The James Gang

We all know James; we may have a James in our family.

James' opinions are hermetically sealed in a crushing keepsake of intolerance, at once massive and flippant, characterized by a deep set of distrustful, squinting slits that once were an eager boy's eyes. Or maybe James looks at you wide-eyed, totally unapologetic, challenging you to disagree. He's regularly hateful, because hate flows much more easily than any of the other emotions which his mind may only occasionally produce. His global belief system is a steady flood into the knee-jerk fanaticism of "with us or against us" geo-politics.

Fuck th' bastards. Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. That kind of thing.

It's not too difficult to understand and even empathize with James, though I passionately prefer that I could make him understand me instead. I'm not going to call him stupid, as he may sneeringly predict; indeed, James is often a well-educated individual, practicing various forms of sophisticated aptitude. No – my wish is only that he would be willing to see a wider point of view and form opinions different than those who peddle his favorite brand of propaganda on the airwaves. Unfortunately, the tool capable of prying that locker open doesn't appear to be available today; I keep hoping for a contraption capable of watering unquenchable, misguided vengeance, wistfully eager that God will soon see fit to produce a muse, inspiring one of us to invent such an instrument.

I wonder if James existed before 9/11. But that's too easy, of course. He's always been there. But on that warm September day some four and a half years ago, when 220 stories of glass and metal collapsed onto southern Manhattan soil, James and his unrepentant ire were now licensed to be traded publicly. Suddenly it was acceptable, if not fashionable, to be an assiduous xenophobe.

It was as if a long semi-dormant volcano, once occasionally releasing steam and providing tremors, suddenly erupted in a Vesuvius of public rebellion. No longer could the supposed PC police stop open racism, now being masked as nationalism. In fact, the pendulum swung so far and so quickly that many people, open-minded and slow to judge in the Christian tradition, found themselves looked upon as borderline insane and probably guilty of treason.

You mean you would let one of those towel-heads into your home? You don't support the wholesale slaughter of those terrorist desert dwellers? What the hell is wrong with you? Goddamn un-American socialist, I tell you what. Freedom isn't free, you know. Why don't you support our troops? Go live in France if you dare dissent.

Amazing; here we are, the most advanced, educated, democratic nation in recorded history, and we're in serious danger of being condemned to repeat well documented mistakes. We're Germany, circa 1933, after the Reichstag Fire – not quite on that scale, of course, because people have their limits – but America today is a country seemingly willing to make incredibly bad decisions in the name of revenge and preemptive protection.

Question is; does public opinion really matter anymore? Well it sure helps keep the heat off.

But of course, the media is almost completely liberal, right? Yet, polls have shown that the more network news you watch, the more likely you are to be entirely wrong about many current events, specifically about the war in Iraq. In October 2003, 48 percent of the American population – essentially half the country – believed that there were pre-war links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. Half the fucking country believed a total falsehood because they watched the news! And I'm not taking about just FOX here – this takes into account all major networks, although the numbers predictably go even higher for those who view the world through the FOX filter. A mind boggling 78 percent of Bush supporters who watch Fox News said they believed there was evidence of a direct link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

I have news for these folks. Saddam found out about 9/11 on 9/11 the same way the rest of us did: he watched it on TV. I imagine his reaction was something like, "Holy shit, look at that." Or actually he said "المقدس بذاءة, بحث إلى أن." This explains why none of the 9/11 terrorists were from Iraq, despite Dick "Annie Oakley" Cheney's vigorous attempts to suggest that it is within the realm of possibility one of them might, at one time, have entered Iraq and stayed there for at least a few minutes.

And that's not all. Almost one quarter of all Americans believed that the troops found some weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Here we have the President of the United States making a parody film about how no WMDs were found, and yet, about 70 million people believe that we did.

Mention this to James and the veins in his head will explode with shock and awe, after he accuses you of being Bin Laden's lovechild.

So the question is, is James stupid? Or has he been brainwashed?

Ah yes ... typical liberal elitist insult. Another by-product of the James revolution – if you know stuff, you are a tree hugging, dirt-worshiping communist who thinks you know what's best. It makes so much more sense to listen to the ranting of a raving, raging jingoist than to a well-informed, flexible opinion from a calm and collected individual. Getting an education is clearly a bad thing.

But really, you have to wonder. Personally, I don't think it's as simple as brainwashing or stupidity or a lack of education, although all three undoubtedly conspire to render a person more susceptible to propaganda. But it's more of a mentality in which one allows oneself to adopt, even if it might go against what they would normally believe, and then that leads to the power of suggestion becoming quite powerful indeed.

It's the same mentality that causes 80-year-old women to sit at night on the US – Mexican border with telescopes, looking for illegal Mexicans who are trying to get to places they don't belong, like Sierra Del Portillo, New Mexico. How dare they!

It's the same mentality that makes a man vote against a candidate, rather than for him, based solely on the issue of homosexual rights, even though he doesn't know any gay people. God forbid, if a candidate that is "soft on gays" gets elected, James imagines that he will wake up one morning to get the paper and the Village People will be pulling a train on his front lawn.

And it's the same mentality that causes people to believe that Jesus made the Tsunami happen because he wants to kill Muslims. Yes, there are people out there who believe that. Spend some time reading blogs and message boards, and you will see James and his ilk shouting hooray at the Tsunami, joking (I hope) that we can now make soap and lampshades out of all the dead Indonesians. I have seen that exact entry, and it's all pretty scary stuff.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this is all going to change anytime soon. Hate, fear and intolerance have taken deep root in this country, and that means that about 48 percent of US citizens would support a war on Norway if someone in the White House could come up with some good bullshit to justify it. Those Norwegians have planet busting super-slingshots armed with giant snowballs and they're aiming them right at us, I just know it. They are part of the Nordic Axis of Evil (NAXE) – Norway, Sweden and Finland. Watch out, Luxembourg – you're next.

Don't laugh. With all the James Gangs running around, it could happen. It's up to you to talk some sense into James. The sanity and prosperity our country – founded by open-minded dissenters - could well depend on it.

Evan Redmon is a freelance writer and editor. He has lived in Washington, DC for most of his life, with seven years of college down the drain in Madison, WI and four and a half years of doing nothing in particular in Boulder, CO. He has visited 39 of the 50 states in the Union (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) and can be reached at evanredmon@yahoo.com.