On Simple Human Decency (literary rant of disgust)

Harper's Magazine, June 2006. By Ben Metcalf.

'Before I attempt to fill these pages with my disgust... I am obliged to address a preliminary concern.. Some time has passed since I last raised my voice to the multitude, and whereas literary taste does not seem to have advanced much in the interim, and I assume is still arrayed so as to engage only the weak-minded and dull, I find that I am no longer able to discern with any accuracy where the bounds of simple human decency lie. This would bother me even less than does the taste issue were it not for the fact that ground gained or lost in the theater of decency tends now and then to affect the law, and it has long been a personal goal of mine to avoid capture and imprisonment.

I am therefore led to wonder what the common citizen is allowed to “say” anymore, in print or otherwise, and still feel reasonably sure that some indignant team of G-men, or else a pair of gung-ho local screws, will not drag him away to a detention center, there to act out, with the detainee as a prop, that familiar scene in which one hero cop or another is patriotically unable to resist certain outbursts against the detainee and what were once imagined to be the detainee's constitutional rights. Because I am loath to violate whatever fresh new mores the people have agreed upon, or have been told they agree upon, and because I do not care to have my ass kicked repeatedly in a holding cell while I beg to see a lawyer, I almost hesitate to ask the following question. I will ask it, though, out of what used to be called simple human decency:

Am I allowed to write that I would like to hunt down George W. Bush, the president of the United States, and kill him with my bare hands? '

please read the whole piece,
http://www.harpers.org/OnSimpleHumanDecency=1149635660.html

I have to say this is one of the best written essays I have read in a long time, as Mr Metcalf is an exraordinary writer. I heartily recommend reading it in its entirety, as just a few paragraphs does not do it justice, and I can't summarize his eloquence.

.......Let me be clear that I have no wish to perform such a deed in fact, nor do I want anyone else to destroy bodily what is, at least in the technical sense, a fellow human being. (Let me be equally clear that the above qualification, although true, is intended primarily as a legal ploy and should in no way be attributed to my claimed pacifism, which today's prosecutor might find a way to use against me. I would also like excused from the proceedings my personal feelings for George W. Bush, embarrassment and rage, as they could probably be turned to my disadvantage as well.) In truth, I bring neither a message nor a promise of violence. I seek only to gauge what level of discourse is still acceptable in this country by asking, in the hope that I might someday participate in that discourse, whether I am free to posit that it would probably be great fun, and a boon to all mankind, if I were to slaughter the president of the United States with my bare hands.
II.

This caution is despicable, yes, but it cannot be helped. If I am to remain at large, then here and there a sentence will need to be perverted. I harbor no desire to become a litmus test for a justice system I already understand to be base, or to look on from the dock as my words are converted into the mathematical symbols so many Americans now expect them to be, indicative of quantities rather than qualities, each best thought of as a price so as to aid in the computation of a verdict or a bill. All I ask is that these particular words be read literally, which I gather is not yet the same as their being received as a dumb stream of numbers.

In 1917, before even a handful of presidents had been offed (and when Wilson, one of the worst, remained on), our first red-scare Congress resolved to build up a legislative wall between the chief executive and his many potential executioners. Murder was already a crime in this country, as was the attempt to commit murder, but the law did not differentiate between a president and a dirty voter, at least where victimhood was concerned, despite the fact that the president clearly was not of the people, was not a common citizen given great responsibility by the people, but was rather a great man in need of uncommon protection from the people. That is, he was a party hack, often delusional, whose permission to rob and mislead the people for the benefit of his friends had not yet been cemented into law, and whose ability to perform that function was being compromised every time one of the suckers managed to shoot him.

I hardly mean to imply that George W. Bush is a delusional party hack whose aim is to rob and mislead us for the benefit of his friends. That idea deserves to be stated outright: George W. Bush is a delusional party hack whose aim is to rob and mislead us for the benefit of his friends. What I mean to imply is that his free ride on our backs was made possible by the clever solution Congress found to its conundrum back in 1917: a law that deems guilty of a federal offense anyone who knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail . . . any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States . . . or knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat. . . .

'I hardly mean to imply that George W. Bush is a delusional party hack whose aim is to rob and mislead us for the benefit of his friends. That idea deserves to be stated outright: George W. Bush is a delusional party hack whose aim is to rob and mislead us for the benefit of his friends.

...

and this:

'True, George W. Bush is an ignorant, cruel, closed-minded, avaricious, sneaky, irresponsible, thieving, brain-damaged frat boy with a drinking problem and a taste for bloodshed, whose numerous crimes have been abetted by the moral corruption of his party cohort and whose contempt for American military lives alone warrants his impeachment, but what has it ever won us to say so? How has it profited the people for their writers to argue that a wealthy, comfortable citizen deserves a wealthy, comfortable retirement when we all know full well that he has earned confinement and conviction and perhaps even a request for that barbaric death penalty he so loudly supports? '

...

That I could write like that!

excellent article

writer was afraid he/she would break DU rules if he/she quoted from it. However, I was so intrigued that I popped right out and bought the Harper's. I must say that this magazine needs to be purchased and shared. The editorial is quite amazing! I am spreading my copy around with zest.