The Year of the Hypnotically Homicidal
You can WILL yourself to do just about anything. And we are.
In head shrink circles they’d call it “operant conditioning”. That is: “Actions that are followed by reinforcement will be strengthened and more likely to occur…” Something I wish I had known when I most needed to know it. But something I clearly didn’t know when, in some sort of OCD bender I played “Concrete Jungle” by The Specials 42 times in a row.
Which sounds like nothing from a “modern” perspective when you can just set your digital player of choice to Eternal Repeat but this was LP time and that means I stood up, walked across the room, picked the needle up and placed it down at track start 42 times.
The occasion? Well if you’ve read A Walk Across Dirty Water & Straight Into Murderer’s Row you know where I’m going with this: it was a midnight showing of The Clash’s Rude Boy. And so it seemed an appropriate soundtrack for the evening I was expecting to have. My date, a pretty straight woman I had met at work, was getting squirrelly and was leaning toward bailing. Something I was more than OK with.
But unlike the line in the song — “I’m glad I got my mates with me” — I had no mates with me. The numbers of people who I knew in 1980 who’d have been interested in going was woefully low. Throw in the midnight portion? Even lower. And add in that the movie was showing out in Bay Ridge, a neighborhood thick with cugines, of the Goodfella variety, and yeah: no.
America being on the verge of Civil War…There’s not a single publication that I’ve seen that hasn’t pimped some version of this possibility. So many, and so often at this point, that it is tempting to think that this is not so much a warning as it is an invocation.
I was going to go no matter what and so weapon’d up I headed out.
I’m not going to cheat the experience if you have NOT read the memoir. And I’m not going to bore you if you have. But hot take: broken bottles, blood, fist fights, foot chases in the movie theater, shotguns and an unplanned trip to the emergency room. After the movie, of course.
My left ear which had been cored out with a broken bottle has never really been the same. Which is why I started duct taping my ear plugs in when we play. So, I’ve had many opportunities to think about that night. Forty-two, at the very least. And I’ve often wondered if I had willed that night into existence.
Enter operant conditioning. Oh, and the drumbeat proclaiming America being on the verge of Civil War as well.
There’s not a single publication that I’ve seen that hasn’t pimped some version of this possibility. So many, and so often at this point, that it is tempting to think that this is not so much a warning as it is an invocation.
Precursors abound, and that is not even mentioning the actual war between the states. For those unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality, the prevailing reality had been spelled out in the classic film Red Dawn, where a plucky band of Americans defended America from a communist invasion.
This enduring fiction that through bearing arms “we” can stand up to tyranny. Kind of like “we” did in 1776.
That story line has gotten great bounce. Just as long as you don’t look too hard or too long. Because, historically speaking, Poland had lots of arms to bear on September 1, 1939. An entire army of arms. And yet: Nazis rolled in. With lots more arms. After that? The Soviets, you know, those commies, with even more arms, did the same.
So much for bearing arms.
However, this myth endures and fuels, in all of these instances, this idea that America is so hopelessly divided along some sort of Trumpian fault line, that we will rise up, arms aloft, and start murdering our fellow citizens for ideological reasons. This, combined with the also-invoked death of democracy, will usher in a Fascists States of America (FSA! FSA! FAS!) cue clown music, roll credits.
Like America needs ideological reasons to start murdering each other. A recently published analysis shows that across 32 study cities, homicide rates were 18% higher in 2023 than in 2019. But…and this is where things get curious, that same rate fell by 10% from 2022 to 2023, representing 515 fewer homicides in those cities.
Is the murder rate up (it isn’t)? Is it down (yes it is)? Does it matter when America still beats the band when it comes to murdering other Americans, outpacing the entire rest of the planet in the Murder Olympics?
And more to the point: does murder matter more or less if it is ideologically rooted versus not?
Moreover, if we have this straight, in addition to murdering each other over parking spaces, or texting in movie theaters, or because you don’t like Mondays, we are being willed into believing that we will soon be killing ourselves because you like red baseball caps and others don’t?
Sure, and while this might be instinctual, this drive to self destruct, where America is sui generis is in having the actual means to do so. Guns don’t kill people, we’ve come to understand, people with guns kill people, but this is not about that. This is about whether or not this is something we should be concerned about.
Not being a humanist really, I think the answer is: what?
Being concerned about being murdered makes sense. That is, me being concerned about me being murdered makes sense. To me. Me and my loved ones. For sure, don’t want any of them murdered. But the rest of you/America: do I know you?
Not so much and this is the problem. Our instincts for self-preservation are silo’d on top of a very narrow set of interests. So narrow of a constituency that it can be catered to, manipulated and pimped against our best interests. The world now divides into those who might be able to see/believe that and those that never will.
“It ain’t safe on the streets…the animals are after me” The Specials sang. Animals? We should be so lucky. Nah. We have met the enemy, apologies to Pogo, and they are we. Always have been. Always will be.
OK…So you have ordered the memoir A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer's Row, from Amazon…Or the Bookshop.Org dealie: Here?
Might you consider giving it a review in either of those places?
I’ve been told it matters, somehow. So please: review away! Unless you think it sucks. Then, maybe, just keep that part to yourself. At last count there were 53 reviews…so yeah…GET AT IT!!! Every one helps. Or so they tell me.
This might sound strange, but...I imagined Darth Vader narrating this post...
We DO have a large group of citizens who are clamoring for a bloated, racist, Spray-Tan-Fascist
to not only " take us to the bridge ", but to drop us off, in flames...