by Corey Taylor
That’s why when you try to talk to someone who’s a bit more conservative about certain programs that seek to help those who have little or no way to help themselves, the Republicans immediately draw blood on your conversation by throwing at you words and phrases like “welfare,” “lazy,” “tax drain,” and whatnot. Same with the left: the minute you begin talking intelligently to a liberal about the Second Amendment and how it benefits all of us, the Democrats all start yelling “gun control,” “school shootings,” “dead children,” and so on. And when you immediately siphon all the humanity from the conversation, it becomes a screaming match. Also, they retain control of the way you think. When we can no longer see how these concepts can help each and every one of us, what’s the point of even having healthy discussions? Should we just all assume that the politicians would do what’s right for us? Are you comfortable with a group largely composed of white males telling you what you can and can’t do? Let’s hope not, because that’s essentially what is happening in the Cheeto’s administration. We’ve come so far now that it’s hard to imagine just how far behind the professionals would like us to return. Is apathy the new black? Will America’s flag go from red white and blue to gray, gray, and gray? Will we suck the heat from the sun just to prove that it can be done?
That’s not even including the violence we’ve seen lately.
I’m not talking about the protests. I’m talking about an elderly Trump supporter being dragged from his car and beaten until he couldn’t walk. I’m talking about Muslims being ambushed so the attackers can rip their hijabs off, simply because they can. I’m talking about angry men screaming threateningly into women’s faces because they’re so insecure they can’t handle the thought of equal anything for women. No matter how civilized or loquacious we can be or perceive ourselves to be, once we are triggered, our basest rages take a hold of us, like a police officer commandeering a car, and it strangles all common sense until all that is left is T-1000, rambling forward to kill, kill, kill, baby. I guess that’s just how we do things, though. We represent an incredibly violent country; even our peace is violently maintained. The social collisions of our past might make us feel like we’re advancing, but the truth is that it’s all static on the screen, the big bang theory and the beginning of the universe. We collude and crash between bouts of passivity, running reds, and belching into parking spots, all in a mad attempt at seeming like nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong—that is, until the spark. You know what I’m talking about: America feels like a ticking time bomb every twenty years or so. Circumstances swirl around us, backing us into cornered situations that have no good solutions. When that happens, the spark ignites, and the shit hits the fucking fan.
Civil rights, police brutality, fascist maneuvering, unemployment, injustice, reckless endangerment, unfair treatments—all these things will spit whiskey on the spark and set the world ablaze. Passion will always sway the brain when someone feels controlled and dictated to. Passion is the gas in the mob; anger is the nitrous oxide ready to blow when the shooting starts. Years ago we lit the fuse and ran for it, scattering like cigarette ash on the wind and looking for a safe place to hide. Some of us are lucky: we ghost in and out of the carnage like spectators at the coliseum, casually gazing on gladiators killing one another for the love of a mob. The rest of the world is not so lucky. While white management takes notes, everyone on the kill floor is ducking and weaving, just trying to make it through another twenty-four hours without losing their jobs, their homes, their kids, and, sometimes, their lives. This isn’t visitation rights; this is “Wipeout” played inside the guts of a clock, doing your best to avoid being mulched like a pile of fucking wet leaves. That’s what most people’s lives are like inside the heat of the fires of freedom, just trying to cool things down so you can get some sleep at night because you know you’re going to have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN TOMORROW. When you can wander in and out of “The Struggle,” of course you don’t realize just how dire the circumstances can become. But those who break their hands against the walls of oppression know all too well what is really going on, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the lifers were more than a little resentful of the weekend warriors sometimes.
I haven’t even started on religion yet.
Yes, we’re going to talk about religion. Yes, I know I’ve gone on record as making my “peace” with many of the various religions out there. Yes, I agree if I start in on religion, it will make me look like a massive wilting double-dipping prick. But because we’re on the subject and because I feel like we might all be friends here (except for those poor souls who bought this book thinking it was some Pro-MAGA bullshit—in that case, sucks to be you), I want you to take a deep breath… deeper… no, don’t hold the motherfucker—I just want you to fucking relax… no, goddamn it, put the Vicks down, we’re not huffing Vicks, we’re relaxing. Now, you—no, we’re not huffing cookie dough either! For fuck’s sake, man! Now, just take a breath. Let it out. Take another. Feel better? Settled? Okay, now remind me that I might come off like a hypocrite if I take back the treaty I have with religion. Now do me favor—and this is important—ASK ME IF I GIVE A SHIT. I believe the retort you’ll receive will sound a lot like the current administration.
Every corner and coast of this country had its own sort of religion and about a thousand fucking offshoots: Mormon, Baptist, Christian, Catholic, Scientologist, Presbyterian, Moony, Jew, Jehovah’s Witness, Seventh Day Adventist, Quaker, Puritan, Amish, Samaritan, and every fucking fractured faction in between. They are all screaming “Faith!,” they are all ready to absolve you of your sins if you believe, and most of all, they all fucking hate each other. They dog each other’s doctrines, they slag the other’s ideas about peace, and they do whatever they can to be the Big Cult on Campus. That’s all that these fucking houses are, you know: they’re just fucking cults. Sure, they have better PR and packaging, but don’t let the leather couches and commercial breaks fool you: the only difference between the Moonies and the Mormons is the neighborhoods they rule over. Sure, you can make the case that I’m talking about Organized Religion, not religion. I assure you, though, these days there is very little difference. They all subtly encourage fanatical behavior, they all preach that their way is the only true way to whatever name their version of “heaven” goes by, and they all teach distrust for anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe, leading to constant conflict and controversy.
Is that what happens when something comes to America and becomes infected with “democracy” or “capitalism”? Does something like religion become overly severe and overtly diabolical when it’s exposed to a free market and tax exemption? I’ve long said that just as the United States can take a good idea and make it incredible, it would stand to reason that it can also take a horrible idea and turn it into a cultural epidemic. We seem to have a way of juicing the shit out of the most stringent concepts; everyone and everything we know is on some sort of booster, so why not our states of mind? Could this explain why we’re so ready to tear each other’s throats out over stupid fucking boycotts like Starbucks and Budweiser? Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s fucking hilarious when hard cases on both sides of shitty arguments try to kill each other. I love listening to and watching rabid followers of rhetoric and “alternative facts” attack while also being attacked. It’s like being in the audience for a full-contact, no-holds-barred version of “I know you are, but what am I?” complete with chainsaws, baseball bats, and cream pies loaded with that crazy evil acid shit from Killer Klowns from Outer Space. As much as it drives me fucking banana sandwich, I could read the exchanges online all fucking day—it’s ridiculous, misspelled, and almost always dangerous. If it’s not liberals threatening to set fire to places that don’t acquiesce to what they find “progressive and fair,” then it’s bigoted conservatives sending out cartoons of racially stereotypical scapegoats being shot in the head. Yes, it’s fucking madness. However, who’s going to stop it? The president? In one day—ONE FUCKING DAY�
�he denounced the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters, saying it wasn’t even controversial because “he hadn’t heard anything about it.” And he offered to ruin the career of a senator from Texas because he wouldn’t play ball with law enforcement’s hopes to deregulate certain civil seizure laws. Yeah, the Cheeto is really known for his kind-heartedness and open spirit…
You’ve got to remember—it’s me. I don’t care what the fuck some of you do to each other. I know I spoke about empathy a little bit ago, but you motherfuckers are pushing me to the edge of my usually even-keeled temper. No, that’s not right—I do have a temper. So what the hell am I talking about? Oh yeah, my psychotically gnarly imagination. Let me start again: you motherfuckers are pushing me to indulge my psychotically gnarly imagination. This country has become a schoolyard full of petulant bullies screaming with their fingers in their own ears, and what’s worse is that the orange principal is trying to arm the faculty to kill everyone. I’m just the hall monitor trying to get out of the school before the ovens explode. I wasn’t sure if it was going to get better or worse, but I feel like this shit would be happening even if HRC had won both the popular vote and the Electoral College. That’s how much we all hate each other, honestly for no really good fucking reason.
It feels like a nostalgic resurgence of the tensions of old: the Cold War, Uncle Tom, Jim Crow, putting the “Ms.” in misogyny… I mean, I guess it stands to reason. As far as the zeitgeist goes, we tend to see fashion and fads fold back on themselves every twenty years, so it would make a bit of sense to realize maybe the same thing happens with agitation and unrest. Do people get uncomfortable with comfort, and if so, is it a specifically American thing that comes with the safe space of freedom and choice? Do we get so blasé about stability that we let ourselves slip into antiquated discontent? The alternative is a little scarier: we’re all a mish-mash of bastards and bitches who will never get along and would rather burn each other’s houses down. If I had on my Big Person Grownup Sarcasm Goggles on, I’d look at it this way: WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!! HAHAHAHAHA, IT’S FUNNY BECAUSE IT’S STUPID!!!! I CAN’T WAIT TO NOT BE FUCKING STUPID!!!! WHEN WILL THAT BE, UNCLE FUCKMOUTH!?
That’s a great fucking question…
In early 1992 I had moved back to Waterloo, Iowa, to live with my mom for a while. Things had gotten a little hot for me in Des Moines, and I needed to duck down and lay low as things cooled off. Don’t ask what possessed me to move back to 319—I didn’t have a lot of money, and my choices were slim and shit. So I went back to where I’d sworn I’d never go again: the scene of so much pain and abuse and the setting of every sun I’d said goodbye to. I moved in with my mom and got a job roofing and siding with her ex-boyfriend. And for four months that was all I did. I didn’t play music, I didn’t write, and I didn’t have a future. I drank, crawled through my bedroom window, passed out, woke up, went to work, and repeated. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my life, but what worried me the most was: What if this was all I was going to do with my life? What if I’d let all that potential go to shit?
Overnight shit changed.
Waterloo has always been a racially diverse city, so much so that most people have referred to it as “Little Detroit.” This, of course, comes with its own dose of tensions, which, in 1992, the riots in response to the verdict in the Rodney King police brutality trial exacerbated. After not one officer was found guilty, even with video proof, Los Angeles erupted into chaos and flames, violence and mayhem, and an unrequited need for vengeance. From the courthouse that sense of injustice ran rampant through the streets of South Central and beyond, like the Flash with a blowtorch and gasoline. Block by block, building by building, the victims exacted what they needed to relieve this pressure, even as they burned their own businesses and neighborhoods. This is what indifference does to people: they will destroy their own dreams for all to see to make sure the guilty cannot sleep at night. For those of us who are old enough to remember watching this live, it was a frightening vision of the future. Only a racist cunt would’ve wished for those cops to be set free. But at some point we’d have to look outside our own doors. That sense of hurt and anger had spread across the country. Chicago, Detroit, New York, Atlanta, New Orleans, you name it—it was happening. Not on the same scale as LA, mind you, but the fire was definitely spreading. Waterloo, Iowa, was no exception.
I was sitting in a car with a friend at 2 a.m. on the night of the Rodney King riots. We’d both had the night off, and we decided to go out and “cruise Uni”—essentially drive up and down University Avenue, looking for girls and kicks. After a fruitless search we both agreed it was time to chill and crash, so we were driving back from Cedar Falls (where Uni ends) to my friend’s house in Evansdale, not far from my mom’s old place off of Butler in Waterloo. It was quiet; the only thing we could hear was the radio. We were both pretty smoked, so we weren’t talking, just riding along, looking forward to some shuteye. We pulled up to a light right at the end of University, where it used to split and turn into a street that I can’t remember the name of right now. It was a dark corner, not a lot of houses or anything, just a couple of empty lots and one abandoned building that used to be a BBQ restaurant. The light was red; the street was quiet.
Like something out of a movie, that changed in an instant.
We missed how it started, but the parking lot in front of that BBQ joint had begun to fill with a crowd of probably thirty or forty black people—standing, talking, slowly starting to shout and yell. They were incensed and enraged, and with good fucking reason. They’d just watched justice get fucked in the ass on live TV. They’d also watched their black brothers and sisters say, “fuck civility” and go to town on a world that thought it was okay to allow that kind of unchecked aggression go unpunished. So they gathered together to talk, then to unite, then to channel all that pain into some type of release. They were just in the midst of a rallying cry with several fists in the air when they became very aware of the two white boys sitting at the stoplight by themselves watching all this unfold. With a silent malice they all turned toward us… and began walking slowly toward the car, as if to surround it.
Now, before I go any further, I am not telling you this story to compel some sort of hateful response toward the crowd. Yes, at the time I was so fucking scared that I was shitting pairs of pants I wasn’t even wearing at the time. But even after it was all said and done, I never blamed anybody for anything, and I certainly didn’t use it as an excuse to tap into some hidden racist agenda on my part. It may have freaked me out at the time, but as crazy as it sounds, I understood what was going on. You’d have to be an ignorant fool not to see why this could happen. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right: I didn’t come to that conclusion in the moment; it happened afterward. But I still never used it to validate any inner hatred. I will say I was freaking the fuck out as they began to surround the car. There was a lot of shit being screamed at us: “What are you looking at, white boy?” “Get out of the car, motherfuckers!” “Come on—we got something for you!” My friend was behind the wheel, and thank god he was—I’d spaced out just listening to all the shit they were screaming at us. He, however, had the wherewithal to hit the gas, run the red light, and get us the fuck out of there. In the rearview mirror we could see them start to give chase but then relent and give up. Neither of us spoke until we stopped at his house.
That’s the kind of world we live in at times: where total strangers can become mortal enemies because of the actions of other total strangers trying desperately to control and manipulate others. It’s been twenty-five years since that night in front of the BBQ restaurant, and I can tell you right now that I can still feel the fear in my gut from that moment when the rage boiled over out of our favor. I do not blame them for coming at us. If they’d gotten hold of us and fucked us up, I might harbor some sort of ill will, but I would still understand where it came from. This is why empathy is so important for our growth. This is why the future must hav
e the respite we sincerely need. This is why if we can’t reach deep down inside ourselves, step out of our own shoes and into a pair that belongs to someone else, we are truly damned. We will truly be on the path toward walls, bans, and mutually assured destruction—all of which will occur inside our own borders, crossing our own boundaries and scrubbing out our own lines. This place will turn into the charred remains of the Temple of Doom, bubbling over like a shaken Pepsi and spraying us all in the eyes with disdain and murder.
Sorry to be a bum-out, but it’s true. These are crazy times, true believers (love you, Stan!), and in times like this a hero must rise to balance the scales. We have our “villain,” whether the people who voted for him believe it or not. No amount of joking or trivializing or pandering or dismissing or forgiving or overlooking will cover the fact that this man wants to be our ruler, not the president. He wants judges to roll over for him, he wants Congress to just give in to him, and he wants us all to bow to him because he approaches our government like a cross between Putin and Celebrity Apprentice: as long as he feels like he’s popular, he will try to strip us all of our rights until only the elderly rich white men have a say in matters. Game—set—strike the match, because the USA will be a fucking powder keg on that day. It feels like a vicious cycle, running from extreme to extreme, finding the love, pushing it away, embracing the hate, and sauntering by, and the world keeps turning on a knife’s point, ready to pierce or be pierced. Apathy is not a good system of government; running one like a business is just as fucking stupid.
The scars from our Civil War, Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, 1968, and every act of violence all the way up to the present day have been torn asunder, spilling blood that is red, black, white, blue, brown, and beige. If you think America is only white, you’re a fucking coward with hate in your heart and no room to play with others. If you think this country is only white, ask the people who were here before us—you know, those people we gave hope to when they protested the Dakota Access Pipeline and won, then we said nothing as Trump overturned it all and made the Army Corps of Engineers fire up the drills again. I’m sure they will agree, saying, “Of course this country is only for whites. White people are the only ones who get any fucking justice here.” I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts you’d get the same answer from blacks, Latinos, Asians, Muslims, and everyone else on the spectrum, regardless of whether they were born here.
