Several things, today.
Armed Guards at Kroger
A few weeks ago, I posted a piece about a woman who was uncomfortable with the presence of armed guards at the Seminary Square Kroger. She told me she was going to make her feelings known at the next meeting of the McDoel Gardens neighborhood association.
That meeting did indeed take place and the poor woman found, to her surprise, she was in a tiny minority. The preponderance of opinion, she tells me, was four-square in favor of the armed guards. In fact, she says, she almost felt “attacked,” so boisterous and intense was the reaction to her objections.
Seminary Square is not my Kroger but I stop in there on occasion on my way to the WFHB studios or the Book Corner after I’m finished writing at Hopscotch. The guards I see there, employees of a private security contractor, don’t often appear to be agile enough to chase or wrestle with any kind of troublemaker. That alone makes me wonder, if push comes to shove, if any of them might be more prone to haul out the artillery in response to a heated situation.
I generally catch the guard’s eye each time I leave the store (they stand, usually, near the windows in the front end). I nod and sometimes offer a salutation; they are, after all, human beings. And, I might add, they’re working women and men and my loyalty always rests with that class.
Speaking of class, it’s the homeless who camp in the little strip of parkland between Walnut and College avenues, adjacent to the grocery store, who comprise the class that many McDoel Gardens Neighbors want to be protected from. By artillery, if necessary.
Again, I understand a certain wariness — some of the habitués of the parkland appear hard and menacing. There are drugs and mental illness enough to make the strongest among us cautious when we encounter these folks. But I also feel a lot of people may be more afraid of becoming part of that class than they are of any individuals within it. That’s especially true these days with wealth inequality growing by the day and affordability more an aspiration than a reality. Hell, it’s becoming harder and harder to afford Bloomington’s rents. And if you want to buy a home, well, good luck; you’d better hope to win Powerball.
Perhaps the armed guards are a sort of symbolic bulwark against any possible slide into homelessness.
The woman couldn’t stop shaking her head as she told me about the meeting. She never thought she’d be so alone in her take on the situation. Then again, considering all that’s gone on around this holy land the last year or so, it shouldn’t have been all that shocking.
Fascist Fanboys
You think the ICE-stapo is scary? Try scrolling through the comments section under any Right Wing internet/social media post re: the killing of that Alex Pretti fellow in Minneapolis last week. Oh sure, they’re all twisting themselves into pretzels trying to vilify a person for carrying a gun after years — decades, for chrissakes — of advocating for everybody up to and including toddlers and convicted wife-beaters to carry guns at all times. And you’d have thought Pretti was rolling down the street in a tank, made in Venezuela, the way they describe the “threat” the man posed to Li’l Duce‘s semi-private police force.
I mean, all that is pretty much the same old boilerplate nonsense that the Right has peddled since…, oh, it seems since the beginning of time. But what’s especially alarming right now is the glee these commenters take in the mayhem, the violence, the death. These damaged males appear to be — dare I say it? — aroused by the killing. Sexually aroused. These guys get off on the videos of the Pretti killing as well as that of Renée Good.
Erik Larson, in his book In the Garden of Beasts, describes the everyday fascism people on the street exhibited in mid- and late-1930s Berlin. Pedestrians waiting at stoplights, Larson wrote, would spontaneously break into Hitler salutes and if someone didn’t raise his hand, he’d be set upon and beaten. Berliners could be walking down the street and the person coming the opposite way might Heil and salute. You’d have to respond in kind or suffer the consequences. Brownshirts and other lunkheaded sorts would be on patrol to make sure everybody saluted.
Fascism isn’t wholly a top-down phenomenon. It can only thrive if just plain folks help make it happen. Hell, at certain points, the last American ambassador to Germany learned, Hitler himself was a bit afraid of the rage, the seemingly uncontrollable viciousness of the people on the streets.
These American guys who salivate and even grow tumescent at the audio of a gunshot and the video of a resultant pool of blood are as terrifying as the Mad King himself. Maybe even more so because he’s old and unhealthy and likely not long for this world. They, though, seem to be evergreen.
The Headline
A bit of trivia. Gun Crazy was a 1950 film noir about a hapless kid, Bart, from some unnamed small town who’s been gaga over guns since he was a little boy. Despite this, he’s gentle and loath to harm any creature, even a rogue mountain lion that threatens the town. Nevertheless, he meets a circus sharpshooter, Annie, and falls madly in love with her. They marry and soon run out of money. So the two decide to rob gas stations and stores. The criminal life becomes addictive. Now they aim for bigger scores like banks and factory payrolls. It turns out Annie has no problem offing whoever gets in their way and, eventually, Bart…, well, I don’t want to ruin it for you.
Scene from Gun Crazy.
The movie is rightly considered one of the classics of the film noir era. One extended bank robbery scene is shot in a single take from a POV inside the getaway car. The scene ranks with the opening shot of Touch of Evil for masterful timing, direction and acting.
Anyway, the script for Gun Crazy was written by Millard Kaufman. If you’ve never heard of him it’s because there was no such person as Millard Kaufman, the pseudonym for Dalton Trumbo, who at the time was blacklisted.
The Hollywood Blacklist. The last time (and not the first) this holy land nearly slipped into fascism.