The Rally

[vakkotaur]

I suppose it's been long enough now that I can tell it. I very nearly got mixed up with a really bad crowd. This group seemed to live on hate of the other and believed, really truly believed, only in their own movement. Dissent was not tolerated. I was very fortunate to have escaped this movement.

I hadn't intended attending their rally. I pretty much just got caught up in the flow and soon the crowd had pressed me into attendance whether I wanted it or not. I had expected to be elsewhere, but there I was, and all the avenues of escape were guarded. I'm sure they had a more pleasant name for it, but when people stand by any means of exit to make sure people only go one way and never the other, that's a guarded escape route.

There was an attempt at reassurance, or at least a bone thrown to patriotism. Things began with everyone standing, facing the flag, and The Pledge was recited or the National Anthem sung. After that came a speech, or speeches, about what I'll just call The Movement which said nothing of substance but glorified The Movement without the slightest hint that there could just possibly be anything wrong with it, that it might have some flaw in need of attention. I was quite uneasy by now, but everyone seemed to be so caught up in things that they didn't notice my discomfort. That was the bit of the mass-hypnosis that was to my benefit. But the guards remained and escape was not a possibility. Everyone was to stay for the full dose of indoctrination.

Eventually things were built up enough for the Hymn that The Movement used. This wasn't just a bit of singing, this Hymn required standing just as the flag and Pledge or Anthem had. And it had more than that, even. It had a salute! It was an eerie, scary thing. I'm not sure if started with a standard hand at the forehead salute or if that came after the raised outstretched arm salute (it did look very Sieg Heil though those syllables and anything else hinting at them were studiously avoided). This cycled a time or two during the Hymn. If I hadn't been scared before, now I certainly was. It was, pardon the understatement, worrisome that this was happening here.

There followed more speeches, again praising The Movement. These were predictable Us vs. Them with no reasonable or even comprehensible explanation given to why They were to be held in such low regard. Though everyone was supposedly part of The Movement, it was a few people who were really involved in things. They were introduced and the attendees cheered and applauded every last one of them though, as far as I could tell, none might have ever done anything for The Movement. Then again, I wasn't really in The Movement, so they might well have done much for it.

Once the introductions were finally finished, there was more speech to incite. Curiously, despite all the promotion of a lockstep solidarity, there was a contest of sorts. This was no show of any talent at all. Not physical strength, not skill of some sort, and certainly not anything calling for thought - a thing that The Movement seemed to be designed to resist if not fear. Instead the attendees were grouped and each section yelled, with the loudest yellers winning. What was won? As far as I could tell, nothing. It was a pointless thing, but gave the impression though not the reality of not being in homogeneous lock-step with each other. It also was another item like the Pledge (or Anthem) and the Hymn which let attendees feel as if they had participated in The Movement without actually getting involved at a practical level. Perhaps that was just as well.

At last, at long last, it was over. There was something about another meeting for The Movement and a large fire, which seemed aptly destructive, but the rally ended and the guards let people by. Eventually things thinned out and I could get out of there. I did so with some speed, trying hard not to draw suspicion by going just too fast. These people and their way of thinking, or rather, not thinking and merely acting as automata scared me.

Some might claim the above is sensationalist and deceptive. The rally was a Pep Rally or Pep Assembly at a High School in Merrill, Wisconsin. The events are as I described them, though perhaps in a slightly different order. The eerie combination Nazi-like salute really happened, and as far as I know, continues to happen there even now. The atmosphere was as I described. The doors were guarded and dissent was not tolerated. I really was reminded of Newsreels from 1930s Germany when I saw what was going on. I was not the only one who did not want to be there, but it was amazing how whenever I asked anyone about it they were willing to go along with things without question since that was just the way things were and it was felt that since it was tradition it could not be changed. Tradition is often nothing more than a polite way of saying rut, and that's what everyone was in - a rut.

I don't believe that "It Can't Happen Here" because I've seen It Happen Here. Sports fans, just like other religious nuts, scare me. I know full well, and from direct experience, that my fellow American, my fellow man, is all too easily capable of throwing away rational thought in order to be part of the Us and avoid being part of the Them and rationalize it as being somehow good or at least not being bad. That many are willing to do so for something as meaningless as a ball game does not say much for the state of civilization.

Comments

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

After getting kicked out of art school (for, well, not taking art seriously enough, I guess, or school for that matter), I spent my fourth year of high school at Bellaire High (because that was the district I lived in, and because I lived in the district, they wouldn't let me ride a school bus, even though it was too far to walk, so I had to take the Metro bus to school every day, and what really sucked was that the closest stop was halfway to school anyway, sheesh... um... where was I? I'll start over.)

So I spent my fourth year at Bellaire High School, which, unlike art school, had a football team. And one day there was a pep rally. I didn't wanna go, having as much distaste for sports as you do. Fortunately, they didn't make me go, but I did have to spend the duration sitting in home room. My home room was close to the auditorium, and I could faintly hear the pep rally. I heard what sounded like cheering and chanting punctuated by what I think were drumbeats.

It was creepy. It kept making me think of the Thuggee ritual scene from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom".

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You have made a valid connection here. This is a dangerous flaw in human nature, an almost instinctive behavior that undoubtedly remains with us from our primate past.

Sports, religion, and politics all can bring it out. And the internal stirrings and reactions of the participants work the same way in all three cases. It is not rational, and it can be very dangerous. This is especially true for anyone who happens to be "identified" as "other" or "them" (not-Us) at the wrong time.

What is sometimes termed "football hooliganism" over in Europe can just as easily be turned into racial violence, or anti-gay rioting by one or two clever manipulators. This is how lynching works. People do things without questioning their actions, because it is expected, because it is safer to be part of the group than to openly resist it. The Nazi leaders were expert in this kind of manipulation, as were the KKK here in the US.

For this very reason, I hate and fear the present government of our country. Its manipulations of public opinion and behavior have stepped more and more near to the critical line at which these mob actions can begin, even if the political leadership doesn't intend it. They create an environment that is hospitable to those who do intend it and will take advantage of it.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

There was a bonfire somewhere that was done around the homecoming thing.