Pirate Society

So,
in my final pre-Lost blog, I just wanted to touch on what has ruined our society. Yes, this is the long awaited entry about pirates. Before I get into it for real-sies, I just wanted to distinguish between internet pirates and CD pirates or as I like to call them white collar pirates, and puffy shirt pirates. I don't care about white collar pirates or about how Metallica is suffering at their hands. I prefer Radiohead for not being such a baby about the whole thing.

So, back to real pirates. Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but... we all know pirates from the grand adventures they take us on such as Treasure Island 2, Pirates of the Caribbean, (the Disney ride,), and Goonies, but pirates were not the cuddly figures that we have become so accustomed to (those were gremlins). In fact, pirates were rather merciless and brutal with their prey, which includes their human prey as well as the English. I'm not going to burden you with facts or figures that represent how many lives pirates have affected, or how much financial damage they have committed over time. But, let's guess that both are in the thousands. According to the great supercomputer known as Wikipedia, the Barbary Pirates, North African pirates, alone (who the United States fought its first "war" against) sold over 1 million of their captured prisoners into slavery. Although this was during the classical period of piracy... (yes, apparently piracy has a classical period,) this is not the romanticized notion of the pirates, which is more of the burning and killing variety.

Pirate ships, would often start out as a British ship that would mutiny under harsh conditions and throw their captain in the brig solely for the crime of failure to prevent a mutiny (thank you Zap Brannigan). These rabble-rousers would then offer their ship up to the local buccaneers. Privateers, to use the politically correct term, were pirates with a get out of jail free card because the governments used appeasement strategies towards pirates, allowing the sacking of the ships of other nations, so long as the pirate would steer clear of that country's ships.

So, society has idealized these pirates because they lived without rules and anarchy has become such an underground youthful idea that our society has embraced the freedom of it all. But, you know what? These guys were robbers, murderers, slavetraders, they tortured their victims, and these guys were the bad guys in a time when everyone was kindof a bad guy, so yes, they are off the charts bad guys by today's standards. But, what happens next, after Robin of Sherwood Forest and Captain Jack Sparrow get to be famous heroes? Well, then we have cowboys like Billy the Kid becoming heroes. Soon after we get Michael Corleone as one of the great heroes of our time. It is a natural progression to have Nino Brown as a national hero. All of these people are considered "cool" within the modern lexicon because of their resistance to conforming to the norm and creating their own world view and power structure that operates under rules they create. And what about Echo, the warlord hero from Lost or Dexter from Dexter? How long before we have terrorist heroes and people are wearing the terrorist version of the skull and cross bones as necklaces and playing terrorist videogames? 100 years? 20 years? 5 years?

I have frequently compared pirates to the Nazis as they were the feared looming force of their time and they operated with out any ruth at all. But, that is not fair to either of these notorious groups because really they operated on different levels of government and with different agendas. The Nazis were a state controlled government that sought to spread their horrid hateful ideas throughout the world, so that structure was more like Soviet and Chinese communism and or the various forms of authoritarian governments around the world. Pirates were more like mobsters or gangsters because they banded together to rape and pillage and steal for their own interests. Some of them were forced into the trade because of various pressures, but ultimately these thugs committed atrocities as part of the group. (Side note: terrorists (in theory) are a mixture of the two, with ideological goals rather than material goals like fascism or communism, but using corporate social structures and not bounded to one national homebase, but rather fluid homebases like large organized versions of smaller time crooks. And that's why I don't like using terms like a war on terrorism because terrorism is more like (usually international) crime, and then we are back to the old euphemisms like a war on crime and war on drugs. And though terrorism is a serious problem that needs to be addressed with a firm hand, it's resolution is not likely to be achieved with annihilation or a conventional truce/peace treaty, (provided we win,) it is more likely to be dragged about like any and all other crimes, including the ongoing crimes of piracy around the globe. That is not to say that terrorism or any crime should not start a war with another nation, because that is a different notion entirely, but fighting terrorism is not fighting a nation, it's fighting a groups united by a method.)

So, at some point, pirates became a joke because as Mel Brooks says, "comedy is just tragedy plus time," and people started laughing at the silly pirates for their funky puffy shirts, their eye patches, and peg legs (honestly my high school's team name, the Peglegs,) or laughing at Nazis singing and dancing with a flamboyant Hitler leading the way, or a Chapelle show slaveowner trying to boss around 21st century gangstas with guns. These people are kind of funny when they are not attacking you because as Woody Allen said, "tragedy is when I stub my toe; comedy is when you fall down a sewer and die," and pirates have not directly affected our lives. So, after we have a few laughs at their expense, we start to think this group was not so bad and they have been picked on historically harshly for their physical deformities and their medical conditions, like scurvy or whatever. Then, we magnify the grandness of their deeds and all of a sudden, these pirates are the good guys, and the bad guys are the rest of society, (see Star Wars or if you'd prefer Serenity, which gratifyingly defends a civil war, similar to the American Civil War, without the racism.) Then, the same thing happens with drug dealers, drug lords, and war lords, with mafia dons, street gangsters, and crime-syndicate kingpins, with cowboy outlaws, rebel fighters, and terrorists, with spree killers, assassins, and serial killers.

Now that the terorist methods don't shock us much anymore such as the targetting of civilians, and with the moral equivalency that has been created equating all lives with those of civilians because life is life (I saw the headline on a major news network website, paraphrased "4 Israelis, 2 Palestinians die in bus explosion" after they were already reporting the two Palestinians that died were the bombers). How far fetched is it to say that terrorists will be heroes in movies soon or that people will have Al Zawahiri shirts like Che shirts are worn now. In our fast paced globe, these things are prone to happen, and happen quickly. And who do I blame for this? Can I blame Hollywood or the media or big corporations for glamorizing the life of crime? Should I blame the government or the parents or technology for failing to shield us? Will I blame the clergy or society in general or the professionals who defend them, heal their wounds, and advocate for them? I'm going to take a novel approach and say the blame belongs, not with the people who air the program or don't turn it off, but with the people who do the wrong. And of all the wrongdoers in history, and there were many, (possibly in the hundreds), I blame the pirates most of all, for being adequately vicious and sinister, but more importantly uproariously hilarious and comical.

So, no, I don't want your facebook application that applauds the pirates and their devil-may-care lifestyle or for their cruelty and glamorizes the world of crime. And, I don't want any of your similar applications. Seriously, don't get me started on zombies. What good have they done for the world?

But, really, where does that leave me? In a world where everyone is to blame except the blameworthiest? In a world where our heroes are of the flawed variety, often not just the under-dog, but the person overcoming a troubled history. There is little glory left for the Maximuses of the world who were always pure of heart and remain pure of heart until his valiant end. But, wait... didn't he and a band of rebels fight to overthrow the empire? Man, the world sure was confusing two thousand years ago. Pirates, man, they mess everything up.

Thanks for listening,
ME Papa Bear