Hot Rock to You

16 December 2006

Arsenal 2 - 2 Portsmouth

My dad and I discussed over email the recent skirmishes between Manchester United fans and those of AS Roma. The worst part about the whole thing, to me, is that there could easily be some kind of ban on drinking alcohol at the match, or worse yet, a ban on away fans for international matches, as a direct result of the fights. No one died, but there were a number of injuries, and Italy has already suffered from a fatal clash earlier this year. During the late 1970s and through most of the 1980s, England had some of the wildest football supporters. They would get trashed, pile onto busses and trains, and basically roam the streets of other towns looking for a fight at 11 in the morning, four hours before the game. After some tragic accidents (re: Heysel and Hillsborough), politicians were able to push through legislation that forced the Premiere League to clean up its act. Before this, most soccer stadiums had both seating and a general standing area. These general standing areas were hotbeds of hooligan activity, and fights would break out regularly. These fights would create crushes of people, where huge crowds surge in one direction, and if the stadium is old enough, you end up with a lot of people dead, as in Hillsborough. After the legislation was passed, these standing areas were banned. They still exist elsewhere in Europe, but they probably don't have much of a lifespan anymore. So how do you avoid these kinds of tragedies? Ban alcohol? Wipe out the terraces? You can't prevent everything though; on 2 February 2007, a police officer was killed outside a Catania-Palermo match. Do you tell these fans not to come? Your attendance probably wouldn't suffer, as it would become a more family-oriented sport (which is what has largely happened in England). There is, however, something you would lose. Something intangible. An essence would be lost. The essence of football as rough and tumble, ungilded, honest, in your face, blue-collar heart-on-your-sleeve, would begin to evaporate. If you stop serving alcohol, people are more likely to go to a local pub and watch the game there (and, more likely than not, find some fights in or around that pub). Would this be an improvement? The gang violence in Italy isn't as rampant, I don't think, as it was in England during the 1980s. Then, if you were a British guy under the age of 25, you were, more likely than not, a hooligan. That culture has dimished in part, but still exists, as it does in Italy, and France, Spain, Germany. The culture is severely stunted. My dad mused with unfortunate clarity during our conversation that "an awful lot of people don't really deserve the freedom they have, so we all get 'crowd controlled'." In simpler times, when I was in high school, I thought myself a socialist utopian. As college wound its tendrils into me, I slowly decided that socialism was not the answer. In the sharp question of "controlled but safe" against "free and dangerous," I began to like the sound of free and dangerous. I was of course turning a bit into a hooligan myself at this time: perhaps that explains the ideological shift. Yet I don't tear it up like I did junior year of college; I haven't broken any windows or terrorized my friends for a couple of years. Still, the idea of control disgusts me. Then I remember that people have died, and probably will die. I don't know where that bright line lies, between necessary safety and true freedom. The importance of the issue seems implied because humans are social creatures; we must live with each other and avoid killing each other. So we regulate our lifestyle in that things will not get out of hand. Contrast that with: our governments wage unpopular wars overseas, letting poor, faceless foreigners die so that we may feel "safer." The moral high ground always seems taller from the other side. Now the crux of the matter: Seung-hui Cho. Gun control. If one of the teachers had had a gun, they could have stopped him. If he hadn't been able to buy a gun, he couldn't have killed 32 people. We don't know which of those scenarios is more likely. What if he only killed himself because he was running out of ammo? If a teacher had another gun, and he took out that teacher, he'd have more bullets. Now we're looking at maybe 35 people dead. If he hadn't had access to guns, maybe he would have turned to knives: stalking college girls and killing them in dark alleys, a la Jack the Ripper (although ethically juxtaposed). Should we ban knives too? Do we jail people we think are crazy? Who write shitty plays? How can we determine any of this? Oh right. We can't. You could take every tool capable of hurting people away from Seung-hui, and he might still find away to injure or kill. Guns don't kill people; American society represses and shunts many people, some of whom are mentally unbalanced enough that it sets the stage for an explosion of this caliber. I'll tell you right now: Seung-hui is the worst shooter in American history, but he won't stay on top of that list for long. In ten years there will be a worse one. You can make the background checks more rigorous, and thus avoid such rampant violence, but serial killers and psychos are bred here about as much as popular movie stars. I can't break down the elements for you, why it happens here with such alarming rapidity, but look at it this way: we don't really have sports riots. The girl who was killed in Boston a couple years ago is very much the outlier. But twenty years ago, that'd have been another grain of sand on the beach that was British football. 39 people died in the Heysel in 1985. It was a tragedy, sure, and Britain was internationally humiliated for generating the conditions which led to all the deaths, but it wasn't until Hillsborough four years later, when 96 people died, that reforms throughout English football began. Club memberships were instituted, closed-circuit televisions installed; essentially you had to sign your name down to get in, and you still get watched by "them." My fear is that it will take a worse school-shooting for anything to change, and that when those changes come, they will begin to pave the way for more centralized power in the federal government. Think about it: some deranged kid shoots upwards of 60 people in a school. Metal detectors and cameras are going to be installed; there will be a social rejection of nerds and goths (who are already the socially persecuted); mentally-challenged or damaged people will receive less sympathy. Is the freedom to bear arms worth the loss of privacy? I don't think so. But in this day and age, with easy access to weapons that can wipe out a considerable number of lives, that's the trade we're making. Britain already made its decision; UEFA is slowly being confronted with the problem. In time, America will endure a worse tragedy than Virginia Tech, and it too will come to a crossroads. I have very little doubt that freedom will come at the sacrifice of privacy, for that has been our track record thus far. We have even sacrificed other countries for our freedom. At some point, we have to stop ourselves: we're like a drunken sailor on the third day of a bender. We've lost any sight of reason and respond with reactionary vigor. I halted my crazy ways before anything got out of hand, before I got arrested or fined or injured. There is a breaking point between fighting for freedom (re: American Revolution) and fighting for control (re: the Iraq War). We have become the British Empire: we must realize it before we're torn asunder. Europe reformed its colonial ways only in the scarred aftermath of two world wars. The trick is to see the disasters before they crash upon us (the trick is to notice a violently-repressed, socially disturbed man) and destroy this once-great nation (the trick is to notice that the walls of Heysel Stadium are in poor shape: they would collapse eventually, regardless of reckless Liverpool fans). The walls of Heysel were kin to Seung-hui Cho; let us hope that America is not.