The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi [119]
“And then fight him,” called out someone from the crowd.
“Right,” he said. “Right, right.”
Later on in the day the meeting spilled out onto the streets, where groups of protesters held up signs and chanted “9/11 was an inside job! 9/11 was an inside job!” at passersby on their way to Philly’s Independence Day parade. Then more chanters appeared on the balcony of the visitor center, which prompted security officers to show up and ask them to stop. Some time later, a woman ascended to the lectern and asked the people on the balcony to come inside, noting that they had promised the landlord of the property that they wouldn’t be hanging signs outside the building.
“Screw them!” someone in the crowd shouted. “They can’t keep us silent forever! We have our rights!”
“Well, actually, these aren’t the authorities,” the woman said. “They just own the building.”
“Well, still!” came the shout back.
As the day went on I sank deeper and deeper into my chair. Suddenly I understood. The People aren’t always victims in the historical narrative. Sometimes the People are preening, chest-puffing, ignorant assholes, too. And maybe the polls are right, and these people aren’t the minority—maybe, I thought as I looked around the packed room, I’m the minority. Maybe this is just how Americans like to roll. You can cut them out of the political deal, lie to them, exile them to some barren cultural landscape of shopping and TV and perpetual powerlessness, sell them a cheap dog-and-pony show for an election, and their way of fighting back will be to parade around like strippers in some amateur lunatic forum, dressing up in the garbs of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thomas Jefferson and César Chávez as they bang their silly heads against the wall, screaming about the Illuminati and holographic airplanes and the free-floating currency exchange.
Or they’ll pray for Israel and the speedy arrival of the battle of Armageddon, when those lunatics on the opposite side will be cast into the fires of Hell.
THIRTEEN
THE END
SATURDAY, APRIL 28, Radio City Music Hall, New York City. I’m at the NFL draft, slouching in a chair in the press section, trying to sleep off a headache. Unfortunately the media affairs people have dicked me around and left me without an assigned space, so I have no desk and no place to put my computer. Which is only fair, I guess, since I’m not really covering this thing—I just decided to come out of sheer boredom. But the NFL press office doesn’t know that, so I’m feeling kind of shafted.
I may not have a desk, but at least I have a good seat near the front. A nice comfortable place to sleep. But as I close my eyes, I feel a finger tap me on the shoulder.
“Excuse me,” a voice says. “Can we get through?”
I look up. A pale, thin-shouldered bald man with a tawny mustache, a dead ringer for eighties pseudo-icon Gerald McRaney of the old Simon and Simon series, is trying to step past me and sneak through my row of seats with his preteen son. I frown. Fans and their goddamn kids, violating the sanctity of the press section—this country really is going to hell!
“Well?” the guy says.
Simon is glaring at me. His kid is bouncing up and down, like he has to pee. Sighing, I raise my hands in surrender.
“Right. Sorry,” I say, getting up and letting them through.
The kid, as he walks past, steps on a corner of my computer bag. I hear an ugly crunching sound as he walks away.
A few minutes later I’m booting up my computer to make sure it isn’t ruined. The Windows screen pops on, and everything seems fine, but I’m still pissed.
“Don’t they have security at this place?” I mumble to a writer for NFL.com who’s been sitting behind me with his girlfriend.
“What, what do you mean?” he says.
“That asshole fan who just walked past,” I said. “His kid just stepped on my computer. Didn’t even turn around.”
“Dude, that was Brad Childress,” the writer says. “Coach of the Vikings.”
I pause in my seat.
“No shit,” I say finally.