Rooting for the Bad Guy

Sometimes, people know they are right at the same time they know they cannot win. Some of those people get disgusted, fed up, tired and angry enough to start hoping that things will finally go wrong enough that the Bad Guy will get what he or she deserves.


Here are a couple of examples:


In Omaha, Nebraska, the state legislature has passed a law, supported by Nebraska’s only African-Amercian lawmaker , that effectively re-segregates Omaha’s school system.

In Washington, power brokers who have no need of the opinions of the people who will actually die in the conflict, march toward World War III as if they were going to a Sunday School picnic.

In both cases, thinking people have confronted the movers and shakers with their folly. And in both cases, and thousands of others less public, their answer has been, “Thanks very much; we will now do as we damn well please.”

The present political climate is such that people are not free to disagree, nor to call attention to flaws in the plans of the mighty without being labeled unpatriotic. Such a climate makes the dissident population unwilling silent observers in a farce that is almost certainly headed for disaster.

In such a climate, it is natural for people to become disaffected to the point that, like the parents of a teen-ager, they begin to hope that the power brokers get what they are asking for, and in the process, bring the walls down around their heads.

In Omaha, the results of a newly segregated school system could be a generation of students who have no idea how to interact with people who come from cultural backgrounds different from their own. Segregation will limit contact with people from other cultures. Taken to its logical conclusion, Omaha could be setting itself up to be the site of the next round of race riots.

In the Middle East, the United States works without ceasing to create ill will for Americans that may well last for generations to come. At the same time, the administration will not rest until there are deployments of regular military to the region, and a boom in the casket-making industry, because it has determined that the U.S. is too populous, and the time to act is now.

The strongest supporters of this war are the class that has the least to lose. Their children are either the captains of industry or upper-echelon military, who will never see combat. No one in their families ever joined the army reserve to pay for college.

Then there is the class of neo-con that is more appropriately called the wannabes. They want to be part of the upper class. They want to be independently wealthy, and the upper class uses them for lackeys, to convince the rest of the country that the situation is under control. They will defend to the death the right of the rich class to exploit the rest of the world. These people are happy to deceive themselves that their children have died in Iraq or Afghanistan defending “Freedom”. They will attack anyone who suggests otherwise, because they have been so wholly hoodwinked that seeing their folly is beyond their ability to bear emotionally.

This wannabe class, like the proverbial sleeping tiger, will wake from its slumber and tear the power structure limb from limb when the cup of loss overflows and the deceit of patriotism wears thin. It is, at least, something to hope for.
© 2006