MOTHERLESS CHILD TAKE UP YOUR GUN
Once, in my late twenties, I had a off and on again job as a hand in a construction crew (back then, I was a general Jack of all Unemployments). So we made this porch in North Austin, and this dock, cause the place was out on a lake. And we talked, hammered, measured, the usual shit. And I, who was taking what I thought was a year off from my graduate program at U.T., talked the usual routine of an Academic Marxist. Quite happily chirping along.
One afternoon, the contractor – a man of all trades, a peppery guy from New Orleans – gave me a ride home. We chirped along, and when he stopped, to let me out of the car, he said: so, don’t you think we should get some guns.
I said, whaaaat?
He said, take some shots, take out some people.
I wanted to keep the gig and I like the contractor, so I didn’t tell him don’t be ridiculous, I told him that I was definitely not the guy to take out some people with a gun. He helpfully offered to take me to a range where I could learn to adjust my opinion to practice, but I declined again.
Being then in the stage of academic Marxism where my idea of the class struggle was being perpetually sarcastic, I found the whole scenario howlingly funny.
Now, being an older gent who thinks it howlingly funny to call people “leftists” who have no connection to a unionized working class but are left in their head only, I am more than ever sure that I am not going to solve anything by practicing at the range.
Yet I also know that letting paramilitary ultra rightists out of jail, which Trump has done, means that surely some people are gonna get hurt. And I know that direct action, such as was allegedly the case with Luigi Mangione, might be thrust upon us by circs.
Take some shots, take out some people. I’m reconsidering that proposition.
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