervous energy. Imagine
what our hypothetical fan had to pay for the seat.
I'm waiting for them to start selling
thundersticks at symphony concerts and the theater. Why not?
Most of the corporate seat-holders are bored out of their minds
by fauns, sylphides and oboes and furious at having to turn off
their cell phones. Let's have some real catharsis for a change.
Hell, I think they ought to hand the balloon tubes out whenever
Congress is in session. It will lend a whole new dimension to
the art of the filibuster. And it will look great on television
when the president gives the State of the Union speech. Maybe
the Republicans could get red balloon tubes and the Democrats
could get blue ones.
Or maybe we'd need three colors, to match
the president's three moods. Most of the time, either he's apoplectic
with rage when we see him, making his agitated, bitter demands,
or he's so depressed-looking he seems almost comatose, barely
able to keep his eyelids up as he reads from the teleprompter.
(Once in a while we catch a glimpse of the relaxed glad-hander,
the ballpark greeter of old, giving people some "touch"
and a friendly smirk.)
"People are crazy, times are strange,"
says Dylan.
Alabama was first to announce that it
would seek the death penalty for the sniper suspects. An echo
with an epicenter near the Potomac swiftly followed, with Maryland
and Virginia claiming rights. On the networks, experts discuss
the jurisdictional squabbles, adding "if they are guilty"
as a routine disclaimer, the way they used to say "alleged."
Think of these experts as just so many
people waving red hyperbolical thundersticks, drowning out the
point of view of anyone who believes that the country is already
too violent, and that the solution might begin with asking the
country to stop killing its own citizens, whatever they may have
done.
As long as my government has the right
to kill me, then I exist at its pleasure. Shouldn't it be the
other way around?
Of late the focus of anti-death penalty
activists has been on using DNA to prove that many of the people
on death row are in fact innocent. That's wonderful, when the
innocent are spared and set free. But it's not the real issue.
Should a government have the power to
kill the people it exists to serve, that's the question. It's
just as appalling when the government executes the guilty. It
is a power so frightening that some of us, and I'm not talking
about lawyers, ought to be inspired to defend even the worst
among us from it.
And to think, an hour ago I'd have approved
the death penalty for operating a leaf blower before noon.
"The pure products of America go
crazy," said William Carlos Williams.
Could the good Dr. Williams have envisioned
Johnny Muhammad? Millionaire baseball players? Mobs with thundersticks?
Or the spectacle of three or four states in a bidding war to
put to death people who haven't even been brought to trial yet?
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. He is a poet
and piano-player for the Pacific Northwest's hottest blues band,
The Cannonballs.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
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October 26
/ 27, 2002
Michael Wolff
A Place
of Tears
Ilija Trojanow
Bali Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
Crocodile Tears
Hope Shand and Silvia Ribeiro
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The Grassroots of Hope
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Wayne Madsen
Pappy
Bush on Wellstone:
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Stuart Timmons
Harry
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Australia
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Historic No Vote to US War Plans
Ben Terrall
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Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
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Will Youmans
Israel's and Divestment
Norman Madarasz
Lula
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Ben Tripp
George
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Harry Browne
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A Guide
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the Major Countries of the World as Defined by the Office of
Strategic Influence
T.W. Croft
America's
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William Hughes
A Free
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Alan Farago
Jeb Bush and the Environment
October 23,
2002
Daniel Wolff
Pataki,
Witt and the Indian Point Nuke
Wayne Madsen
A Saudiless
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Sam Bahour
and Paul de Rooij
Abritrary
Imprisonment
Chris White
Why I Oppose
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an ex-Marine Sergeant Speaks Out
Anthony Gancarski
Back to Bali
Adam Engel
Twilight
(of the Idols) Zone
Robert Fisk
How to Shut Up Your Critics
October 22,
2002
Jack McCarthy
A Letter
to C. Hitchens
Carol Norris
This Message
Brought to You by Breast Cancer, Inc.
Joanne Mariner
Just
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Legislating Morality and Understanding HIV/AIDS Prevention
Kathleen Christison
Excuse Me?
How Israel Justifies Killing Palestinians
Linda Heard
Iraq War
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Roger Peacock
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Resources:
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