Big Big Love
“Though you begged me to keep her, in that house on the hill.
Lookin out for Love. Big Big Love,” Fleetwood Mac
Years ago I was a bartender in a really great place in the Lower Mainland.
This pub was up the highway a bit from the local biker bar and the main bouncer there, a well known young guy, would come in to our place for beers. You couldn't tell he was the bouncer because he looked like a regular young guy, about 6 feet, slim, smiling, nothing out of place. No teeth missing, no cauliflower ear, and no crazy look in his eyes whatsoever. His girlfriend was very nice and they made a lovely couple.
On a Thursday night, not even the weekend yet, he came in straight up to the bar and said to me,
“Listen. I want you to witness that I am just here for a beer and then I'm going. My girlfriend doesn't want me getting into fights anymore and I promised I wouldn't.”
I know. Red flags, right? Should've been, but it was busy. I had five servers ordering steadily and we raked in $1000 per hour most of that night. It was 1997 and everyone was still getting used to the Serving It Right laws.
Time passes and then Buddy is back in front of me, saying,
“Hey look. I was talking with some people and these other people started beaking off at me. I'm going to go before any trouble starts and I just wanted you to see that I was the one leaving, K?”
“Okay,” I said, busily pouring draft- one of those ridiculous button-controlled pouring mechanisms. Push once to pour, twice to stop, and another two buttons for if they want clamato. Buddy makes to leave but doesn't get two steps before a little tiny older woman, somebody's mom, too drunk to speak, comes up behind him and grabs him by the arm. Won't let go.
I hit all stop on the draft. Behind Buddy and Drunken Grandma were tables of local guys all now on High Alert. Everyone had stopped to watch, and I was powerless to stop what you, the reader, must know happened next.
One point, in hindsight, is that it is pretty hard to sit back and say we didn't know what would happen. The bar was like a tiny roiling symbol of the big picture in that respect. Even if we go back a few more generations and look at World War II, the outcome was anything but a mystery. The history of choices that were made is now quite damning in light of the results. And looking ahead a little bit, as Donald Trump's administration cranks up his tweeting against Iran, and China, it feels like the mystery is gone.
Yet the argument that is made for not condemning those people and those choices is so weak compared with what was known at the time. In my case, I knew very well about the Serving It Right laws, as did the owners of the pub, and the servers. We would say that we needed the jobs and the money, (pretty badly in my case). We all knew Buddy was dangerous. The owners were in fierce competition with other pubs and restaurants. The industry itself was in fierce competition with other local industries, and supported tens of thousands of people across BC in work. What choices did we have? Actually, the answer is that we had choices.
So did the leaders of the most powerful countries prior to World War II. There is no part of any 'causes' of the Second World War that suggest any “necessity”. Time and again, when we drill down into what happened, it comes down to satisfying the rapacious needs of short-sighted profiteers. Just for example, the CEO of General Motors, Charles Wilson, advising that a war-time economy was necessary to stave off depression. During the war, opportunities abounded to finish the conflict early, and were decided against. The Allies invaded Italy instead of France, or North Africa and Greece. Japan went unchecked in China. We are content to be horrified by the Nazi treatment of the Jews, without the corresponding horror of the millions of Poles, Ukrainians and Chinese who suffered similarly because of these calculated decisions. It takes no military genius to see that, had Hitler been forced to fight on both Fronts, the war in Europe and in Japan would have been over much sooner. We need no expert on that because the Russians- who were allies back then- called repeatedly for it at the time.
And we are not idly quarterbacking this analysis from an arm-chair because when we dig into the reasons for these decisions, we turn up dirt: Ugly self-serving and venal reasons for why things happened as they did. When Truman was placed on the Democratic ballot with Roosevelt, instead of Henry Wallace, that was a choice made by people “quarterbacking” an entire election with back-room deals and hand-shakes, people desperately unqualified to make such choices, people who all pretended they had no choices and were abiding by instructions. It's important to think about that when you wonder if it was necessary to drop a nuclear bomb on somebody, or fire-bomb their biggest wooden city (both happened under Truman).
Would Roosevelt have approved of reneging on the agreements he made with the Soviet Union? No, and Wallace would have upheld those agreements, making Russia a US ally. Would the Japanese not have surrendered if the bomb was detonated say, five miles off the coast of Nagasaki? It's a rhetorical question because it is well-known that they were already prepared to surrender. Would we still be talking about war-time economies if we, as a people, were actually interested in peace? That, too, is a rhetorical question.
The difference between the national politics and my scene at the bar all those years ago, is that Buddy was only afflicted by drunk people, while the American nation has a small cadre of wily, crafty little men and women carefully selecting fights that other Americans must carry out. They won't be around for the results. The real question to ask is: Do you want irresponsible people, that you know are going to deny responsibility for any decisions, making decisions for you?
The reality is that we the people will be left holding that responsibility. It's our country. If people want to fight, that is what they are going to do. As we progress into this new round of fighting we want to be clear, that we are okay with the results.
And we want to be clear that the truly hostile among us are counting on a certain amount of passivity. Just like in the bar all those years ago, the people who want to fight need only a weak excuse. They know from generations of experience that the passive among us will supply it by letting things slide until something ridiculous happens. It's “safer”, by their estimates, to stay out of the drama, except that it's actually not.
Buddy demanded several times that Grandma let go. He pleaded with her that he just wanted to leave without any trouble, and even yanked on his arm at least once. The people behind him called out to her to let him go, but she was drunk-strong, or something, and then, he raised his fist to try to scare her. All hell broke loose.
At least ten guys got up and tried to man-handle Buddy, but violently. It seems some of them had a grudge against him. He also had friends, and they began fighting with those guys. Some women tried to pull Grandma away, and they got attacked by other women trying to “protect” her. And then other guys just started fighting for the hell of it. One of my servers, Karen, full-on charged the group and tried to push them toward the door. I nearly panicked when I saw that, so I leaped over the bar and helped her. Explaining to her husband how she got hurt was not on my list of favorite things.
We were unusually successful, pushing the main mass of fighting people into the foyer. Most of them went out the other door and fought in the parking lot, but six guys had Buddy pinned on his hands and knees in the foyer. Karen and I peeked through the small window and saw them pummelling him. Sadly for them, he was no ordinary guy. He didn't look like much, but he was the bouncer at the biker bar down the street, and these were just fellas.
“Look! I've just about had enough of you guys,” he yelled, “I'm gonna warn you one more time to let me go!” They kept punching him without effect.
“Okay!” he said in a truly resigned tone. Then he literally stood up, and flung them off like they were chaff. Several crushing punches and he began walking out. A couple of them kept on him into the parking lot and then it was over. Blood everywhere. Broken guys limping away before the cops arrived.
