There’s always something to howl about.

On the Nickel with the boys . . .

My BubbleBoys are mostly gone for the moment, no doubt off like a cloud of gnats desperate to enshroud someone else’s head. The truth is, I do have a particular kind of fun at their expense, not the least of which are their pitch-perfect echoes of the charges I make against them. They were so aghast they I called them flying monkeys that they swooped in by the hundreds to express their outrage. Surely none dare call them Brownshirts, when most of what they did was rage, swear and threaten with all their minimal mental might. A certain few of them were brighter than I expected, but not one seems to have caught on that the Heckler’s Veto doesn’t work on the internet. And for all their complaints, none of them seems to have noticed that I also compared them to the Communists.

Even so, I ended up feeling sorry for them. It’s not the specious arguments repeated over and over, not the garbled grammar, not the atrocious spelling. Those are secondary consequences. What grabbed at my heart, despite myself, was the lack of internal resources that would lead a man — and they seem to be almost exclusively men — to join a gang of thugs. Surely this is not true of each one of them, but it is true in the main, in the same way that their belief in the efficacy of browbeating is an attribute of the browbeaten and their conviction in the ubiquity of corruption betrays only too completely the contents of their own souls. This is the stuff of the Brownshirts, of the Bolsheviks, of the Khmer Rouge and the Klan. This is the stuff from which the ugliest episodes in human history are sprung.

And yet it is still a sorrowful spectacle. I’m not absolving them. If you dig deeply enough into any sort of human squalor, at the bottom of everything you’ll find some combination of laziness, deceit and envy — usually about 112% of each. But every one of these boys would be a better man if he had more to do. The curse of America’s economy — and the world’s — is not that we have too much commerce, but too little. If these men saw more value in pursuing their own affirmative values, and less in campaigning for and rejoicing in the suffering of others, each one of them — and everyone else — would be better off.

But: They are who they are, and change comes only from within. All day, I’ve had a song for them in my head, On the Nickel by Tom Waits. It’s not directly apposite, it’s just a sad song about men who waste their lives in preference to living them.

Rage on, BubbleBoys. It ain’t much, but it’s what you’ve got…

On the Nickel

by Tom Waits

sticks and stones will break my bones,
but i always will be true, and when
your mama is dead and gone,
i’ll sing this lullabye just for you,
and what becomes of all the little boys,
who never comb their hair,
well they’re lined up all around the block,
on the nickel over there

so you better bring a bucket,
there is a hole in the pail,
and if you don’t get my letter,
then you’ll know that i’m in jail,
and what becomes of all the little boys,
who never say their prayers,
well they’re sleepin’ like a baby,
on the nickel over there

and if you chew tobacco, and wish upon a star,
well you’ll find out where the scarecrows sit,
just like punchlines between the cars,
and i know a place where a royal flush,
can never beat a pair, and even thomas jefferson,
is on the nickel over there

so ring around the rosie, you’re sleepin’ in the rain,
and you’re always late for supper,
and man you let me down again,
i thought i heard a mockingbird, roosevelt knows where,
you can skip the light, with grady tuck,
on the nickel over there

so what becomes of all the little boys,
who run away from home,
well the world just keeps gettin’ bigger,
once you get out on your own,
so here’s to all the little boys,
the sandman takes you where,
you’ll be sleepin’ with a pillowman,
on the nickel over there

so let’s climb up through that button hole,
and we’ll fall right up the stairs,
and i’ll show you where the short dogs grow,
on the nickel over there


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