Entry 54. The assassin comes calling

Mahatma Gandhi, who freed his nation with nonviolent civil disobedience, died Jan. 30, 1948, shortly after being shot in the chest while walking  onto the prayer grounds at his home in New Delhi.

A few days before his death, the 78-year-old Gandhi said, “Should I die by the bullet of a madman, I have to do so with a smile. There must be no anger in me. God must be in my heart and on my lips, and you must promise me one thing: Should such a thing happen, do not shed a tear. I have done my deeds for humanity not requested by any human and I cannot stop on request of anybody. I am like God wanted me and I do as he advises me to do. Let him do with me as he pleases. If he wants to, he may kill me. I believe that I do as he orders.”

Martin Luther King, who used Gandhi as a model in his efforts to free his people, died April 4, 1968, shortly after being shot as he stood on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis.

The night before he died, King concluded his last speech by saying, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

Ramsey Sardonicus was shot by a sniper during the inaugural ball marking his second term as president of the free nation of Colorado; he was 41 years old. Jesus was crucified at age 33. Real life is not so gentle with those of us who seek to lead nonviolent revolution.

It gave me little comfort to know Henry David Thoreau died at home in bed, seeing as Thoreau first contracted tuberculosis when he was 18 years old in 1835 and spent the next 27 years suffering from it on and off before the damn bug finally killed him at age 44. I figured I had a four-out-of-five chance of dying a violent death and a four-out-of-five chance of dying before I hit 45.

And since Thoreau was not an especially public figure until years after he died, I figured the main reason old Henry David wasn’t shot was because he wasn’t famous enough to kill. It was only a matter of time, I figured, before some nutbag came calling at the door. I only hoped I had a chance to talk to the guy before he pulled the trigger.

So, yes, it’s true that when Frederick Miles Masterson stepped in front of me that day as John Hemlock and I strolled along my familiar beach on Lake Ptolemy, I  raised my eyebrows and told the stranger with a smile and just the slightest gasp of recognition, “Oh! It’s you.”

Oh, dear, I think I’ve gotten ahead of myself again.

Entry 55

Entry 34. The civil disobeyer

Henry David Thoreau hated that he was asked to support a government that condoned slavery, the idea that a man could hold another man as if he were property. Thoreau also hated that he was asked to support a government that had gone to war under questionable circumstances.

He had spent a single night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax, which he found unjust, and in the course of that night he realized that the state had no control over his mind and soul, the essence of who he was.

“As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog,” Thoreau wrote in EY 1849 – about 400 years ago. “I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.”

Reflecting on the disruption that his small protest had created in his little town, he envisioned that if people in general refused to pay their taxes to protest the institution of slavery or the unjust war, the State might be motivated to abolish slavery or end the war.

“If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose,” he wrote. “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.”

And Thoreau tried to convince his readers that a person of conscience had an obligation to be a part of this peaceable revolution: “Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

This was the popular beginning of the concept of noncooperation – that gumming up the machinery of government by, for example, flooding the prisons with peaceful men and women who deliberately violated an unjust law, could have the same effect as an armed revolution, and (I would argue) even a greater effect.

Entry 35. The man in the jail cell

Entry 13. After class

I don’t remember much of the rest of the roll call from the day Buffalo Springsteen first appeared in my class, except that the boy who made fun of Buffalo’s name turned out to be named Carson McGillicudy, so I guess he knew something about lightening up over his parents’ naming decisions. In fact the laugh over his name was bigger than the one over hers, given the circumstances.

The dustup between Carson and Buffalo gave me a good opportunity to segue into the class themes.

“Now we had a little incident here a minute ago, and before I get into the syllabus, I’m going to use it as what we educator types like to call a teaching moment,” I told the class. “Buffalo here had a difference of opinion with young Mr. McGillicudy, and she chose not to use diplomacy in resolving those differences.

“I’m going to make the proposition that Buffalo Springsteen accomplished nothing by going after poor Carson here physically. No, actually, I’m going to say that she produced exactly the opposite of what she hoped to accomplish. What do you think, McGillicudy?”

“I don’t know, Dr. Kaliber,” Carson replied ruefully. “I don’t think I’m ever going to call her Buffy again.” We all laughed at that.

“Yes, but here’s the most important thing about that — did she change your mind about whether ‘Buffy’ is an appropriate nickname for someone named Buffalo?”

“No, of course not.”

“You’ve got it precisely correct,” I said. “She didn’t change your beliefs in any way, shape or form — in fact, I believe even after she did her best to persuade you, you used the word ‘psycho.’” Even she smiled.

I went on to mention a quote from Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government — the one about how the state “is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior strength.” I outlined my core belief that people will use force to win an argument, especially when they have a government at their command, but they don’t actually ever win the argument.

“My point is that violence might force people to change their behavior, but it can’t change their minds,” he said. “The most brutal regimes in the history of humanity have all faded to dust eventually, because you can’t brutalize an idea out of existence.”

“Hang on a second,” McGillicudy persisted. “A lot of those brutal regimes were overthrown violently. I mean, how else do you get rid of violent oppression if not by violence?”

“Good question. That’s a big chunk of the syllabus, and we’ll get into that in depth as we go along. For now, let me suggest that you recognize the names of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King faster than the names of Nathuram Godse or James Earl Ray. The names of the men who fought for freedom without raising a hand in violence live on in our memories more than the names of their assassins.”

“We remember Hitler and Raynoldizon, too,” Buffalo interjected.

“True,” I sighed, “but we sure don’t admire them the way we do Gandhi or King or Thoreau. No one wants a Hitler or Raynoldizon in charge — in fact, the nastiest insults politicians usually throw at each other are comparisons to tyrants like that. They never shake their fist and say, ‘My opponent is just like Gandhi.’ Tyrants are the bad example; nonviolent resistance is the good example.

“I’m off on a tangent. My point is simply that you can force Carson not to call you by a nickname, but you can’t force him to change his mind. Changing minds is a more complicated process. That’s why so often you’ll find that a violent revolution only results in a new violent regime, sometimes more violent than the old one.”

I’d like to say I was bold enough to stop Buffalo Springsteen after class that first day and launch into what now seems to be an inevitable courtship, but truth be known, it was a week or two into the semester that I caught up with her as she walked purposefully across the campus – she always walked as if she knew exactly where she was going.

We exchanged greetings and small pleasantries, and then I came to the point.

“Buffalo, it’s extremely inappropriate for me to ask given our teacher-student relationship, but –”

“I’d love to.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re asking me out, right?” she said with the hint of a smile, a shake of her flaming red hair and a twinkle in those remarkable sea-green eyes. “I’d love to.”

We worked out a time and place to meet for coffee the next afternoon, then she leaned up, brushed my cheek with her lips, said “See you then,” and glided away, looking back once more to share that knee-buckling twinkle.

Entry 14