There are very few eight year-olds who, if I tried my hardest, I could not beat up. I am not an egotistical person and I understand my limits, but I am confident that I can put any eight year old in the hospital if I wanted to. And I do. Badly.
My summer job is being a Camp Counselor. I am responsible for peoples’ children. Yet some still believe that God exists. Doesn’t really make much sense. When I went to camp many years ago, there was one kid who was significantly bigger than me – we’ll call him “Pituitary-problem Retarded Idiot Kid” (PRIK). When a camper had something that PRIK wanted, such as a ball, PRIK would grunt and swat at the kid until he dropped it (PRIK did not simply grab the object because he had yet to evolve opposable digits). Except for the times when I came to a fellow camper’s defense, PRIK never specifically targeted me. However, PRIK ruined a lot for me – he obliterated my conceptions of fairness and justice and I still hate him for it.
So, as a Camp Counselor now, I sometimes trip the kids who are big for their age. In my eyes, they are all PRIKs who need to be annihilated, but in a way that won’t jeopardize my tips at the end of the session. At that age, much in life is decided by size and physical power, and I consider it my responsibility to even up the playing field. If this means that I have to make Little Tommy bleed during Dodge-ball, then so be it.
I realize, though, that I am doing a disservice to the smaller, weaker kids who revel in watching me submerge their tormentors in Bug Juice. I am merely postponing their understanding of the fact that PRIKs are everywhere and that their entire lives are going to be entrenched in a system of domination. Indeed, many of these small, weak kids will someday climb that ladder and dominate those below; these are late-blooming PRIKs.
PRIK was pretty bad, but I can’t imagine how Chip Frederick’s fellow campers felt all those years ago. Sgt. Ivan “Chip” Frederick is a military policeman partly responsible for those pictures you’ve seen of tortured Iraqi prisoners. When Little Chip caught someone from the other team in Capture the Flag, I wonder what he did to him. I wonder if he was like PRIK back then or if that transition happened after he got hired to kill by the Army. I wonder who in my group of Explorers (second and third grade boys) will be the next Chip Frederick or William Calley or any number of thugs and murderers who hide their criminality behind a uniform*.
I wonder who in my group will be the next Ken Lay or Dennis Kozlowski, a man who I hope meets a Psycho-like fate behind his $6,000 shower curtains. I wonder who will destroy lives for his own luxuries and excesses. I wonder whether anyone who wields power, the ability to coerce or influence, has claim to it that is any more legitimate than PRIK’s was.
Legitimate authority is a laughable notion in an era of imperialist wars, unilaterialism, and unelected Presidents. It is a distant concept in a power structure that thrives on exploitation and subjugation. It is a dangerous conception in a nation where laws target the oppressed and the behavior of the police is often indistinguishable from that of thugs and gang-members.
We’re not shocked by killer cops in NYC or police corruption in LA anymore. To shock us you’d need to make up some crazy story about a cop pepper-spraying an elderly blind woman and knocking out her prosthetic eye with a blow to the head! Or a cop shooting and killing an unarmed Latino man who failed to use his turn signal and then winning an award for excellence (this, of course, all happened after said officer threw a woman with one leg off her couch at gunpoint and then seized her electric scooter on drug suspicions, though it turned out that she had a medical marijuana card). Both of these stories came from just taking a brief look at the news in Portland, Oregon. Before this, all I really knew about Oregon is what I learned from playing the Oregon Trail computer game. Now, in addition to cholera and fording rivers, I can add “insane thug cops” to the list of state dangers.
When I return to camp this summer, I will be the authority. I will be the one who these children must blindly follow because their parents enrolled them in a system in which my legitimacy as an authority figure is automatically assumed. These kids don’t question me when I make group decisions, when I insist on being the “kicker” in kickball at least twice per inning, or when I sell small baggies of “talcum powder” to other counselors. Authority has nothing to do with justice or fairness. Legitimate authority is a myth, and in a world where I am in charge of children and George W. Bush is in charge of the nation, non-PRIKs don’t stand a chance.
*Lest you think that Americans monopolize abusive authority, take a look at the pictures of what British troops have done to prisoners – if, of course, they are ever shown by mainstream media in America. You can see them in the The Guardian or The Mirror. As I write this, there are even more reports and allegations coming out claiming unlawful abuse.
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