I'm A Salesman

Written By: Gerald Selas

I want to admit something here. This first paragraph of this piece was the last one I wrote for it. And in the next paragraph, which was originally the first of this writing, I think you’ll begin to learn why I’ve added this introduction. I’ve done it simply because I want to stress a couple of points and I don’t know where else to do so within this composition. First, let’s respect rather than defund our police. They care about us. They keep us safe. Yes, sometimes like everyone else they make mistakes, but in their field of endeavor outlandish mistakes can’t be tolerated. And second, in my opinion all this “group” business is detrimental to all lives in America and across the world. We’re born as individuals, we should live as individuals. Sometimes however it seems we think we need to live the lives of others as well as our own.
Let me apologize in advance for what I’m guessing will be a rather choppy and unstructured prose piece. Like all Americans I’m very concerned at this current time. In my opinion our nation faces three great immediate challenges: one, the coronavirus, two, warranted peaceful protests, and three, unwarranted violence disguised as protest.
I’m a salesman. And I never was very good at composition. But I have two “special problems” in regard to what’s taking place in America today. I’m sure everyone has their own opinions and fears concerning the current pandemic and violence. I have two which are especially bothersome to me. They both concern the upheaval sparked in our society by the gross police over-reaction toward someone who’d apparently committed a minor offense. And like everyone else, I’m also fearful of the pandemic, but this current writing will express two wishes I have concerning our present state of societal unrest. Again, my apologies to anyone who reads this written piece to its end. I’m not much at writing. I’m a salesman, and, I believe, a great example of the so-called “common man”.
I’m sure you know by now that “the city” has a new mayor. Well, he contacted me a few days ago and asked if I’d write what he called “a common man’s take” on the current situation in The United States. He said he’d read about my brief appearance in Joseph Same’s “The Same Tapes” book, and therefore knew that at least for a while I’d been both a salesman and someone with a minor drinking problem. I told him I was still in sales, but had stopped drinking alcohol completely. I also said I’d undertake his task. Thus, what follows now is my so-called “take”.
Despite the claim of equality as an ultimate goal, there really are two other, and in my opinion, far more important desired outcomes sought by those now imposing fear, chaos, and anarchy across America. And the first of those is a seemingly universal effect which is always present in every questionable search for societal change. A struggle begins when a certain individual or group is singled out as having been the target of some sort of mistreatment. The apparent offenders are then lambasted in almost all the current media formats, and are promoted as haters of all such people who don’t happen to be white and male. But what is lost in this mirage which is then presented as clarity, is that the oldest hatred and abuse known to mankind is being promoted again, i.e. the working middle class of every particular nation is evil, and although its members do the work which keeps all societies functioning, those people are, as some have called them, deplorable.
And the second sought for result in any form of societal unrest is most likely a scenario which is not even understood by most of those engaged in that unrest. It’s the attempt to somehow pit the two extreme wings (left versus right – communism versus fascism) of the political spectrum against each other in the sick hope that eventually some sort of national or even worldwide conflict will emerge from their engagement against each other. And if we could take the time to learn from history rather than attempt to downplay or rewrite it, perhaps we’d realize that the same scenario which sparked World War Two (far left versus far right) could occur here in the United States. But truthfully, it’s been only within a few hundred years that radical isms have been given names; before that we could make a case that the same scenarios which led to WWII were present in societies then, but were disguised by various dictators, tyrants, monarchists who sought to further evil rather than good, and sometimes even figures from outside the realm of politics who gained control of certain nations for a while.
Nonetheless, we can rest assured, all mortals who once lived, or who live still within time’s scope, carried or carry their actions and non-actions with them as crosses to bear as they navigated or still do navigate through the years granted them by a force so powerful it’s time’s only inhibitor. And as history has unfolded, many controllers, and many organizers and reorganizers have vied for the conscience of the moment. And they’ve had a lot of answers for problems which most often have faded away with time’s passing, or else have been found out as not having been as significant as had first been believed. Thus the challenge for mortals in regard to time has always been the search for appropriate and safe actions and reactions in response to changes wrought by its passage.
So, as we speak of the current situation of time in America we must admit that rioters can shout and threaten. And they can tear down statues of people who long ago lived according to the social mores of their time. But nonetheless, time always wins in all disputes. And it wins because it features fleeting lifetimes lived temporally. And fleeting temporal lifetimes end quickly, and then enter the realm of the eternal.
And frankly, if we wish to live as best we can temporally, then we dare not defund or eliminate police forces! It seems incomprehensible that in this day and age some individuals would actually prefer to have a society in which all types of lawlessness could thrive.
I would urge anyone who thinks our nation will be better off without police to try to envision what such a scenario would entail. Rapists, murderers, thieves, and all types of lawbreakers would have a free hand to terrorize everyone – everywhere. And for victims of crimes, it would come as a shock when they called their police department only to find it had been eliminated in an effort to appease certain radicals who themselves might someday need police protection.
But certainly police officers can be trained better than they are currently. And certainly we can expect that police will treat all Americans with respect, and grant them all the rights afforded them under the law; but then we must also hope that all Americans will likewise afford the police the respect they deserve. And let’s not forget that many police officers have already been hurt or killed in violence tied to the recent mistake made by one of their own.
But now I have a very simple, yet sincere favor which I’m going to ask of the National Football League. I know it’s something which will involve a lot of money. Yes, it will involve a lot of money to people who already have a lot of money; or at least who should have a lot of it unless, as someone I once knew used to say, “money burns a h*** in their pockets.”
As a show of respect for, and in solidarity with America’s middle class which has been the unfortunate recipient of massive condemnation hurled at it by various groups, politicians, current and former professional athletes, and haters of civil liberty, I think the NFL should cancel the 2020 season. Now of course there’s another very real reason why this action could be taken, i.e. the national pandemic; but frankly, I fear professional sports, and especially professional football are fanning the flames of racial anxiety in this nation. I know that I for one am not going to enjoy being told by a bunch of twenty or thirty something millionaires what a rotten and disgusting individual I am simply because I was born white. And also, when we single out one racial group for acknowledgement via song prior to the beginning of a game, we short change all other ethnicities in the nation, and mock the “inclusiveness” which many are now trying to say is needed between all racial and ethnic groups in America. I think the NFL needs to give some serious thought to the non-field problems it’s now become so much involved in, otherwise, in 2020 professional football may be playing with fire rather than with game balls.
And, maybe the NFL will also face a crisis in regard to the names of its teams. Certainly certain ethnic groups will not wish to be offended by various monikers. And, who knows, down the road perhaps animal rights groups will also protest the teams named as animals and birds. And all of this will take place while the United States of America, guided by leftist politicians, will use the fact that its populace is comprised of diverse cultures and ethnic backgrounds as a reason for division and racism, rather than for the melding together of one great American people.