We are governed by serial killers
On the occasion of the passing of my esteemed colleague from across the aisle
Hello. All of my books and all of the OR Books titles are available for 30% off throughout the rest of the day with the coupon code makeusrich at check out. Pretty good deal buddy!
A good and timely thread in my opinion.
In other news I went on the No Homework pod last week and had a bunch of laughs with the fellas.
On the occasion of the passing of my esteemed colleague from across the aisle
Sure we didn’t always see eye to eye. He wanted to kill ‘em all for example. Mr. Missile they called him. Da Life Shortener. While I on the other hand simply wanted to let the market determine who lives or dies. Anything besides that was beyond my purview. But we did nevertheless both agree a certain number of people needed killing. He also loved the St. Louis Cardinals.
Look I don't want to share this one from a couple years ago yet again but it's unfortunately always appropriate. Substitute in whatever names you would like.
I’ve been thinking a lot about killing people lately. No, not like that, relax.
What I mean is all the manifold ways people in this country with power of any kind use it to kill. Not directly mind you. Not with a knife or a gun. Instead I’m concerned with the much more mundane and pedestrian acts of violence that our legislators and other bureaucrats dispense perfunctorily under the cover of How Things Are Done. Most notable recently in this long and noble American tradition was the Senate vote on including a minimum wage raise in the Covid relief package over the weekend. All Republicans and eight Democrats including Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Jon Tester of Montana, Tom Carper and Chris Coons of Delaware, Angus King of Maine, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and, rather infamously by now, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, mustered their considerable powers, considered the plight of Americans currently working at the minimum wage, looked them in the eye and said:
No. Fuck you.
Or rather they didn’t look them in the eye and that’s sort of the problem. They made the lives of people struggling at poverty wages worse from the remove of and with the protective bracketing procedural politeness of the Senate. This, much like our legislators’ continued refusal to enact Medicare for All is an act of violence by another name. It is sending people to suffer and to starve and to scrape by and to slowly but surely die. It might take a bit longer than other more reliable forms of killing but it is killing all the same.
...
No matter what you say about a senator, no matter how rude it is, it will never match the violence they very calmly and cordially enact on millions of people as a matter of course. Sinema’s goofy thumbs down was a distraction, but it’s not really the salient issue here. It’s her and her colleagues' indifference to so many of our lives.
Every single senator has killed more people than any random guy from your city doing 25 to life, they just get to do it in a way we have all agreed makes it not real for some reason. We're governed by serial killers!!
Here’s an honest question: Who do you think has been the cause of more deaths, Joe Manchin, or Ted Bundy?
...
Whenever a regular guy kills one single person you can say all manner of fucked up shit about him. I hope he rots in prison I hope he gets what’s coming to him I hope he burns in hell etcetera. People love to say that sort of thing about a guy who merely destroys one life. But when it’s tens of thousands or millions harmed we can’t even verbalize what we wish would happen to them without getting in trouble.
This is all so fucking trite I know I’m sorry but it’s the Omar briefcase versus shotgun speech.
These people can give the disinterested emperor thumbs down for our collective well being and our recourse is what? Marching in the streets? No do not do that. Yelling at them in public? Can’t do that either. Hm. Protesting where they live?
Also no!
In any case:
"The perfect coda to this poem," as our man Chris Scott noted, "is that on January 6th Lindsey Graham publicly and emphatically broke with Trump and said his allegiance was over only to change his mind right back like 48 hours later. A true fraud and coward through and through. RIP."
As for the other motherfucker...
Yeah put me in a button down shirt and my coziest pair of hospital jeans. Prop me up. Have my wife fly in from China for it. Real Channel Zero look on my face. And get the newspaper in the shot too so no one suspects anything weird.
Thanks for being here. Paid subscribers can keep reading for more from me including some poetry and music recommendations and the best sentences and posts and essays I've seen this week and some pictures I took of the world and whatever else I jam in there. Oh and also some more readers writing in about how their memory works like I talked about in this piece.
Luke O’Neil
Read this one by John Oakes if you missed it.
Luke O’Neil
And this one by Dan Ozzi.
Luke O’Neil
Rest in peace to a real one. You'll notice a stark difference in the ways people are remembering Sam Neill and Lindsey Graham today because when you are a good person people don't piss on your grave. A lesson for us all perhaps
