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Fraggin'

By Bill Shunas

Sp 5 Willy (Ret.)
A.K.A. Bill Shunas

On vacation last summer I was with a group of people who came upon some Native American pictographs etched into a huge rock outside a cave. Our group—unfortunately—included a certain anesthesiologist who took one look and made some comment about "the savages and their drawings." My wife—as she is prone to do—immediately and caustically proceeded to tell this unrepentant yuppie about the thousand years of culture and civilization these people had before the white man ever washed up upon the shores of North America.

Now, the whole incident was of little significance except that it got me to thinking about the word "savage" which is not too much in common use nowadays although it should be. When I returned to the so-called civilized world a week or so later, I got out my trusty dictionary and looked up "savage." Old Webster used words like wild, barbarous, rude, brutal and cruel. Sort of reminded me of a lot of this country's leaders.

Seriously. Why do we talk in such refined terms about our political and commercial leaders? Just because they graduated from Dartmouth, wear a $953 suit and know that the salad fork goes on the left (or is it the right?). That doesn't mean that they aren't savages. Take a man like Elliot Abrams, Reagan's point man on the whole Nicaragua thing and current advocate of CIA assassination plots. Is not this pseudo-intellectual wild and rude? Were not the policies he pushed and carried out, policies that were brutal and cruel to the people of Central America?

Of course there are plenty of savages in Washington besides Elliot Abrams. Look into the Senate floor, that area of alleged sophistication, to someone like Senator Jesse Helms. It is not only that this man votes for and supports the kinds of barbarity that Elliot Abrams pushes his own kind of cruelty on the American people.

According to recent testimony of outgoing Surgeon General Everett Koop, 390,000 people a year die as a result of smoking. (Now, I don't know how he could possibly come up with that figure. I'm sure some of those people died more from environmental pollution, Agent Orange, stress or an overdose of sucrose. Nevertheless, the 390,000 figure gives us an idea of the major league ball park in which we are playing). Everyone knows that smoking kills, but because of the likes of Jesse Helms and friends the government condones and promotes the use of tobacco. So what does this say about Jesse Helms? Savage? Barbarian?

Or look to the corporate world. There you find nameless executives who have the biggest homes, the finest cars and memberships in the most exclusive country clubs. And many of their number have earned their millions because of their skill at making life miserable, dangerous and short for this nation's working people.

Paul Douglas Jr. is one of these little known representatives of the corporate world. Chief Executive Officer of the Pittston Company, he and his friends came up with an offer to the miners in their employ that precipitated the recently ended long and bitter strike against them by the United Mine Workers of America. Is it not cruel to cut off the pension plan due these workers after years of service? Is it not barbarous to abandon the health plan of 130,000 retirees, widows and disabled miners—this in an industry with a high accident rate and the dreaded black lung disease? Is it not savage to try to bury people while the blood is still warm?

Certainly the Reagan years, and now the Bush years have brought many of these type of people to Washington. Some of these people may really believe in the "trickle-down theory," but most are there to rip-off and run. And when they make out their budgets, they take away housing money and create more homeless, they take food from the mouths of poor children and medical care away from the ill. Tell me there aren't some savage people residing in Washington.

Smugness seems to be one of the characteristics of a ruling class. In the case of the U.S. of A., that smugness includes a belief in their own self-righteousness which combines with awesome power to trample whoever happens to be in the way.

Not that they would do these things themselves. They have overseers for that. They are genteel. They wear $953 suits, kiss their wives, hug their children and have the ability to discern which is the best wine. They may not even be aware of the cruelty they inflict. Nevertheless they are the modern-day barbarians. The manifestations of the use and abuse of their power are wild, rude, brutal and cruel. That is what is known as a savage, and it is time to bring back the word.