How many of us are publicly anti-war, but secretly yearn for "the exhilaration of the barbarian"for the thrill of victory, or, more precisely, the joy of seeing our enemies broken and humiliated? It doesn't have to be physical; a political defeat or public shaming will feed the yearning. Republicans are masters of this vengeful individualism, but there's plenty of it on MSNBC, and in social media cancellations.
We're all Spillane's children.
Why else would we do nothing, or too little, while our country props up brutal dictatorships and fights endless wars, as people of color die at home -- of bullet wounds, of unequal healthcare, of poverty in all its death-dealing incarnations? Why else would we watch passively as our police forces are turned into occupying armies infiltrated by white nationalists?
We've sent our children into alien lands, over and over, to kill and terrorize. Now, the alien land is our own.
We've seen the kind and progressive sheriffs and deputies taking the knee, or marching with protesters. It's gratifying. But they're the exceptions -- and they're not exceptional enough to stop the killing. Humane policing is useful to the system, if it's administered in homeopathic dosages.
Look at those videos again: We like 'em mean, and we like 'em dumb.
Why else does our system produce walking hand grenades like Derek Chauvin, then protect them as if they were Faberge' eggs? What else explains a liberal mayor's waffling when his own police officers ram demonstrators with an SUV? What else explains the martial movement of a tank and soldiers down a residential Minneapolis street, and the "light 'em up" order to fire a projectile at people on their own front porch?
"Light 'em up."
That's a line from the video that Chelsea Manning released, and Julian Assange published -- spoken as Americans in Iraq killed civilians, including two journalists, from a helicopter. Manning and Assange revealed the truth, and we're torturing them for it. Now, military helicopters hover over US demonstrators while cops target journalists on the ground.
"Light 'em up."
A line that reveals the skull beneath the face.
These tin soldiers are the violent, cowardly, bullying products of a dying empire, the death dreams of a sybaritic system breathing its last. They are America's Id.
Don't believe it? As cities slash their budgets in the wake of COVID-19, gutting social services and after-school programs, police departments aren't being cut at all. That's the act of an empire protecting its elites from the coming chaos.
Why do we let this happen? Some of us get off on the violence, Mickey Spillane style. Others just don't care enough to lay their bodies on the line to stop it. That isn't any better, is it?
Maybe this time will be different. Maybe we'll purge our national heart of its love for state violence. But that would mean admitting the problem isn't "rogue cops," but rogue hearts. It would mean admitting that our history is a thin red line that runs from the slaughter of the Native Americans, through the torture of the enslaved, all the way to the deaths of despair and the killing of George Floyd.
It would mean feeling what we don't want to feel: the suffering of others.
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