How America Was Murdered
A little bit at a time, and then all at once. And all of us cheering (for different reasons) while it happened. So, ah...now what?
“Get the fuck OUT!”
I stood on the bottom portion of a stairwell that led to an upstairs of a house where, as luck would have it, a house party was ensuing.
“You’re being ridiculous Roy,” I looked up at a teammate of mine. I was a high school swimmer, not very good for speed, but on account of various acts of will? Not half bad for the long distance swims.
“I mean it,” Roy said, pulling out a gun and holding it to my forehead. You see, we had been having a dispute over the music. I was a disco dance instructor, so kept suggesting, at first, that the party music be switched to something you could dance to. He kept switching it back to rock, which I liked as well, but disco he disliked, mostly and largely on account of him not being able to dance.
“Suggesting” at first. Then finally just switching it over. Much to the delight of the women there who preferred dancing to listening to Roy and a few other non-dancing jocks talk about sports. Or whatever the hell they were doing with high school classmates who were not at all interested in sports. I mean who goes to a party to talk tennis? Or hockey?
“If you don’t get out I swear to G-d I’m going to shoot you.”
“You’re going to shoot me for music?”
“I’m going to shoot you for not leaving.”
I had come to the conclusion that our death obsession here had taken a full and solid hold over both the hearts and minds of millions of Americans…
“You’re going to shoot me because you can’t dance,” I said, putting my hand over the top of what I could now see was a BB gun, lowering it while I spoke. “I’ll leave the music alone, but I’m not leaving. So shoot if you have to.”
He didn’t, as I guess he didn’t have to. And I discovered that you can dance to AC/DC just as easily as you could to Chic, and his eyes burned while I danced with a girl whose name I’ve long forgotten while still, curiously enough, remembering Roy’s.
I, of course, did leave eventually, but not before getting phone numbers and “ruining” the party for everyone who had had designs on the number givers. I knew I’d never be invited back (and I wasn’t) and I didn’t care or even think of the moment until this week. You had a gun held to your head you’d think that you might remember it but I didn’t. Totally forgot to put it in my memoir.
It’s not that I’ve had so many guns pointed at me — this was the first of only two, not a bad lifetime record — but more that it feels to me like everyone’s always wanted to kill me for…well, just about forever.
In fact I did a series for the benighted OZY Media in their True Stories section, and it was called “The First Time They Tried to Kill Me”. By the time I had gotten to “The Fifth Time They Tried to Kill Me” in that eternal query regarding whether it’s me or them, I had come to a steadfast conclusion: oh, it’s them, alright.
The rejoinder here from my MAGA friends though is usually straight out of the great Catch-22 and it sounded something like… “well, they’re trying to kill EVERYONE.” Which, a la Yossarian, from Catch-22, doesn’t lessen my personal concern for me. In fact if that’s the case, to paraphrase Yossarian, I’d be a damned fool to feel otherwise.
And while watching Republican senator after Republican senator in the “United” “States” of “America” fold under the witheringly harmful Big Beautiful Bill that President Trump has been pimping as the solution to all of our problems, I had come to the conclusion that our death obsession here had taken a full and solid hold over both the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. Because, in fact, they are trying to kill everyone.
Sadly, it must be said now that despite all of the obvious signs, I just didn’t see it coming. What I did see was this: if the Republican Party is the party of small government what better way to get it than breaking up the existing government into teeny tiny nearly not-functioning pieces.
America is addicted to death. Before World War 2 was even over there were movies being made extolling the greatness of World War 2.
That is what I saw. What I missed? All the rest of it. The Christian nationalists looking for a quicker trip to Jesus. The incels figuring/thinking that they’d rather fight than switch. The ethno-nationalists whose struggle is an existential one born of having to hear people speak Spanish at the supermarket. The liars who say that their only concern and reason for backing the Trump train is the economy and finally the superset of folks who just want to watch the world burn.
Because?
Because why the fuck not?
America is addicted to death. Before World War 2 was even over there were movies being made extolling the greatness of World War 2. Movies about the Civil War, and the gallantry and sorrow of the South. Movies, those weird palimpsests of the American psyche, covered each and every aspect of our love affair with death.
Later comedies even (Hogan’s Heroes was set in a concentration, er, prisoner of war camp). Sad Sack, Beetle Bailey, comic book staples. Toys by way of GI Joe. With or without the kung fu grip. So noticeable by the late ‘70s that it wasn’t long before a defense attorney for a Ronny Zamora tried to use them to explain how it was that his client murdered an elderly neighbor: TV was to blame.
But it wasn’t TV that needed to be blamed. Or movies or video games. Or even guns. It was us. Always us. Us who were tailor-made for a guy both a product and a byproduct of our lesser angels. Here, specifically, none other than Donald Trump. The seasoned huckster and walking iD Trump, despite his failure to really embrace what it means to actually be Trump, is loved by all. Really and truly.
[T]he thing that shocked them [Nazis] the most about the people that they were killing, as they were killing them, is that went to their deaths so “easily”. Is that a shock in the summer of 2025? I’m thinking it absolutely shouldn’t be.
Enemies who hate him fail to realize that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. And allies that love him fail to realize that this love will never be reciprocated because Trump, like Mao and all of the other great harmers of humans, doesn’t really believe that other people exist. Outside of their usefulness in populating a self-directed fantasy of his own greatness.
So we give him that and in return he gives us…entertainment. The kind of entertainment that has us rushing to our seats like our hair was on fire while our hair is actually, based on the numbers of the already dead, on fire. The teenagers that Americans are hate the idea of leaving the party before the party is over and so, ending parties has always had some appeal.
And now, in the perfect mating of rhyme and reason, after the signing of his Big Beautiful Bill that will fuck and fuck over the indigent as well as the American middle class, in the name of letting the billionaire class fuck whoever they want, Trump is throwing us, not bread, but circuses.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) full of fight fans and fighters who best represent the lusty attraction to a man who seems to best embody the BRUTAL that undergirds our understanding of reality, will be having some event on the White House grounds next year.
With no one holding a gun on us, this is how it will play out.
Nazis had reported, in several eyewitness accounts of the perpetrators, that the thing that shocked them the most about the people that they were killing, as they were killing them, is that went to their deaths so “easily”.
Is that a shock in the summer of 2025? I’m thinking it absolutely shouldn’t be.
So I’ll say this to you, by way of an exit line: saves yourselves, get out while you can, because we can all be sorry later when the rubble and the smoke clears (and we will be because it will clear). And then…when everyone is relaxed we can, as quietly as conversation will allow, say whatever version of this suits us: “we told you so.”
TICKETS?!?!? GET YOUR TICKETS HEEEEERRRRREEEE…..
And if books are still your thing and you still do books, please do this one…the memoir A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer's Row, from Amazon…Or the Bookshop.Org dealie: Here?
And if you’d like to book a book show? Like THIS one…Please DM.
I got a good spot to see all the shit go down in Chi-town between the blackberry bushes.
Saw the show in Ottawa last night, thanks for coming, it was a great show.