BY CARL ROSENSTEIN | “Kill the pig! Cut its throat! Bash her in! Drink its blood.” That was the chilling chant in William Golding’s 1954 novel “Lord of the Flies,” a cautionary tale about the dark side of human nature, the barbarity that underlies even the most civilized human beings. A planeload of young English school boys turn savage on a deserted island in the Pacific, indulge in pagan ritual and viciously murder the outsiders in their lot.
This parable came to mind when I viewed the disturbing photo published in The Villager, taken in Tompkins Square Park, of a smiling mother, affirming and assisting her young multiracial child in the mock murder by crucifixion of the effigy of the president of the United States (“Hammer time! Trump ‘Nail-a-thon’ was peaceful and cathartic,” talking point, by Sandra Koponen, May 10). The lurid photo was submitted with pride by the self-proclaimed “artist” Sandra Koponen, who takes responsibility for the Trump crucifixion party that I wrote of recently (“St. Mark’s is truly dead as Trump gets pounded,” talking point, by Carl Rosenstein, April 20).
I am grateful for Ms. K for providing these images because Villager Editor Lincoln Anderson had doubted the veracity of my story because it was so horrid. But who needs fiction in these “Through the Looking-Glass” times? Orwell in “1984” wrote, “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength,” and now add, “Murder is Cathartic.”
Ms. K writes that her street performance was “peaceful and cathartic.” That’s how the “merry” Brownshirts felt after hammering a few thousand Jewish storefronts on Kristallnacht, and how Ku Klux Klansmen feel after they’ve burnt a few crosses — “peaceful and cathartic.”
Hate is hate; there is no masking it with qualifications that K’s collectively infected mock assassination was multiethnic and metrosexual. Imagine if a gang of white guys in Texas did the same with a totem of our last messiah, oops, I mean president. Rachel Maddow would be snorting and turning handstands while Chuck “Wall Street” Schumer would take his hands out of your pockets for five minutes to push up his glasses and hold a press conference.
K suggests I meditate on her message, and though I generally meditate to free my mind of all of this noise, I have come up with an answer to the source of her sexist rage. All true art is born out of the deepest realms of one’s psyche. K’s vile and vicious Nail-a-thon can be attributed to a deep disturbance in hers, as is all violence, real or symbolic. Rather than face our defects revealed by the shadow, we project them onto others — for instance onto our political enemies
Consciously, she might hate the cheating man or her sleazy landlord or maybe it was that college professor who denigrated her year-end art project. We do know for certain she “hates” Donald Trump. But the all-wise Angry Buddhist surmises this wrath is most likely a suppressed subconscious rage against Barack Obama. Obama? Yes Obama.
The venomous anger at Trump by die-hard liberals is an expression of pent-up frustration toward Obama for his massive betrayal of the enthusiastic millions who genuflected before his mellow baritone and swept him into office on a tidal wave of “Hope and Change.” He promised to relieve us of eight years of Bush, war and economic collapse. But instead he and the corrupt swine in the Democratic Party delivered eight more years of crony capitalism, militarism and globalism. The first week in office, he moved into the Right Wing of the White House. Instead of promised single-payer healthcare, we ended up with the archconservative Heritage Foundation Affordable Care Act, with no public option.
“Obomba” and Hillary took two Middle Eastern wars — Iraq and Afghanistan — and turned them into seven by adding Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and Syria. He expanded the military and dedicated a trillion dollars for upgrades to the nuclear arsenal. He and Clinton expanded and exported fracking and did nothing while militarized cops busted the heads of the water protectors out at Standing Rock.
Most ominously, the constitutional lawyer put the surveillance state on steroids, decimating the Fourth Amendment while wielding executive order to eliminate habeas corpus, the bedrock of liberty. He suppressed the First Amendment by prosecuting journalists under the Espionage Act.
Obama bailed out and protected Wall Street while 10 million American families lost their homes. Not one banker was even indicted. He pushed the job-killing and labor-crushing Trans Pacific Partnership until his last breath in office. You cannot serve two masters and Obama chose Wall Street over Main Street. The first thing he did when he came back from kite surfing with billionaire Richard Branson, was take $400,000 for a speech from Cantor Fitzgerald — and that’s just the beginning.
Obama’s liberal base, however, never fell out of his messianic aura and slipped into a deep coma for eight years. Instead of focusing the blame on Obama — the neo-liberal architect of the decline of our standard of living and diminished liberties — they have orally fixated upon Trump, who is merely a symptom of the Democrats’ corruption.
There was a cure to this disease, but Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee stole the primary from Bernie Sanders. That was the only election that was hacked.
I suggest Ms. Koponen create new effigies representing the corporatist sellouts of the Democratic Party, especially those from our New York delegation, Schumer, Gillibrand, Nadler, Maloney and Velazquez. Then in midsummer, as the Druids did with their wicker man, light them afire, not as a symbol of violence, but one of transformation and resurrection with the hope for true justice and peace in a real democracy.
Ommmmmmmm.
