running for something

funny how we can't get worked up about war or poverty anymore, but let somebody try to rub up against someone on the train, and all hell breaks loose. because we love the sensational, the individual. and we hate to acknowledge how powerless we are, and just how awful the entire structure is.

give you an example. yesterday, it came out that a van driver in the town of brookline likely molested a special ed. student who rides his bus. teachers and staff were up in arms, everyone was infuriated. the teacher i work for said she hoped the arresting officers "beat the shit out of him." you would think a teacher would be vaguely aware of the concept "innocent until proven guilty." now, granted this is a terrible thing, if true, but why does something like this set everyone off? i've never heard this teacher, or anyone else at the school, say "they ought to beat the shit out of that ignorant patriot who dropped those bombs on defenseless iraqis." maybe she said it when i was out of the room.

something like this satisfies for a number of reasons...

1) it's local. the closer the better. wow, this happened in our town! our drivers are more perverted than your drivers!

2) it allows one an anguish that is essentially conservative. no one (i should say, no white person) expresses nearly the same amount of outrage when a cop murders an unarmed black man. no, because then we might need to address issues like police brutality and institutional racism, and this would mean standing up to entrenched power. not a safe endeavor. no, much safer to berate alleged sexual perverts. this does nothing. the predator has already acted. but, i suppose it does allow us to feel a sort of puritan arrogance. sort of like watching springer..."oh my god, how disgusting! these people are sick!" you don't need to build a social movement in order to feel that way. they are tears without cost, sort of like putting up a holocaust memorial.

3) superficially, it puts you on the side of children. "i care about our youth, unlike this monster." oh yeah, while you teach them lies, while your tax dollars support war, while you stand by and allow yet another generation to be demonized because of their race and class? the fact is, these artificial humanitarians don't give a fuck about children.

4) it creates the good guy vs. bad guy dichotomy. we love that in this country. we are good, the terrorists are bad. christians good, atheists bad. no need to think, no need to question our sick culture which has helped to create more and more sick people. we are innocent, he is guilty. even though there has been no trial. even though the student can't talk. no matter. throw him to the wolves. santiago was his name? probably an illegal anyway! god, you give them work, and this is what you get! oh yeah, it's all connected. scratch a concerned, law abiding moralist and you are likely to find a bigoted asshole.

so yeah, we like our tragedies safe, committed by lone lunatics. oswald, james earl ray, sexual predators, trailer park trash. we like incest and perverts and religious nuts and neo-nazis. it helps to keep our attention away from the war crimes.

as you can gather, i kept my thoughts to myself while the issue was being discussed.

speaking of a crime that won't make the news, george washington carver (the teacher next door, whose last name is carver) started bitching in class today about how apathetic we are in this country while our soldiers are fighting in iraq. "during world war one, we were united. (kept debs and goldman and the sedition act to myself) now, we just go about our business. we ignore it." then, he became crazed. "do you remember how you felt on september 12th, 2001? (i didn't have the heart to tell him that the students were around 9 years old then. besides, at that moment he looked like hitler after a bad date) i do. i wanted to kick some ass. i told a friend that if you aren't in america, we are coming to get you. i wanted to blow everything up." the class got quiet, looked around. i sneared. he got control of himself, and switched gears, bringing it back to ww 1.

no one will talk about this. no one will say "he ought to get his ass kicked." no one will say this man should be taken off the streets, and never be allowed to come close to a child for as long as he lives. for you see, the real predators are making it. the real predators are doing just fine.

welcome to the jungle.