Page 38 - Tales the Maggid Never Told Me

Blood Libel

our one hit tune in small-town auditoriums and roadhouses. As I
said, we were lucky. We were on the charts often enough to keep
everyone’s accountants and lawyers busy but not too busy.

S: It sounds like you were very contented.

B: I had no problem with the way things worked out for me. And I
didn’t have a problem when the country started on its mad dash to a
fascist takeover by the Christian right. I was that apathetic, that
typical a self-absorbed and willfully ignorant citizen. If asked I would
neither confirm nor deny that the world was going to hell in a hand
basket. I know a lot of musicians went from teen-age rebelliousness
to a studied—and possibly cynical--outlaw image because it appealed
to youth, and from there occasionally to real political criticism and
activism, but Count Geiger and the Particles of Decay collectively
couldn’t have told you the name of their congressional representative
or how the constitution of the United States actually read. So the
corruption and capture of every branch of the government and most
major media outlets by the unholy alliance of billionaire
neoconservatives and isolationist fundamentalists was not something
particularly outrageous to me.

S: Did anything occur to change your attitude?

B: You bet it did, Doctor! Are you really a doctor? Never mind. You
couldn’t prove it and I couldn’t disprove it. And I refuse to accept
my situation as anything other than illegal detention and this
interview as serving any therapeutic purpose. Perhaps it amuses my
tormentors. But to answer your question, I need point to nothing
more subtle than the murder of my brother and the fire-bombing of
our family’s bakery.

S: How did that make you feel?

B: Really, Doctor. If you are working from the hypothesis that I am
devoid of all human feeling, I must presume the same of you. I
would prefer to leave the dead alone in that mental space reserved for
memories uncontaminated by bitterness. More pertinent to any
context concerned with reality would be what happened and why.

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