We started book one, The Mucker, about two weeks ago, and have been hitting 5 pages every day. It will take us another 23 days to finish it. And it's a pretty exciting read...as are almost all of Edgar Rice Burroughs' books, actually. But it's certainly not a great book, and it's certainly not one of Burroughs' best. Still, it has its moments.
Tonight, for instance, there was a bit which gave me cause to stop and think, and then to mark the passage. For context, Billy Byrne, who is the titular Mucker, is a vicious, brute of a man who has been part of a scheme to kidnap Barbara Harding, who is the "she" in this passage.
Which goes like this:
"As she spoke Billy Byrne's eyes narrowed; but not with the cunning of premeditated attack. He was thinking. For the first time in his life he was thinking of how he appeared in the eyes of another. Never had any human being told Billy Byrne thus coolly and succinctly what sort of person he seemed to them. In the heat of anger men of his own stamp had applied vile epithets to him, describing him luridly as such that by the simplest laws of nature he could not possibly be; but this girl had spoken coolly, and her descriptions had been explicit—backed by illustrations. She had given real reasons for her contempt, and somehow it had made that contempt seem very tangible.
"One who had known Billy would have expected him to fly into a rage and attack the girl brutally after her scathing diatribe. Billy did nothing of the sort. Barbara Harding's words seemed to have taken all the fight out of him. He stood looking at her for a moment—it was one of the strange contradictions of Billy Byrne's personality that he could hold his eyes quite steady and level, meeting the gaze of another unwaveringly—and in that moment something happened to Billy Byrne's perceptive faculties. It was as though scales which had dimmed his mental vision had partially dropped away, for suddenly he saw what he had not before seen—a very beautiful girl, brave and unflinching before the brutal menace of his attitude, and though the mucker thought that he still hated her, the realization came to him that he must not raise a hand against her—that for the life of him he could not, nor ever again against any other woman. Why this change, Billy did not know, he simply knew that it was so, and with an ugly grunt he turned his back upon her and walked away."
It made me think about the Facebook Messenger conversation I'm in the process of having with a FB Friend who is a Trump supporter (and which you can read about HERE if you so desire). When you come at someone hard, you immediately give them a reason not to listen to you. More than that, you immediately push them into the worst version of themselves, so that they either move to defend themselves or move to attack you. Neither way is going to lead to any kind of understanding.
In fact, I was watching a video this morning which brings this home quite vividly. In the video, there are a bunch of Trump enthusiasts driving golf carts in some kind of bizarre pro-Trump show of force. (I didn't care enough to try to find out what the context was.) It was pretty asinine, but hey, riding decorated golf carts is one of the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, as I recall, so let's not pick nits with that. There were also a whole bunch of anti-Trump people lining the road, shaking signs at the golf carters and shouting them down. And I suppose that's more or less okay, too, though I'm not sure that I understand it. Why not just let the golf cart people do their thing and not give them an audience?
But it was more than that, too. Because the anti-Trump people (who I am all for philosophically, I must add) were also stepping in front of the golf carts and screaming obscenities at the people driving them. Well. I have to say that if somebody screamed "You motherfucker!" at me, I would probably be tempted to scream back. And it was in that context that one of the golf cart people screamed back, "White Power!" Which is a vile thing to say, for sure, and I certainly don't want to defend that motherfucker in any way.
But here's the thing. That loathsome thing probably would not have been said if the anti-Trump person hadn't provoked the guy. She actively campaigned to make this situation worse. In fact, after the golf cart guy said this, you could hear one of the anti-Trump people say, "Did you hear what he said? He said White Power." And maybe not, but it sure sounded like he felt that he had scored a point.
No one is going to change their view of themselves or change their political perspective because someone comes at them and threatens them with vileness or violence. That just solidifies positions on both sides. Is that the goal? If it is, then we may fast be coming to a point where both sides are equally adamant, equally unfair, equally stupid.
So I'm going to try to continue to talk with my FB Friend who supports Trump. I'm going to try to speak coolly, and give descriptions which are explicit—backed by illustrations. And given real reasons for my contempt for Trump. It might not work, of course. She might not be open to discourse which sticks to facts and avoids calumny.
Then again....
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