By David Rutter
If modern medical science prevails and I do my part by looking both ways before crossing the street, there is some chance I will get to be 75.
The age. Not the speed.
In fact, the science of predictable death forecasting assesses that I have a 62 percent chance at this moment of reaching 80, and a worth-the-bet chance of making it to 90.
If you statistically excluded childhood deaths and those who step in front of a truck, I can hit 100 without a sweat.
Because I have never had a 62 percent chance of anything good happening to me, I consider these odds are, to turn a phrase, literally a mortal lock.
But reaching for some statistical finish line is not the point.
What do you want out of life when you are 75?
I want to be “ANTIFA provocateur” Martin Gugino, the witness-for-justice Buffalo peace activist, who somehow tricked riot police into pushing him down, bashing his head on the pavement and letting his brain fluids gush out.
Put aside whether the venerated Christian principle of witnessing silently for justice just wastes time when guns work so much better. Instead think of any 75-year-old man retaining enough vitality, balance, and desire for such activity.
The boy’s got moxie.
I want moxie, too.
If he were actually a “planted provocateur,” he needed to get in much better physical shape. Bashing your head on the pavement is hard work that can kill you.
No, I think the most conservative Occam’s Razor view of that event is that the police whacked him last week during anti-police brutality demonstrations because they wanted to whack him, and he fell backward.
Had to be done. You know how dangerous 75-year-old men of principle are to public order.
When I’m 75, I hope to still be able to tie my own shoe laces, and also hope shoes still have laces by that time.
The truth is that I would join ANTIFA to which the president’s conspiracy-to-go pipeline suggested Gugino belonged.
But I can’t because I can’t find ANTIFA. I’ve tried.
It’s sort of a random, organizational mess, like my first marriage.
Anybody know a good ANTIFA book club? What are the dues?
I can’t find any visible organization by that name. Even the FBI and William Barr have tried, but the provocateurs drift away into the deep greenery of Sherwood Forest like Robin’s merry men.
Though it’s not my preferred state of being, I wouldn’t mind being in the “merry men.” I was once a member of Kiwanis, and we thought of ourselves as “merry men,” although “pleasantly jovial men” was more accurate.
As far as I can tell, ANTIFA is rudely, confrontationally anti-facist, and fascists dislike this approach because they are sticklers for manners. The KKK has become so touchy about etiquette.
ANTIFA seems mostly to be a shared idea without a phone number or even a clear structure. It’s mostly affiliates who believe in the same idea simultaneously. They are like rabble-rousing versions of Amway and Mary Kay without the marketing fees.
I’d like to be a rabble rouser.
They just show up and cause discomfort for fascists, racists, anti-Semites and assorted right-wing scum.
Maybe they are violent on occasion, but why not?
They might well be described as provocateurs because they force fascists to unmask themselves. They are provoking the truth, though I doubt the president actually wrote the phrase “Antifa provocateur” because I do not believe he could spell that word or even think of it.
For those of you who came into the room late, fascists are like Heinrich Himmler and grave-but-stable General Francisco Franco.
Though fascists demand opposition be measured and orderly, fascists prefer making political points by murdering people in the millions.
World War II and the Holocaust were their ideas.
By the 1940s, we all had figured out who fascists were, but now seem to have mislaid that information. We have become fuzzy on the human boundaries that millions perished to preserve.
My father took up arms against them because, he figured, you just can’t let murdering savages run the world.
There have to be at least a few Martin Guginos these days as a moral counterweight.
He is the ultimate American hero. He often stands up and says “No!”
He’s not the 82nd Airborne landing at Normandy, but he serves the related moral principle. That encounter in Buffalo was a precise re-enactment of what letting fascists run the world looks like.
I offer this brief historical treatise only because we have lost track of several distinctions over the past three years. And our president is not a man of fine moral distinctions. Or any moral distinctions that I can identify.
So, if Martin Gugino actually is a member of ANTIFA, tell him he has friends in the world.
We admire old men of moral principle.
In fact, some of us would like to join, but you guys need a good 800 number.
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Recently by David Rutter:
* Kris Bryant’s Future Bar Trick.
* Mansplaining To A Millionaire.
* Status Check: Chicago Sports.
* The Week In WTF Redux: Blago Is Back Edition.
* What Is A Chicagoan Anyway?
* Glenn Beck’s Turn In The Volcano.
* Only Science Will Bring Back Sports.
* I Loathe The Lockdown Protestors.
* Reopening Books.
* A Return To Abnormalcy.
* I’m Having A Down Day Emotionally. Here’s Why.
* So Long, Jerry.
* A Special “Trump’s Bible” Edition Of WTF.
* 5 Things An Angry Old White Man Wants To Say.
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David Rutter is the former publisher/editor of the Lake County News-Sun, and more importantly, the former author of the Beachwood’s late, great “The Week In WTF” column. You can also check him out at his Theeditor50’s blog. He welcomes your comments.
Posted on June 9, 2020