I’ve been depressed lately. Not always, not in a ‘can’t get out of bed, can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t act kind of a way’. Not even in a ‘can’t enjoy my life’ kind of way. Quite the contrary in fact. I’ve actually spent the last few weeks engaged in wonderfully fulfilling and enriching moments with some of my best friends. I’ve laughed, loved, eaten good food, exercised my body - what more than that is there to the good life?
Yet still, under all this knowledge that I should be happy there still dwells a creature, a feeling, a lugubrious ooze at the pit of me that I can’t seem to scrape off with any amount of recreation or laughter.
I blame the US election. So I guess that’s something we have in common. If you’re feeling the same way. Which I presume you are if you’re reading this. Or at least I’d hope so - not full soul-drenched moroseness obviously, but this cavity, this sense. This feeling.
Something just broke.
I can always tell when my mental health’s taken a nosedive, because that’s when I find myself neck-deep in musical theatre; albums, trailers, YouTube essays, you name a medium I guarantee you it's been engaged with. Throughout this particular emotional deluge, I’ve gravitated towards one show in particular: Assassins by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman. First performed off-Broadway in 1990, this show’s cast consists of an ensemble, two fictitious semi-narrators, and nine historical figures. Among those nine are included an 1800’s stage actor, a Nihilist suffering from stomach cramps, a member of the Manson family, an Anarchist millworker, and a modern-day Youtuber who once had a paedophilic obsession with Jodie Foster’s character in Taxi Driver. The thing that binds them?
All these people tried or succeeded in assassinating the President of the United States.
‘What a completely random topic to write about in your blog post, Char’, I hear you say. ‘Whysoever would such an unsavoury subject be relevant this month?’
Oh who am I kidding? You know as well as I do that in these past few weeks my faith in humanity’s been shaken to its core. Not that I should have expected anything else of course - given the amount of money and power put behind Trump’s campaign, I’m actually surprised more people weren’t convinced by his mis/disinformation. So I’m not angry. I’m not even disappointed. I’m just sad. Sad for every person whose life is going to be made that little bit to a lot worse by Project 2025, and even more so because on November 6th, those people found out that in the eyes of their country, they don’t matter.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t me writing about how Assassins convinced me of the goodness in killing a world leader. To clarify: I DO NOT SUPPORT OR CONDONE VIOLENCE IN ANY FORM. Nor is that what the show is trying to accomplish. Instead I want to interrogate why, given current socio-political context, when watching a line of people all driven to commit one of the worst crimes against our human social contract, I wasn’t filled with curiosity or disgust - but with empathy.
“Czolgosz, working man. Born in the middle of Michigan. Woke with a thought and away he ran to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo.”
Buffalo, 1901.
Leon Czolgosz shoots President Bill McKinley in front of a crowd of onlookers. He’s been waiting in line to shake McKinley’s hand, but instead reaches into his pocket and pulls out a gun. It’s been wrapped in a handkerchief to muffle the shot, but there’s no hiding what he’s about to do. An angry and quiet man, Czolgosz was an anarchist who believed the only way for the working man to achieve freedom was to commit an act so destructive that change would have to occur. In an interview after his arrest, Czolgosz stated his reasoning for assassinating McKinley (Leon Czolgosz, September 7, 1901, in James P, Boyd, James W. Buel, and Edward Pell, A Memorial Volume of American History: McKinley and Men of Our Times (Washington: Historical Society of America, 1901), 261) :
“[…W]hat started the craze to kill was a lecture I heard some time ago by Emma Goldman. […] Her doctrine that all rulers should be exterminated was what set me to thinking, so that my head nearly split with the pain. Miss Goldman’s words went right through me, and when I left the lecture I had made up my mind that I would have to do something heroic for the cause I loved.
Emma Goldman - revolutionary, activist, writer, extraordinary woman - later responded that as an anarchist she was opposed to violence, and did not support Czolgosz’s actions. After all, who could? As socialists, anarchists, liberals, believers in humanity’s capacity for infinite goodness all, why would we ever stoop to the actions of madmen and crooks to achieve our own ends, however good?
This is what I’ve always believed. That one must always take the high road, to hell with everything else. But as is often said about people on the progressive, pacifist route, we are perhaps too idealistic for any kind of good to occur. In Assassins’ ‘Gun Song’, Sondheim hides what some would call sense in lyrics sung by Czolgosz:
‘It takes a lot of men to make a gun.
Hundreds.
Many men to make a gun.
Men in the mines to dig the iron.
Men in the mills to forge the steel.
Men at machines to turn the barrel.
mold the trigger, shape the wheel.
It takes a lot of men to make a gun...
One gun…
And all you have to do is move your little finger.
Move your little finger and—
You can change the world.
Why should you be blue when you've your little finger?
Prove how just a little finger
Can—
Change the world.
I hate this gun.
[...]
A gun kills many men before it's done.
Hundreds.
Long before you shoot the gun.
Men in the mines and in the steel mills.
Men at machines who died for what?
Something to buy.
A watch, a shoe, a gun,
a "thing" to make the bosses richer.
But a gun claims many men before it's done
Just one...
More…’
Scene fades to black, and I find myself empathising with a man whose body and soul has been scarred in service of his master. Of all the men like him, an entire class damaged through neglect and abuse by those on top. Similar feelings are provoked in ‘How I saved Roosevelt’, which examines the mentality of attempted assassin Guiseppe Zangara.
Zangara, an Italian-born American citizen - was a Nihilist who suffered from chronic stomach pain. During his last moments sat in the electric chair, he questioned why there were no photographers present at his execution. Sondheim reimagines this moment in song form:
‘I look at the world—
No good. No fair. Nowhere.
When I am a boy
No school.
I work in a ditch
No chance.
The smart and the rich
Ride by
Don't give no glance.
Ever since then, because of them
I have the sickness in the stomach
Which is the way I make my idea
to go out and kill Roosevelt.
[...]
No left!
You think I am left?`
No left, no right
No anything!
Only American!
Zangara have nothing
No luck, no girl.
Zangara no smart, no school
But Zangara no foreign tool:
Zangara American!
American nothing!
And why there no photographers?
For Zangara no photographers!
Only capitalists get photographers!’
Attention, recognition, publicity. These things are presented as major motivating factors in presidential assassinations. Many of these peoples’ names will be known throughout history for their misdeeds. I can’t help but find it ironic that often the underclasses are sentenced to an eternity of being ignored until they step out of line. In a desperation to be heard, can we really blame a few of those cursed with silence for reacting in anger?
Normally I’d say no, but when I truly consider my own position in this society - relatively comfortable, free from financial responsibility over others, never at risk of physically being harmed through my work - I have to recognise that I’m likely never capable of feeling the anger or desperation of people like Czolgosz. And when thinking of how people like Czolgosz and Zangara are banded together alongside fascists and madmen, I wonder whether to conclude that there must be elements of grey in my usual monochromatic code of ethics.
Even if my musings aren’t confirmed to be exactly those shared with Sondheim, a similar thought process inspired Wicked author Gregory Maguire when penning what became arguably his most famous novel. In this interview Maguire remembers seeing a news post about Saddam Hussein which dubbed him ‘the Next Hitler’. Despite identifying as a pacifist, Maguire found himself ruminating on two things - the perceptions curated in a reader’s mind through the media they consume, and the nature of evil itself. Would a pacifist such as himself, or for that matter myself, be justified in putting aside our principles and condoning violence against such a dangerous human as Saddam Hussein? Is condoning one single act of violence - an execution, a revolution, an assassination - actually more pacifistic than to stand idly by in allowing such a man to oversee countless more acts of violence? Especially when that single act is one borne from desperation to make a better life for oneself and everyone else. As the assassins sing - doesn’t everyone have the right to be happy?
This philosophy, this right to a right to be happy, is best encapsulated by Samuel Byck - attempted assassin of Richard Nixon. I would recommend listening to this monologue first. In this scene, Byck is recording a tape addressed to his intended victim whilst driving to an airport where he will be shot trying hijack a plane.
‘[I]t seems appropriate to look back at your long years of public service and to conclude that as our President, you really bit the big one. Wazoo city babe, what can I say?
And you know what—this cracks me up—I voted for you. Yes, I gave you my vote, my sacred democratic trust. And you know what you did? You pissed all over it! Ah what the hell, guys like you, you piss all over everything. You piss all over the country, you piss all over yourselves, you piss all over me. Yeah, yeah I know: "Sam, don't say it! You're my main man. Guys like you, you're the backbone of the nation. Sammy—"
(shouting) SHUT UP DICK! I'M TALKIN' NOW! ALRIGHT! I'M TALKIN' AND YOU'RE LISTENIN'!
Here. Have you seen the papers lately? Grandma lives in packing crate. Sewage closes Jersey beaches. Saudi prince buys Howard Johnsons. What the hell is goin' on here, Dick!? It wasn't supposed to be like this. It wasn't, but it is. And schmucks like you, you're tellin' us it isn't? "Everything's fine, it's great, it's Miller time." What Miller time!? The woods are burnin', Dick. What can we do? We want to make things better. How? "Let's hold an election." Great. The Democrat says he'll fix everything the Republicans fucked up. The Republican says he'll fix everything the Democrats fucked up. Who's tellin' us the truth? Who's lyin'? Someone's lyin'—who? We read, we guess, we argue, but deep down we know that we don't know. How can we? Oil embargos, megatons, holes in the ozone—who can understand this crap?
We need to believe, to trust, like little kids, that someone wants what's best for us. That someone's lookin' out for us, that someone loves us. Do they? No, they lie to us. They lie about what's right, they lie about what's wrong, they lie about the FUCKIN' HAMBURGERS!
And when we realize they're lying, really realize it in our gut, then we get scared. Then we get terrified, like children waking in the dark, we don't know where we are. "I had a bad dream. Mommy, Daddy, Sammy had a nightmare." And then Daddy comes and takes me in his arms and says, "It's okay Sammy, Daddy's here. I love you kid. Your Mommy doesn't, but I do." And then Mommy comes and holds me tight and says, "I gotcha bubula.
I'm here for you. Your daddy isn't, but I am." And then where are we? Who do we believe? Who do we trust? What do we do?
We do the only thing we can do. We kill the President’.
A child crying in the night. This is who we are, feeling abandoned and frightened of the darkness. Flashes of light, bright shiny toys comfort us in the wake of human comforts - gossip columns, social media, the vaste carnivality of Google. This distracts us, but ultimately leaves us lonelier than ever when it goes away. And that’s how we get desperate. Desperation on all sides of the political spectrum, which engenders action. It is at best constructive. At worst violent.
But we need not be in the dark. Because we can choose to burn bright. Bright in our actions, and in our intentions. Aristotle stated that an action’s righteousness is not found solely in one nor the other - but in the goodness of both. And this is why despite my sympathy for Czolgosz, Zangara, and all the people they represent it is never justifiable to resort to murder - assassination, murder it's all the same - to get what we want. Humans are gifted with a rational mind and opposable thumbs - surely we can dream up something better to do with them than pulling a trigger?
The protagonists in Assassins have been distracted by the darkness, resorting to their Master’s Tools of violence which, as Audre Lorde states, will never dismantle the Master’s House. In fact, they want us to be violent - it keeps prisons populated, and gives us people to blame. Don’t quite agree? Watch the Wicked movie, then you’ll maybe change your mind.
So this is why in the face of things that make me angry I write. And I talk. And I try to stave off depression through channelling my contempt into text. Try to make something.
I bought some linocut tools the other day, and listened to an audiobook whilst carving. It was relaxing. Then I phoned my boyfriend and got dinner with friends. This morning I had a coffee. Later, I will support my friend at a poetry evening to raise money for Congo. I’m trying to stay off social media a bit more. Trying to make myself better. Because I can be better than the world wants me to be. Every day, in little ways.
It’s tiring sometimes. But so much better than giving into destruction.
Sending all my love this difficult month. And as always, all my stars,
Char.
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