A Tale Of A Failed Martyr - For A Progressive Willing To Die For A Social Cause, The Time Never Seemed Right

Bob Muzelle had wanted to give his life for a good cause as far back as he could remember.  When he travelled to Alabama and marched across the Pettis bridge with Martin and Ralph, he defied the police to beat him, water cannon him, and sic their dogs on him; but he only got a dousing, a light spray from the jet that hit the Negroes ahead of him. 

 

When he sat-in at a Montgomery lunch counter and waited for the expected abuse from the owner, a police collar, the back of the paddy wagon, and a sleepless night in a foul-smelling jail cell, he got only a hamburger 'on the house'.

Apparently he looked like the owner's son, one of the first American service men killed in Vietnam, so much so that the owner hustled him to a back room and asked him whether by any miraculous chance he had been in the same infantry regiment. 

When he protested outside Angola (Louisiana) prison, demanding the immediate release of Jacoby Martin, accused and wrongly convicted serial killer about to be executed, he expected the Louisiana State Police to charge the protestors, take them as prisoners and lock them inside the prison alongside rapists and murderers. 

Instead, unseasonal rains poured down on protesters and police alike, sending both for shelter and out of harm’s way.  When the rain stopped, Jacoby Martin had been executed, the police went back to their barracks, and the protesters boarded the busses that would take them back north. 

As he got older, his passionate endorsement of progressive causes increased, and also his desire to make the greatest sacrifice. Images of the monk immolating himself in public square to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the Catholic government of Vietnam were fixed in his mind.  If only he could have the courage and the gumption to kill himself for someone else, for good, for right. 

Yet the marches and protests for abortion, the glass ceiling, and gay rights were little more than jamborees, happy get-togethers of likeminded people, joined in a common cause but on the Mall for camaraderie, collegiality, and friendship.  

There was no deadly serious to the affairs, no do-or-die conviction.  Setting himself on fire for some fagg-t from San Francisco simply was not done.  As much as he espoused gay rights, gay pride, and gay marriage, he found the whole gay thing repulsive; and every time he pictured a buggering, cock-sucking bathhouse, he grimaced. 

When Donald Trump took office the second time and let loose all hell on the American people, innocent Venezuelan fisherman, and Colombian patriots, he felt the old civil rights juices flowing.  Perhaps this was his time.

This bullying, arrogant, power-hungry anti-democratic racist had to be stopped; and the complaisant, deluded, credulous Americans who still supported him needed to be shown how profoundly evil he was. If he, Bob, set himself on fire in Lafayette Park across from the White House and let it be known why he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, the tide would turn and Trump would be turned out of office. 

On a trial run in the park, he had his doubts.  Perhaps he had chosen the wrong moment for the dress rehearsal, for the only visitors were lunch hour bureaucrats and curious tourists from Iowa.

'Just across Pennsylvania Avenue', said the tour guide, 'is the White House.  The American flag is flying. and our President at this very moment is deciding affairs of state, signing executive orders, and assuring the safety, prosperity, and well-being of the nation...'

What would immolation mean to grocers from Dubuque? Or Walmart greeters from Ames or Prairie City?  He would go up in a pillar of fire only to be seen by rubes from flyover country.  Never, so back to the drawing board. 

Now, Black Lives Matter still had currency, and it was at the time the most heady and potent protest movement going.  Black people en masse were demonstrating for equal rights, justice, and a place in the boardroom and against the police brutality which had been responsible for the murder of George Floyd, for the incarceration of thousands of innocent black men, and the continued waves of oppression and racism by the white population. 

Yet, if Bob were to immolate himself during a BLM protest in support of the black man, black people would cheer.  One more white man incinerated and gone up in smoke. 

Bob was also a committed environmentalist who was convinced that climate change was real and imminent and that within our lifetimes the planet would not longer be livable - unless of course a spanner was thrown into the works of the capitalist engine, that coal-fired furnaces were shut down, thermostats turned off, cars kept in garages, and plastics banned.  

But before that could happen a universal support for such actions would have to be assured; and only with some dramatic image of commitment and purpose - such as Bob's self-immolation - would the movement to protect the earth gain currency and momentum. 

This, then, would be Bob's time - a martyr to Mother Earth, to Gaia, to universal good; but as he looked around, travelled from east to west, engaged ordinary Americans from Bethesda to Chillicothe, he realized that no one really cared - they didn't give a shit, and went about their backyard barbecues, PTA luncheons and Sunday golf games as if there were no climate threat at all, let alone an existential one. 

No, burning himself up on Farragut Square would simply add carbon to the environment, attract a few onlookers, and have no earthly impact whatsoever. 

At this point Bob looked inward. He was the problem, not ordinary Americans.  He was the moral coward, the diffident, indecisive one.  If he had just one strand of moral fiber or one ounce of get-up-and-go determination, he would have been fire, smoke, and cinders long ago.  He was prevaricating, making excuses, dilatory and weak.

He could die for any one of the many progressive causes.  After all, progressivism had a unified structure.  Feminism, misogyny, gay rights, the gender spectrum, open immigration, economic socialism were all conflated, unified, and inextricably linked. Dying for one cause meant dying for all of them. 

And yet, and still...none of the above generated any real existential passion.  Gay men could bugger each other from here to eternity for all most people cared.  Women, as pushy and demanding as ever could make their way easily to the boardroom, and black people after more than a century still mired in the dysfunctional, crime-ridden, drug-addled ghettoes of major cities could stay there for all that mattered.

 

Not only were demonstrations and protests not worth anyone's while, the ultimate sacrifice - giving one's life for others in a good cause - was irrelevant. 

So, Bob was at a moral crossroads, troubled by his craven doubts, anxious to make the final sacrifice, but finding himself waiting for a bus which might never come. 

He wouldn't empty the jerrycans of kerosine or his supply of long-burning matches - that would be too much of a capitulation - but he decided to give the whole progressive thing a second look.  Why weren't conservatives ready to jump on their swords or climb on their funeral pyres?  Where was their existential angst? and why were they enjoying themselves!?

'Time for Florida', said Bob's wife Corinne, a thought which only a year ago would have been anathema, tantamount to a miserable withering away and a slow death.

Progressives die hard.  They cannot give up the fight for issues they have invented, lies of fiction and romantic fancy.  Amazon recently published a demographic analysis of consumers of dime store romantic fiction and found that they were overwhelmingly progressive, well-educated women. 

Not surprising when you come to think about it.  Fantasy, romance, and love affairs do not necessarily have to happen in the bedroom.