FOOTBALL UBER ALLES (or, The Greatest Disappearing Act)
by Andrew Williams


Before I get into my main topic, some words of observation--not observance.

We don't need help remembering what happened two years ago yesterday. I
had half-a-dozen friends who were within spitting distance of Ground Zero
in NYC and luckily they're all still here. We need more people like myself
to say that none of what the U.S. government has done since
then--police-state laws and Gestapo tactics at home, a bogus War on Some
Terrorists, and equally bogus wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (how's the
latest opium crop, Donny?)--can be justified by the events that took place
in New York City and Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001. Just the
opposite.

The United States has reacted, typically, like a wounded behemoth,
stamping its feet all over the world, crushing innocent and guilty
indiscriminantly. And now that Goliath has shown himself vulnerable, how
many more would-be Davids can be far behind?

Want to stop terrorism? At least reduce it? Then strike at its real roots:
our government's arrogant imperialism. Williams to Bush: Stop attacking
everybody. Apologize for past mistakes. Come clean with your motives for
your actions. Pipe dreams, perhaps. But it's the only way to stop
terrorism anywhere. (It really should be called counter-terrorism, since
the perceived initiators are perceived as terrorists themselves. But then,
the side with the most weapons and troops usually gets to call the terms.
And yes, Virginia, there are countries in this world that consider us
terrorists. They generally have good reason to, unfortunately. You can
start your research with our government's incursions in Iran, Chile and El
Salvador. Howard Zinn's *A People's History of the United States* is a
good starter for the picture at home.)

Further denials and attacks--diplomatic and military--on so-called
terror-friendly countries will only increase external opposition and make
the military and police states at home stronger. In mathematical terms,
1+1 does not equal 0. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, as I've
said before, will leave the world blind and toothless.

And now, our main feature.

Magic exudes a sensual, seductive mystery that no charlatan, fifth-rate
carny sideshow or mythbuster can dispel from the human psyche. But the
acts of magicians--from small to large, from card tricks to disappearances
and reappearances--are not what interest me. What fascinates me almost to
the point of obsession is the psychological aspect, best expressed as: the
human need to disappear.

The best place to observe such a phenomenon is any large gathering,
especially a state-sponsored one surrounded by legions of balloons,
bunting, bullshit and B.A.R.'s.+ An excellent example of such flash and
filigree is last Thursday's patriotic pep rally, scheduled one week before
the anniversary of 9/11/2001. (How convenient.) Nerds, rebels with or
without cause and misfits of all tempers will remember with bewilderment,
amusement and loathing such events from their high school daze. The
planners in Washington took it to a new level--a quantum leap in
banality--vaingloriously and for the umpteenth time yoking football and
love of country, with sex and pop music thrown in as the usual bread &
circuses to distract from the police state surrounding the event.

The closest thing I've ever seem to such gallimaufry was the half-time
show at the Dallas/Washington Thanksgiving game several years ago. In the
span of ten highly expensive minutes, our senses were inveigled by a
skillful conglomeration of sex, patriotism, football and charity,
represented by the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, several fit young men
apparently from Chippendales, the flag, the Cowboys/Redskins rivalry, and
the Salvation Army. It was seamlessly surreal, a visual cornucopia such as
one that Salvador Dali, Leroy Nieman and Leni Riefenstahl might have
conjured up in a consensual hallucination. A garish but highly attractive
goulash.

Back to the national pep rally.

The easiest way to disappear is to merge with a crowd, to do what it does,
to shout what it shouts. Many of us have blended in with such crowds,
usually for protective coloration: sometimes the motive is subterfuge,
sometimes escape. But what of those who disappear almost without volition,
who salute the flag with tears in eyes and hands on hearts, who cheer the
President and the troops? Can this be considered a disappearance of the
human spirit, a way of shrugging and saying "Here we go, and to what end
we cannot say?" What compels the soi-disant average person to choose such
an empty mask, to shrug off inconsistencies and dissent, to swear
allegiance to thoughts and ideas s/he may not fullyagree with or even
understand?

I've already discussed that subject ad nauseum, and come to several
conclusions. I would like to append here the insightful words of Steve
Earle, remarks he made in an interview with PULSE! magazine prior to the
release of the *Jerusalem* CD and its controversial song "John Walker's
Blues." Earle describes to a nicety what happened to the 1960s generation
of protesters, who sang and fought and smoked and loved against war and
tyranny and racism and oppression: "We wanted to buy stocks and bonds, and
put our kids through college, and become regular people who put their
heads down."

At some level, surface or deep, even the most radical of us naked apes
wants to do that as well. The nerd wants to be cool. The outcast wants to
be accepted. To be outside is painful but potentially liberating. To be
inside is painless and soporific, like Aldous Huxley's *Brave New World*
of soma, feelies, helicopters, pneumatic women and programatically
repeated behavior modification mantras. (We now have a choice of somas in
many delicious flavors: Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac, Luvox, etc. Unlike the drug
in Huxley's novel, however, sometime they make the people who take them go
bang-bang.)

We all disappear at times. Last Thursday, I saw no one, spoke only to one
person on the phone. I needed to be away from life, to focus on what was
troubling and paining my soul. Such retreats are a necessary balm to the
vicissitudes of daily life. But I daresay I could not simply "go along to
get along," support the President and the troops and all the other
prolegomena that go with such conformist devotions. Hate it, like it or
love it, I am on the outside and have been since I was 5. I am looking in,
saying with Irwin Shaw that "this is where I think I am and this is what
the place looks like (to me) today." And I gain in comfort and strength
and love, even as I suffer for that work. This is terribly important:
Suffering is not endless and can be transcended--*especially if the
suffering has purpose.*

I have a dream today: that one day all the flag-wavers, blind patriots and
gold-star mothers will put down their stanchions long enough to listen to
that same song. The melody is not always sweet, but it is always
compelling. And it lingers in the memory cells far longer than any Britney
Spears number.

+-Browning Automatic Rifle
Copyright 2003 by Andrew Williams. Free to forward with attribution.