The Weekly Screed (#562)

Peace of mind — as close as the nearest hammer
by David Benjamin
(Originally published 21 June 1995)

Who ya mad at?

I used to know a kid next-door, Dougie. His parents bickered, his big
brothers abused him. He was short for his age, and skinny, and homely,
and slightly feral. He cussed like a sailor. People shunned him. He
couldn’t control any of these juvenile miseries. But Dougie had a
hammer. He hammered in the morning, he hammered in the evening, out on
the walk in front of his house. Dougie waited for ants to crawl by,
then pulverized them with the hammer. Clonk. That was the sound of
Dougie making peace with the universe — steel on concrete. Clonk.
Another dead ant. Clonk.

Who ya mad at?

Used to be, on “Monday Night Football,” they had Howard Cosell. He was
a Jewish lawyer turned sportscaster. He had a sneery voice, worse than
Phil Silvers. He’d never played a sport in his life, but he made out
like he knew everything. He ridiculed some of America’s most beloved
athletes. He made friends with Cassius Clay, the name-changing,
draft-dodging smartass Black Muslim. Howard Cosell, the most unpopular
popular figure on TV, pissed people off no end. Finally, you could go
into a particular bar on Monday night. They’d have televisions lined
up. You’d pay and they’d give you a brick. You’d wind up and that
heave brick right into Howard’s face — smash that snarky TV Jew to
kingdom come. Clonk.

Who ya mad at?

So, you’re a cheapo Japanese yoga instructor with bad eyes, a rap
sheet and a reputation as a deadbeat. But you find an angle! Blending
together a little chicanery, a little dimestore mysticism, a ton of
chutzpah and a lot of suckers, you invent a whole new religion. You
call it “Aum.” Thousands of eager initiates fork over everything they
aum. You’ve got it made until some parents of your followers, and then
lawyers, and then police start hassling you. You can’t beat them all
off. Your power only extends to the walls of your ashram, and your
health is going sour. So — just to show the cops who they’re screwing
with — you mix up a batch of nerve gas, declare the end of the world
and send your followers to drop canisters on subway cars. Clonk. You
kill a dozen guiltless strangers on their way to work. Clonk.

Who ya mad at?

The rule of thumb, for all forms of ant-hammering: You punish someone
right here in place of someone else who is somewhere else. You torment
someone randomly for the offenses of the absent enemy, although the
actual victim is perfectly innocent. You kill someone small and weak
in place of someone else somewhere else who is huge, or strong, or
innumerable, or all of the above — and therefore impregnable. You
shoot a puppy on Pearl Street to conquer a dragon in China. You don’t
suffer; China doesn’t notice. The puppy is an ant-stain on the
concrete. Clonk.

Who ya mad at?

You’re a loser named Tim. You’re from nowhere. You’re going nowhere,
because they’re stopping you. Who is? They are! They’re methodically
stripping all your defenses, leaving you naked and helpless, so they
can take what you’re entitled to and hand it over to foreigners,
Zionists, welfare cheats, mud people. Before they can stop you, you
load a truck full of death and park it in front of their headquarters.
You drive away fast and hear from a distance as the earth shakes. You
raise a fist at the sound of victory. Clonk. The sound of ants on
concrete, the sound of concrete on babies. Clonk.

Who ya mad at?

You’re the Speaker of the House, but you’re not President. Yet. You
can get there by buying voters, finessing taxes, trimming the deficit.
But you can’t touch the Pentagon, devouring its $600 billion a year.
You can’t touch Medicare or Social Security, because the geezers would
squeal. You can’t hurt subsidized farmers, subsidized corporations,
the timber lobby, the utilities lobbies, the oil lobby, the cheap-loan
fatcat financial industries. You can’t touch any of them, because they
feed your personal kitty. So, you trade school prayer, which is free,
for school lunches, which ain’t. You strip education, kick the props
away from little kids, ostracize the homeless, build prisons for
everyone. You preach Christ and cuddle the Pharisees. You attack the
voteless and the penniless. You bash the blacks. You hammer the white
trash. Clonk. You plant a wingtip on their necks and you smile
triumphantly. Clonk.

Who ya mad at?

You’re black, you’re male, you’re young, you’re in South Central. Your
school is a war zone; you can barely read. Your only culture is a
musical genre that doesn’t contain music and preaches hate. Half your
childhood friends are dead or in jail. You can get high but you can’t
a job. All the stores are owned by immigrants and they all overcharge.
The cops are an occupying army. Suddenly, the fuse runs out. South
Central goes up. You smash, you burn, you grab. You see a white guy in
a truck, a stranger, hardly richer than you — but white. You pull him
out, you beat him senseless, kick his ribs in, drop a cinder block
onto his head. Clonk.

Who ya mad at?

You’re a corporate bigwig, but you can’t stop the Chinese and Koreans
from outproducing and underpricing you. You can’t innovate, you can’t
modernize, you can’t manage your way out of a toilet stall. You can’t
hold off the raiders. You can’t afford to live on less that $4 million
a year, but you can’t make a quarterly profit to save your life. But
you’ve got a hammer. You can downsize. You can sell off divisions,
move production offshore, bribe politicians for tax breaks. You can
fire people; fire thousands — save your Country Club membership and
your summer home. Clonk. You can stand over the carnage, suck in your
gut and call yourself lean. Clonk. And mean.

Who ya mad at?

Who can ya get to?