American Cogitation

I was opening the antiquated refrigerator for a quart of milk while the proprietor rang up the fat girls.  The big white box had four separate glass-paneled doors and blocky silver handles that looked like they’d come off a ’56 Ford Fairlane.  If I hadn’t seen the milk through the window I wouldn’t have known it was a refrigerator.  The proprietor laughed at something, a big laugh that filled his wood-walled convenience store.  “Well, you ladies have a good night,” he said.  They wished him a goodnight and walked out.

1956 Ford Fairlane.

There were only the sounds of my footsteps on the floors and the anchorman's voice on the TV as I started for the register.  I stopped to check out his ice cream selection, and I wasn’t surprised when he broke the silence.  He muttered something at the TV in a voice that invited comment.  I picked out an ice cream sandwich out of the freezer and walked toward the register.  The proprietor, a gray-haired man with an alert gaze and a crow’s feet around his eyes, looked up.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Fair trial,” he said.  “I said this guy doesn’t deserve a fair trial.”

“Who?”

“The Fort Hood shooter.  You know, the guy that shot and killed thirteen people at Fort Hood.  They caught the guy.”

“Oh, I hadn’t heard,” I said.  “I’m a little behind on the news.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t deserve a fair trail.  They ought to line him up in front of a firing squad, and then give only half the shooters live ammunition.  Let that be his fair chance.”

“Ahuh,” I said.  I looked up at the television.  Fox News.  I put my milk, ice cream and box of macaroni on the counter.

“They ought to have known,” he continued.  “Bells should have gone off when he said that in his . . . his Muslim religion, ‘we value death more than you value life.’  Bells should have gone off then.”

“Oh, man,” I said.  I was still hung up on the guy’s disdain for a fair trial.  How could you possibly oppose a fair trail?  If the guy is guilty, then he would be adjudged guilty and sentenced, likely to death, just as this guy wanted.  And if there was a fair trial and it turned out that the cops had the wrong guy, then every American ought to be glad we went through the formalities of determining guilt or innocence before executing the suspect.  This guy made it sound like a “fair trial” was a privilege that could be withheld when the American public was sufficiently pissed off.  Nuts.

But I couldn’t see any good that would come of arguing with the proprietor, who was probably just trying to make conversation anyway.  So I asked about something I was interested in.  “Why’d he do it?” I asked.

“Terrorist.”

“Just to hurt folks,” I commented.  It can be an ugly world.  Terrorism, I think, is what happens when someone is angry at a particularity and lashes out at a generality.  It’s us-versus-them thinking with a catastrophic failure to distinguish among “them.”  At least, that’s the only reason I can think of for someone deliberately slaughtering the innocent.  “Damn,” I said to the proprietor.

He shook his head as started to ring up the groceries.  “You know, he belonged to the same mosque as two of those 9/11 guys.  You know, the ones that crashed the planes into the Trade Center.”

“No, I hadn’t heard that.”  I paused, wanting to say something we could agree on.  “You know everyone who’s ever set foot in that mosque will be on the FBI’s watch list now,” I said.

“You know what I think the Army ought to do?” he said.  “Drive a bulldozer up to that mosque and just go right through it.  Flatten it.  But no, we can’t do that, because it wouldn’t be politically correct.”

That almost set me off.  Politically correct?  Using the term “Indian” instead of “Native American” is politically incorrect.  Referring to proponents of Second-Amendment rights as people who “cling” to guns is politically incorrect.  But bulldozing a house of worship solely because some former attendees have committed heinous crimes is a long way from “political correctness.”  Bulldozing the mosque would trample the Constitution, the document that every soldier in the Army swears to protect.  It would make a mockery of the freedom and justice for which America purportedly stands.  To say nothing of lashing out at an undifferentiated “them.”

“Alright,” I said, taking my groceries in my arms.  Never wrestle with a pig, they say, because you both get muddy and the pig likes it.  “You have a good night.”  I didn't mean to convey my disagreement but I think it showed.

And that’s your voter, I thought as I walked down the stairs.  A friendly guy who runs his own business – likely a pillar in the local community.  Well-spoken and probably better informed than most.  But he thinks that trials should be withheld and houses of worship bulldozed when a crime is sufficiently heinous.  Rule of law, out.  Rule of lynch mob, in.

I climbed in the camper to load the milk into the refrigerator.    “Democracy,” Churchill once quipped, “is the worst system of governance ever devised by wit of man, except for all the others.”  It was hard to see how democracy could deliver adequate governance when you talked some of the citizens.  There seemed to be no deliberation between stimulus and response.  Only a conditioned reaction.  It was like a word association game: terrorism . . . execute!  mosque . . . bulldoze!  Such were the ruminations of the voting public.  Dismaying.  I could train Duke to vote and accomplish as much.  “Terrorist,” I would say, and Duke would step to the right.  “Change,” I would say, and he’d step left.  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the objective American voter.

I opened the milk jug, took a swallow, then capped it and put it in the refrigerator.  But the pleasant fact was that this nation does not generally execute people without trial or bulldoze houses of worship whose attendees have misbehaved, despite the clamorings of some citizens.  And I don’t mean to isolate the proprietor here – nuttiness is by no means confined to convenience store owners in small California towns.  I’m sure he’s not alone in his opinions as to firing squads and Army bulldozers, and I’m also sure that some other event – say, the opening of a Marine recruiting station in Berkeley – would excite equal nuttiness on the other side of the aisle.

But to a remarkable degree, and with some exceptions, America has done an excellent job of resisting the pull of the lynch mob.  For instance, it never entered my mind that the suspected shooter would not stand trial, or that the mosque he’d attended would be summarily demolished.  And although today’s voters commonly appear unthinking and ill-informed, I doubt that we voters are any worse than the voters of yesteryear.  In fact, if anything, today’s voters are likely better-informed, given the generally increased proliferation and quality of today’s news sources.  (Go read a newspaper from Lincoln’s day – it’ll make even Fox News seem fair and balanced.)  So there’s the consolation: obtuse as today’s voters may be, we’ve always been this obtuse.  And yet our Constitution remains more or less intact.  So in a way, this convenience store owner’s exhortations are a testament to the enduring merits of democratic governance.  Testament to a system that, by listening to all of its citizens, resists the worst tendencies of each.  Testament to a system that proves that the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.  Testament to the merits of collectivism.

As I climbed out of the camper and wiped my milk moustache on my sleeve, the proprietor came down the steps.  He’d seen the “Wall Drug” sticker on the back of my camper and, being from South Dakota, came out to chat about it.  I guess he’d thought we got off on the wrong foot.  He looked at the sticker, and had to see the old Kerry-Edwards sticker directly underneath it.  But he smiled, and we talked amiably about the irresistibility of a well-marketed tourist trap.  America is great.

Store and proprietor.