I spoke to my favorite evangelical Christian stoner, Columbine Joe, this morning as he purchased his groceries and I stocked the sour cream. He wanted to know when I would put a small book together of the stories that he had related to me, so that he could give a copy to his kids.
“You know, I’m forever telling them about all of the stupid stuff I did, and explaining to them how much better life is now that I no longer engage in decision making on that level."
I told him that I needed about six more stories:
1. The other murder he witnessed, the one he did not want to talk about
2. 2 boxing matches [worst and best fight]
3. An incident of childhood aggression
4. An incident of teenage school violence [I just know this stuff is there]
5. The last act of violence or aggression he was involved in
He told me that he had not been in a fight since he was 24. I informed them that I am not interested in the media/police/criminal perspective of violence as only consisting of mutual combats, quaintly termed fights. I am looking for real aggression of the type that most people are conditioned to slot as a property crime, and not even define as violence: such as stick-ups, muggings, extortion, captive panhandling [not letting you out of your car], rape, home invasions and carjacking. Like most fighters, when he thought in terms of violence he only considered the now extinct “mutual combat” or “fight” between men. Also, like most former or practicing criminals, a mugging that did not result in property loss or a stick-up that did not result in a shooting are regarded as non-violent non-events.
His eyes lit up, “Heck yeah, brother, how about last week—right outside the store here. I was riding my bike and this… [He was about to identify the aggressor by race, but spotted a black customer in the aisle and kept it generic.] dude yells at me, ‘Hey, I’m looking for my bike! That’s my bike, right?’
“Of course you know what the deal is, this is an attempt to get me to stop and argue and explain why it is my bike, so that him and the three dudes he is with can take it from me after they beat my ass.
“I yelled, ‘Fuck off asshole,' and rode off down the street. The heck if I’m going to let them jack me.’
“That’s really interesting, that I am so conditioned from living in the Baltimore area to people threatening me and jacking my shit, that I failed to identify the behavior for what it was. There is a good lesson in that in favor of prayer and the search for truth within and in the gospels, because the dominant culture is so obviously atheistic, just a false construct to manage the brain-dead herd.”
“I might even be able to use the book as a handout—a set of talking points for people I reach out to. I’ve actually got a pretty substantial FaceBook following.”
“Later, Sir!”
Interviewing a person like Columbine Joe, who was so immersed in the criminal underworld back in the 1990s, is very important, as the late 90s saw the formation of our current hiphop national ethos. Our media culture stems from the unholy font of the Drug War and it's combatants and support personnel on both sides. Today police commonly utilize the term "fight" in press conferences, even though there is no such legal term, and the use of the word to deflect legal attention from an act of criminal aggression by spinning it as a casual low social impact encounter—even if it was, and usually is, a stomping of an individual by a mob—was borrowed from the urban criminal class. Even shootouts are now casually being termed "fights" at press conferences. In fact, the Baltimore Police Commissioner, is now using the drug world term "in the game," traditionally used by criminals to describe a person engaged in the drug trade who is fair game for murder, and "not in the game," a term used by drug gang members to identify "civilians." The fact that the drug war has failed so miserably that Law Enforcement is now operating and communicating within the vernacular and moral spectrum of their ghetto gang enemies has established a need to understand the mindset that is infecting police and the media.
Joe's next story will illustrate this salient point quite graphically.
