PAGE 10
ON SIMPLE HUMAN DECENCY
BY BEN METCALF
Before I attempt to fill these pages with my disgust,
which the odd reader who knows me will surely expect, I am
obliged to address a preliminary concern, which that same
odd reader may safely ignore. 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 decency lie. This would
bother me 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 deten
tion 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 HZ. Bush, the President o f the United States and kill him
with my bare hands?
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.
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 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
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 execution
ers. 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 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 convey
ance in the m ail.. any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or
document containing any threat to take the life, to kidnap, or to
FOOTNOTES
1 Especially the angry seaman, who reportedly produced this
further ejaculation against Clinton: “I'm going to shove a gun up
his ass, and I'm going to blow his fucking brains out." Where is
that spirit today?
2 Reader, is this honestly you?
storia Real Estate
REX BABIN
inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States., .or
knowingly and willfully otherwise makes such a threat ...
Consider for a moment the simple brilliance of the
language here. It presupposes, not always wrongly, that the
stupidity of the American character will demand an announce
ment of any grand and deadly intention beforehand, and it
IMPEACHMENT?
NO. IMPALEMENT!
BY WILL DURST
I don't know about you guys, but I am so sick and tired
of these lying, thieving, holier-than-thou, rightwing, cruel, crude,
rude, gauche, coarse, crass, cocky, corrupt, dishonest, debauch
ed, degenerate, dissolute, swaggering, lawyer shooting, bullhorn,
shouting, infrastructure destroying, buck passing, hysterical, ♦
criminal, history defying, finger pointing, puppy stomping, room
mate appointing, pretzel choking, collateral damaging, aspersion
casting, wedding party bombing, ciearcutting, torturing, jobs
outsourcing, torture outsourcing, election fixing, women’s rights
eradicating, Medicare cutting, un couth, spiteful, boorish, venge
ful, jingoistic, homophobic, xenophobic, xylophobic, racist, sexist,
ageist, fascist, cashist, audaciously stupid, brazenly selfish,
lethally ignorant, journalist purchasing, genocide ignoring, corpo
ration kissing, poverty inducing, crooked, coercive, autocratic,
primitive, uppity, high-handed, domineering, arrogant, inhuman,
inhumane, inbred, inept, insipid, incapable, incompetent, ineffect
ual, insolent, insincere, know-it-all, snotty, pompous, contempt
uous, supercilious, gutless, spineless, shameless, avaricious,
noxious, poisonous, imperious, merciless, graceless, tactless,
brutish, brutal, Karl Roving, backward thinking, persistent vegi-
tative state grandstanding, nuclear option threatening, evolution
denying, irony deprived, consciously depraved, conceited,
perverted, preemptory invading, thirty-five day vacation taking,
bribe soliciting, hellish, smarty pants, loudmouth, bullying, swell
headed, ethics eluding, domestic spying, medical marijuana
busting, Halliburtoning, narcissistic, undiplomatic, blustering,
malevolent, demonizing, Duke Cunninghamming, hectoring,
dry drunk, Muslim baiting, hurricane disregarding, oil company
hugging, judge packing, science disputing, faith based advocate-
ing, armament selling, nonsense spewing, education ravaging,
whiny, insane, unscrupulous, lily livered, greedy (exponential
factor fifteen), fraudulent, delusional, CIA outing, redistricting,
anybody who disagrees with them slandering, fact twisting, ally
alienating, betraying, chickenhawk, sell out, quisling, god & flag
waving, scare mongering, Cindy Sheehan libeling, smirking,
bastardly, voting machine tampering, sociopathic, cowardly,
treasonous, Constitution shredding, oppressive, antagonistic,
vulgar, trust funding, nontipping, tyrannizing, peace hating,
water and air and ground and media polluting (which is pretty
much all the polluting you can get), deadly, traitorous, con man,
swindling, pernicious, lethal, illegal, haughty, venomous, virulent,
mephitic, egotistic, bloodthirsty,yellowbelly, hypocritical,Oepidal,
did I say evil, I’m not sure if I said evil, because I want to make
sure I say evil...EVIL, cretinous, slime buckets in the Bush
administration that I could just spit. Impeachment? Hell no.
Impalement. Upon the sharp and righteous sword of the
people's justice. Make it a curtain rod. Because it would hurt
more.
ORGANIC PIANO SERVICE
***«s»oriares(eJt
B U C K ’S
BOOK BARN
ate.nef
503-325-3304
The non-postal aspect of this edict (“or knowingly and
willfully otherwise makes any such threat”) has proved handy
many times over in the persecution of those unlucky or unwise
enough to swear a physical oath against the President within
earshot of a fink, such as when a prospective Vietnam draftee
(Watts v. United States) was overheard to say, “If they ever
make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is
LBJ"; or when the Black Panther David Hilliard was said to have
said, “We will kill Nixon" (and went somehow unkilled himself);
or when an obviously disturbed man (United States v. Fredrick
son) was quoted as saying he would “have to kill” Jimmy Carter;
or when an already confined mental patient (United States v.
Howell) calmly explained to a Regan-era FBI agent that “If
released, I would make my way to Washington and kill him —
I will kill the President”; or when a brig-bound and pissed-off
sailor (United States v. Ogren) was heard by his guard to say
of Bill Clinton, “Hell, fuck the President... If I could get out of
here right now, I would get a gun and kill the bastard."
Yet as much as I admire these flouters of a law that
serves not public need but rather the greed of a conceited
oligarchy,1 I suspect that they are but secondary targets in this
on going raid, and I doubt their separation from the American
flock has improved Presidential safety so much as it has less
ened the willingness of marginally more literate lambs, the ones
who publish, to test their shepherds with anything sharper than
the conventionally approved tropes of the day.
Here are those tropes: the President is ignorant; the
President is cruel; the President is a zealot; the President is
a tool of the corporations; the President hides his agenda from
the people; the President’s agenda endangers the people; the
President is a thief; the President is a madman; the President is
a drunkard; the President is a criminal; the President is protected
by his cronies; the President is a smug prevaricator; the Presi
dent should be removed from office.
True, George W. Bush is an ignorant, cruel, avaricious,
close-minded, 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 comfort
able retirement when we all know full well that he has earned
confinement and perhaps even a request for the barbaric death
penalty he so loudly supports? What goal, besides an impover
ished guarantee of my own personal “freedom,” is served by a
refusal to acknowledge that I might easily, and enjoyably, rid us
of this man forever with my hands?
Political comic writer, actor, radio talkshow host Will
Durst wrote this for The Progressive.
Thinking of moving to the coast?
Come In and check out the local market!
âÇS»
manages also, via that lovely invocation of the mail, to implicate
as a possible assassin (and certainly an “inciter to violence")
anyone who does not adequately curb his anger in a publication
All publications were then, and most still are, conveyed through
the mail. Touché.
Peter and Janet Weidman
2935 Marine Drive, Suite C
Astoria, OR 97103
★ USED BOOKS & RECOHDS ★ 738-4246
1023 BROADWAY • SEASIDE
!
THE TUNER ALONE PRESERVES THE TONE'
TUNING ^REGULATION ^REPAIR
RECONDITIONING
177 NW ADAMS AVE., HILLSBORO, OREGON
(503) 846-1467
KIRTLEY W. BURGGRAF. PIANO TUNER/TECHNICIAN