Scotty Beam Mich Hoch, Part Deux

Nestor, now sober, crossed under the spotlight and tapped his hands on the podium, trying not to make eye contact with the packed auditorium.

“Dim the lights. Thank you. It’s not that I have an aversion to public speaking, I just feel better if I don’t see all those eyes on me. Now, all you sitting there in the dark. I could rave like always. I could give you all the schtick you expect from me. I could spew platitudes about how our penal system began in Salem, or our policing started the first time a plantation hand chased after a runaway slave, or remind you that we are the only country in the world outside the Third Reich to ever use the gas chamber to execute our citizens. I can give you the indignant screed against your typical corn-fed, beer-guzzling red state mob...

But today, you are the mob I want to speak – maybe not truth to, because fuck knows what that is - but my own fucking peace. Because the mob is power. Because the iconoclast becomes demagogue, and no one ever thinks to nip that bud when there’s a chance.

Recently I gave a speech, or whatever my screechy monologues pass for today, where I brought the shit down on a gaggle of prim, prissy, sheltered suburban honkies who think jumping whenever the pigs tell them to jump makes them better than the dogs who don’t. The sorta holier-than-thou clucking honkies whose sense of superiority comes not from accomplishment, but from shitting on everyone else. Only, after I got off that stage, a thought occurred: all you Berkeley alumni, hopped up on your edibles and thinking you’re changing the world by waving your little picket signs and chanting your slogans like a cult mantra, who think lying on your futon, blaring “Cop Killer” is as effective, if not better than, a whole row of speared pig’s heads hung out to dry, given the Lord of the Flies treatment – At a certain point this should go without saying, and I thought you, you of all fucking people would know better by now after your grandparents tried this same tired love-in bullshit in the ’60’s and it completely fizzled out - blame it on Altamont or Woodstock or Charlie fucking Manson and tell yourselves that this time is different, even though you’re not doing anything they haven’t done. All you goddam hippies poking your heads out fifty years later now the specter of that strange little stringy-haired man - who showed that hippies can be just as deranged and dangerous and cruel and vicious as any pointy-headed hood tightening his rope - is gone. It’s safe now that Helter Skelter has passed without even coming and you snowflakes who feel guilty and hate your own kind stand on your cars bleating into your bullhorns, unaware that agitating all the inbred trailer-park imbeciles is exactly what Charlie was counting on. Not only that, but I will be the first to tell you the earth is completely fucked. We’re scorching no matter how many panels you drill into your roof or bird-slicing turbines you erect, but this A.T.W.A. routine your gluten-allergic kids are oh-so-fucking concerned about was already laid down by that swastika-headed maniac half a century before your balls even dropped.”

Nestor pauses and shakes his head at the thought of plowing through another speaking engagement after this without being at least halfway to shit-faced.

“What else is up my ass, what else...back to what I was saying, if you want to take a shit on a statue of Reagan like any good American with at least half a sense of decency, be my guest - but just because something is Anti-Ronald doesn’t mean it’s worth a shit. If you’re such an evangelical anti-Reaganist that you convince yourself that a grade-school project like ‘They Live’ – a “smart satire” only if you’re eight years old - is good, then the dose of Kool-Aid you’ve been given is no less than the spit-filled punch bowl that pack of Guns-and-God toting inbreeds you look down on has been filling their cup from.”

In the dark of the auditorium, Nestor sees the whites of their eyes reflected in the light off the stage. Unease isn’t the right word, but it’s the first word that comes to mind, and loathing is even closer.

“I shouldn’t have to tell you that there is no such thing as “reform”. I would like to think you, none of you, wouldn’t be here if you believed that there was for one second.

But if you’re not willing to wake up to the smell of scorched flesh in the morning, you’re not ready for change. If you think merely throwing up a power fist or fashioning your wardrobe after early Stokely Carmichael and aggressively reciting “black is the shit” is getting your cause anywhere, you’re exactly the sorta delicate, shivering snowflakes blowing in the wind men like Trotsky and Che would’ve had shot.”

Nestor’s voice faded. He coughed and took a swig from a plastic bottle. Smacked his lips. And resumed:   

“I wonder...before I go, I’ll leave you with this: see, I have this theory: we look at someone like Ted Bundy or Jeff Dahmer and think, why? I know it may sound like I’m going off on a tangent here, but bear with me. My hypothesis is that serial killers are biologically necessary for our race. Every species needs predators. Every species, in order to get anywhere, needs external pressures acting upon the populace. Disease, famine, struggle for resources and of course the primal hunter. If a species like ours gets to the point where it no longer has a natural predator, decadence sets in. So how does nature compensate? If we don’t have an inter-species predator, nature balances that with an intra-species predator. That’s how we’ve gone from Sabertooth to Son of Sam, and we don’t seem to appreciate that. Terror...is necessary. Terror prevents decadence. So light a fire under whitey’s ass while you can.”