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Thursday, October 02, 2008
Vipers, Pansies, and Fatcats
Fran here. I've said, on a number of occasions, that I write what I write for myself, and that any edification or entertainment these pieces provide to others is a positive secondary consequence, a "spinoff." It's true nearly all the time, but not today. Today, Gentle Readers, I'm writing this for you.
You need to know what sort of creature you are.
Ponder these two incidents, please:
"Crowd cheers suicidal jumper to his deathJEERING onlookers goaded a teenager in Britain to jump to his death, undermining police efforts to talk him down, and then took pictures of the body.
Yesterday as 17-year-old Shaun Dykes prepared to jump from the top of a multi-storey carpark in Derby, northern England, spectators allegedly shouted to him: "How far can you bounce?", the UK's MailOnline reports.
As Dykes hesitated for three hours on the ledge while police unsuccessfully tried to reason him out of taking his life, teenagers who had gathered below shouted "Jump" and "Get on with it", according to police and witnesses.
Then after Dykes lay in a crumpled heap on the pavement the same hecklers rushed out from behind the police cordon to take photos of the body."
This afternoon, at work I was about to leave when the two young guys I work with urged me to stay a moment and listen to a segment on the local radio station, something called "wind up your wife".
So I stayed, and listened for a few minutes. The segment today consisted of one of the announcers ringing up a South African immigrant's wife and pretending to be from the Immigration Dept.
The woman had a very young child and the husband had previously told the two yobs running the segment that their baby's visa had run out due to an oversight.
So the "immigration officer" harassed the woman, telling her that the baby was booked on a deportation flight the next day and when she protested that she was breastfeeding--almost hysterical with rage and worry by now--the scumbag told her "not to worry, we've made arrangements for the baby to be fed on the flight."
The two I work with were grinning and really enjoying this appalling exhibition and they assured me that the segment had been known to have wind-ups "much better than that".
I left, unable to bear to listen to any more of what was no less than torture for entertainment. Sickened and sad and depressed, that this kind of behaviour is now absolutely unremarkable, that two otherwise seemingly decent young people could regard that disgusting display of cruelty and arrogant abuse of trust as entertainment.
And you know what, my friends? I don't believe this is at all unusual. We now have a couple or more generations of young people to whom words such as honour and decency and integrity are no more than an excuse to take the piss, to poke fun at the society that nurtured them and supports them still.
These "people" would destroy -- or allow to be destroyed -- the very structure which provides their way of life, and they're too arrogant, too ignorant, too blinkered and too selfish to know what they do.
God help us.
It isn't often that I lift an entire post from another blog. The above comes from the most excellent Crusader Rabbit, whose proprietor Keith, an Australian currently living in New Zealand, is one of the finest men I've ever encountered in any way. I don't mean "man" in the generic, ungendered sense; Keith is a dedicated defender of Western Civilization, prepared to fight the destroyers and despoilers to the last round. I offer the above cri de coeur as Exhibit One.
The persons of whom Keith wrote aren't men. They're not even human. They're vipers. Threats to life and all that makes it worth living. Feeders on human misery and suffering. Deadly vermin that deserve, nay, need to be crushed out of existence.
Crushed any lately? No? Well, ashamed as I am to say it, neither have I.
Cruelty is becoming a much sought-after spectacle. Consider Simon Cowell of "American Idol." Consider Anne Robinson of "The Weakest Link." Consider the many game shows and "reality shows" in which the point of the thing is to see the participants suffer, or be frightened, degraded, or betrayed. Consider the proliferation of incidents in which some persons deliberately seek to give offense to persons of other convictions, specifically to get featured on a radio or television show. Consider the "Ultimate Fighting Championships." Consider all of that, and tell me if you can disagree.
It's not everyone. Not nearly. But it's a significant fraction of our young people, and it appears to be growing both in numbers and in confidence.
It's not without precedent. For example, in Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, her exemplary history of fourteenth century Europe, she wrote of an entertainment that was apparently quite popular among the peasants of France: a contest in which men tried to batter a cat to death with their heads. (The cat, of course, was bound to a pole and unable to escape.) But that was a time when life itself was held cheap, being short, poverty-stricken, ravaged by diseases for which the only cure was death, and hemmed in from all directions by forces too great to oppose. Its parallels with today are very few.
Like most perversions, a taste for cruelty grows beyond all limits. The moral horror of the thing is precisely what excites its holder. He needs to go ever further, to trespass over ever more outrageous boundaries, to slake his need for the dirty thrill that comes from seeing decency cast down, humanity laid waste, and innocence defiled. He only becomes jaded when there are no greater outrages to titillate him...but there always are.
In other words, we cannot expect the new cruelism to burn itself out. It's more likely to burn us out. At the stake, while vipers in lawn chairs roast hotdogs and marshmallows as they critique the sincerity and intensity of our screams.
Unless, that is, we rise up on our hind legs and put a stop to it.
My two stepdaughters are good people. They're self-supporting, they meet their own obligations, their moral standards are good ones, and they greatly dislike to see anyone hurt. I'd bet heavily that the overwhelming majority of Eternity Road readers could make similar claims for their own children, sincerely and accurately.
But we're not the only parents on the block. Quite a number of our contemporaries have bred vipers. Never intentionally, but all the same.
The viper population is irregularly distributed. Like most predators, vipers prefer cities, where the prey are thickest on the ground. The Western world's major cities are becoming bifurcated entities, partitioned between civilized and uncivilized zones, with little intercourse between them. (No, it's not all because of Islam.) But there are at least a few just about everywhere there are human beings.
Partition -- garrisoning the civilized regions against the uncivilized ones -- is one of the responses civilized men, who prize decency and public order, can make to a viper infestation. But it's far from the best one. Vipers left to their own devices breed more vipers. At some point, driven by a desperate need for more and fatter prey, they'll come swarming over the walls, no matter how high we build them. Besides, partition does nothing for the influences that create vipers in our midst.
Once cruelism gains a foothold, due to a prevailing ethic of moral relativism, its influence seeps into the undefended areas of society, commerce, and culture. Some areas, such as the "arts," are undefended by design; they very nearly open their arms to their corruptors. Others, such as commerce, can be compelled to open their gates by political interventions, such as laws and regulations that forbid "discrimination." These things are happening as we speak.
When vipers appear in our midst, there's no remedy but to crush them. But fewer and fewer people have the courage even to say so, much less to do so.
Over the last few decades, Western Civilization has become steadily more pansified. Far too many of us no longer feel that it's our duty as citizens to defend that which we claim to love.
It's worse in some places than others, to be sure. The Old World and its luxuriant welfare states are places of almost complete inanition toward the destroyers among them. Even their official defenders, the police, quail before the greater resolve and will to violence of the vipers in their midst. Read any batch of stories about the nightly rioting and widespread vandalism that besets Paris, Frankfort, or Malmo, and tell me if you disagree.
Far too many of us would rather retreat, build the walls a little higher, and strain not to think about the future.
The pervasive fear reaches into the remotest and least expected of places, such that even breaches of decorum far below the threshold of threat are allowed to pass unchallenged. A few years ago, when I pulled into a strip mall here in my town of residence, I saw a gaggle of teenagers loitering outside the store I was about to patronize. One of them, a tall, husky young man, looked up, saw me, casually flung a handful of litter onto the sidewalk, and grinned. Being somewhat more prone to vain gestures than most, I swept up his detritus with my hands and deposited it in a trash basket less than six feet away, glaring murderously at him as I did so. Remarkably, the offender was taken aback. He paled and stammered, "I was about to do that." I scowled, strode past him, and entered the store.
That's not the point of the story; this is: The clerk at the counter had watched the affair, and remarked that what I did was "very brave."
WHY? Why did she consider an ordinary gesture in defense of noncontroversial standards of public conduct "very brave?"
Because she, being a young woman, had never seen anything like it, of course. That's a measure of our pansification.
Pansies don't crush vipers. They daren't even speak harshly to litterers. And that's what most of us, who claim still to prize decency and public order, have become.
The very well-heeled and very well-connected among us can summon others to deal with the unpleasantnesses they encounter. It might be private security; it might be the "official" police. In either case, if you're a sufficiently fat cat, you can dispatch someone else to deal with anything you find distasteful.
But that depends on the willingness, or rentability, of those you intend to summon. What guarantee is there that there will always be enough of them, sufficiently ready to hand? In these latter days of the Republic, when an hour of a plumber's time costs $100 or more, should we refuse to consider the possibility that the supply of gendarmes-for-hire might run out?
There's no such thing as a private community, or a rich man's manor, that's well enough fortified and guarded to withstand all imaginable attempts at penetration. Nor is it written in the stars that there will always be "rough men ready to do violence on our behalf," whether out of conviction or for a stiff fee.
To be a fatcat, dependent upon others of less refined sentiments for one's protection, is to be a dependent...a hanger-on...a parasite.. Tautology, you say? Merely a string of pejoratives that over-dramatize an admittedly regrettable interregnum in our march toward the City of God on Earth? Then why do so few people dare to take notice of it?
Do we really think the Deluge will wait until after our lives are over?
I could go on about this for a lot longer, but the subject is too painful. Besides, to belabor it would serve no good purpose. I'll close by asking a brace of questions. Think hard, Gentle Reader, about your answers:
- Are you horrified by the explosion of cruelism and indecency, and the vipers who feed on it?
- Are you persuaded that there's nothing you can do about it, that the best course is to keep silent and pass unremarked?
- Would you say, as long as you can keep the vipers from your gates, that it's not your problem?
- Or are you a loyalist of civilization...a defender of humanity and decency...a man?
Choose wisely.
Comments
Very wonderful presentation.
To answer your questions:
(1) No, I’m no longer horrified since my senses have been numbed to vipers by living in a heroin district for so many years and having watched a child almost become serpentine as the distance between my work and home grew.
(2) I’m working harder to do something about “it” by volunteering in the viper factory at a local middle school. Anything to push the adult to student ratio higher helps.
(3) Hell no. I now live behind gates and I’m hungrier than ever to do more about these problems and without fear having lived in a snake pit.
(4) I can only hope, but I believe I still smell like a pansy.
Posted by kkarns on 10/03/2008 at 02:28 AMWhat a fine commentary on Crusader Rabbit. I find all of the contributors at that excellent blog to be the highest and grandest sort of fellow blogging companions.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/03/2008 at 06:40 AM1. Yes
2. No
3. No
4. Working on it, Boss. I’m never where I want to be, but I work on it.Since you’ve obviously put thought into this, do you have any suggestions for the best ways to crush vipers that don’t result in jail time? It seems to me that staying at liberty might free one to continue the fight.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/03/2008 at 12:59 PMSame answers as Weetabix.
I recently visited someone with my laptop. We were finding stuff on Youtube on our respective computers. He referred me to a video of a plane crash. I refused to watch it, and he asked why. I hate to sound like I’m setting myself as a model of human perfection, but this is what happened. I said “Because it’s using human suffering as entertainment.” He said, “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
I don’t know if he has changed his viewing habits, but I’m sure the answer to #2 is No.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/03/2008 at 02:08 PMYour trash story reminds me of an incident.
I was in the drive-thru of a fast food restaurant at the pay window. The driver in front of me threw trash out against the wall of the restaurant as he waited in line to get to the window to get his food. I got out, picked it up, handed it to him, and said, “Here. You dropped this.”
He expressed anger at MY rudeness. I think he only demonstrated loutishness at that point. He could have been a viper, but I didn’t have any direct evidence.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/03/2008 at 03:39 PMFrancis, I can’t thank you enough for posting this and for your kind words. (and thank you too, Beach Girl for yours about our fine commenters.).
Posted by KG on 10/03/2008 at 10:56 PMJust came over here from Dr. Helen’s site. You make many good points, but I have to correct one misconception (that perhaps you have already abandoned in the time since this post). There is no cruelty whatsoever involved in mixed martial arts competition, and the small minority of fans who seem to “get off” on the idea of brutality are generally despised by the remainder of fans.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/06/2010 at 12:27 PM
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