The above was spat out by a friend of mine in a fit of...a fit. He was rather upset. He was rather upset at the government - the federal version - "running roughshod all over my shit."
He'd just had a run-in, you see, with a rank-and-file dumbass, asking dumbass questions.
"So what freedoms have you lost?" asked the dumbass.
"Me personally?"
"Yeah. You."
My friend says that here the dumbass's face twisted.
"I haven't lost any."
"You can still do your thing, whatever you want, whenever you feel like it?"
"I guess so..."
"Let me tell you something, you fucking good for nothing. You haven't lost one motherfucking freedom, dig? You have lost nothing. I don't see you begging for your life in a prison somewhere where you can't speak the truth at all, and I sure don't see you suffering - in any visible way, anyway."
"Yes..."
"No. You're not suffering, and you know why? Because people have died for that sacred right you have - "
My friend exploded.
"Ha! Fat motherfucking chance, you're gonna feed me that shit and have me eat it! If anybody died for any reason for anybody else it was for the right to passionately disagree with the powers that be, to rail at them and mix my shit and piss for their consumption...people died for the ideals of this republic, yes, you have that right, but those people died for the most selfless secular aspirations, you know? And what hurts the fabric of the country is the equivalent of what hurts a body when one part or another is attacked or somehow messed with - radical agents using the country as a blunt instrument against itself. Do you understand that? Do you?"
"No."
"All for a patch of earth, and some dollars."
Everything went silent after that.
*************************
Apparently 6 hours later they went to 7-11 and scored some breakfast and then they smoked pot the entire rest of that day and the next, and agreed on just about everything. But that single fight - documented above - remains, to this day, the single, only time those two threw down. *
*Thanks to Quentin for preserving the tapes; to Charlie, for the masters; Mike for the music; and thanks to the many readers at Dailykos.com