What's New
Just to Watch him Die
When I was just a baby, my mama told me, “Son
Always be a good boy, don′t ever play with guns”
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin’, I hang my head and cry (oh yeah!)
– Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues
One of the curious aspects in the videoed Minneapolis murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents is the behavior of the killers after the murders. Following their brief frenzy of violence, they seem nonchalant, they back away, or approach the victim slowly. They offer no assistance. They seem bored by what they’ve done, saying, in effect, “Well, that’s done, Life is cheap; who cares?” Or, is it the slow, lackadaisical strut of “Mission Accomplished?” What we see is calm, unrepentant power snatching away life. They appear to feel nothing—the murders as consequential to them as stomping snow off their boots. Sort of like I imagine some rapists must feel: “It’s over, I feel good, what’s all the fuss?” We’ve witnessed aggressive murder, provoked by the lust to dominate, that is not unlike rape. Literally a gang bang.
I watched those murders—played in a loop on TV news—and that haunting line from Johnny Cash’s song “Folsom Prison Blues” began playing in my mind along with the images: “But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.”
I heard the same song while watching the videos of the small open boats in the Caribbean being blown to bits by missiles from U.S. drones. I sensed Pete Hegseth and Trump leaping from their overstuffed chairs, like a touchdown had been scored, at the instant the boats and the men in them flashed into oblivion, shouting, ”YES!!!” Trump and Hegseth are men whose deepest sensation of life springs from domination and destruction. Both have also been accused of rape. Both want to be admired and feared for their power and their willingness to take life. Both flaunt the freedom and power of their amorality, their immunity, their murderous, white nationalist ideology.
In Cash’s song, we learn that the singer was urged by his mother to be good, to stay away from guns. For reasons we don’t know, the warnings, the morality vaccine, never took. The singer never felt the sanctity of life. His connection to life is his morbid curiosity of how it feels to end it. Like a kid squashing ants.
The government killers made accusations to justify the murders: their victims were guilty of “domestic terrorism;” the killers “acted in self-defense.” Bystander videos disproved their lies. And Trump and Hegseth claimed the men in the boats were narco terrorists at war with the United States. We have no idea if that was true. No facts were presented, no due process performed. And even if they were transporting drugs, that’s not a capital offense. What we do know is that Trump, Hegseth, Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi and everyone connected with this administration lie pathologically. Even when the lies are absurdly transparent, they clutch them as though the lies are life preservers. One of the bizarre characteristics of facism is how stupid it is.
In the song, the prisoner hears a train whistle blowing. He hangs his head and cries. The train’s receding, mournful whistle tells him that life outside prison goes on without him. He squandered his. The remorse he feels is for himself, not his victim. He realizes his actions have consequences beyond the brief, satisfying climax of power. Ultimately, others hold power over him. Even in prison his narcissism is unabated.
The masked thugs and political gangsters who run our government are one and the same. They seem a fundamentally different species of human than the protesters. The protesters are invigorated by love, by courage, by concern for victims being stalked by fascist killers. The protesters are nonviolent, practice free speech, and persist in their solidarity. They are the strongest threads of the community’s fabric. The gangster-thugs are animated by hate—a mutant species relishing their perversity, murderous aliens programmed to shred communal fabric. Allowing them to stay in power is a death wish for us all, an acceptance that violation of our ideals, our laws, and our persons is permissible. An acceptance that we’ve imprisoned ourselves with them.