Checkpoint

by Nicholson Baker

  BEN: Eminem is no favorite of mine.

  JAY: Well, no, he’s not Zappa. But that woman, I’m sorry to say, is the real obscenity.

  BEN: Oh, Lynne Cheney did some good things when she was at the NEH. You’ve got to lighten up a little. She’s not a viper. She was just on the board of directors.

  JAY: How could she be on the board of that company and look at herself in the mirror? How can she look at her husband in the mirror? Halliburton and Enron and all that. Enron wangling to profit from the pipeline across Afghanistan. It’s a sickening spectacle.

  BEN: Do you think they look at each other in the mirror?

  JAY: Probably they do from time to time. But you know, the straightforward corruption is never worth wasting too much time over. There are always going to be corrupt people who sip from the firehose. No, it’s the death-dealing. It’s the creation of suffering and hate. That’s when you have to move.

  BEN: Yeah, yeah, okay, but—yeah, all right, all right, this is all relevant and useful information. Dick Cheney is the shadow warrior—it does certainly seem that way. And Lynne Cheney was until very recently in the pay of the arms merchants. But that’s just the Cheneys. And you’re talking about—

  JAY: I’m talking about direct action against the guy who’s nominally in charge. George W. Tumblewad. If you as the guy in charge allow killing to go forward, if you in fact actively promote killing, if you order it to happen—if you say, Go, men, launch the planes, start the bombing, shock and awe the living crap out of that ancient city—you are going to create assassins like me. That’s the basic point I’m making. You are going to create the mad dogs that will maul you. And that’s what he’s done.

  BEN: Oh, Jay. My head, my head. I have a job. Let me have those bagel chips, will you? Oh, man. So, I take it, um, you’re no longer in the lobster business?

  JAY: I had to bring that effort to a close.

  BEN: Why? Seems like the fresh air, you know.

  JAY: I saw one too many lobsters. They’re primitive creatures, extremely primitive. What goes on in those cold heads down in the murk at the bottom of the bay? Some people get terrified looking up at the emptiness of the night sky. I get that exact sensation looking at a lobster.

  BEN: So you’ve been between positions?

  JAY: Well, no, I’ve been working for a landscaping company in Tennessee, moving flag-

  stones around, stone benches. For a while I had this idea that I wanted to get a job in a real factory, so that I could be part of something important, some manufactured product that went all over the country and went into everyone’s life, I wanted to punch a clock, whomp, time to work, just do the same thing over and over, go into autopilot, and that’s when I started to get a troubled feeling.

  BEN: A troubled feeling, you? Hah hah hah! Who would have thought!

  JAY: I still had this childish image of a factory in my head, which is obviously no longer a true idea, because face it, we’re not making anything anymore. It’s kind of scary.

  BEN: Well—

  JAY: What do we make? Huh? Do we make TVs, do we make shoes, do we make pillowcases, do we make electric motors? Do we make radios? Clocks? Dishes? Forks? Knives? What do we make? Hammers?

  BEN: We make pickup trucks.

  JAY: That’s for sure. We make light trucks for fascist fiddlefucks to drive around in.

  BEN: We make corn syrup.

  JAY: Corn syrup. That we do.

  BEN: Military hardware?

  JAY: There you go. Unmanned CIA robot attack drones. We do make those. Although I bet if we could we’d be outsourcing our attack drones to the Chinese. Slap an FAA sticker on them and sell them to tiny fearful countries.

  BEN: The Chinese-made attack drones would probably be more reliable. Cheaper, too . . . What? What? What is it?

  JAY: Oh, just remembering. Three men are standing on a bombed-out hillside in the mountains in Afghanistan. Do you recall that episode? They’re loading up a camel with some shrapnel that they’ve gathered to sell for scrap across the border in Pakistan. They’re scavengers. Finally here’s something American that actually helps them survive—the bomb shrapnel itself. A gift from the skies. And then a Predator attack drone flies by, rmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, very slow, rmmmmmmmmmmm, odd-looking plane, headless, and its camera gets a fix on them, and it turns, rmmmmmmmmmmmm, and some CIA drone jockey sitting in front of a screen sipping lemonade thinks, Woo Nelly, tall guys, long beards, robes—robes? ROBE ALERT, ROBE ALERT, ROBE ALERT, one Adam-Twelve, men wandering on the hills near the caves! Al Qaeda operatives! Could be Mr. Bin himself! So the CIA guy takes another sip of lemonade, pushes a few buttons, and suddenly the three men see this flare of a Hellfire missile, they hear the hiss of it, and they pause, and for some curious reason it’s coming toward them, it curves a little, it seems to know where they are, and boom, shreds of blood and tissue, moaning people. I knew, I knew when those towers came down, I knew we would be bombing somewhere very soon. It’s what we do. We get as far away as we possibly can and then we deliver the goods.

  BEN: Does Lockheed make those Predators?

  JAY: No, somebody else does that. They make the Hellfire missile, though. I do know that. And I’ll tell you something else. Lockheed has a joint venture with Israel’s state weapons company, Rafael. It’s called P-G-S-U-S, Precision Guided Something Something United States. PGSUS. Israel supposedly makes forty-five percent of this missile and Lockheed makes fifty-five percent of it. That way it can be deemed a U.S. product and not an Israeli product. It’s called the Popeye II missile. Any chips left?

  BEN: Finish the bag.

  JAY: So here we are in an attack on Arab cities shooting Israeli-designed missiles at them. And so lo and behold then you’ve got people in robes in Baghdad who are holding up bits of bombs that say “Made in Jerusalem.” I mean, that’s a guarantee, that’s an iron-clad guarantee that you’re going to have decades of smoldering hate. Terrorism out the wing-wang. I mean, damn! We can’t even make our own missiles anymore. I’m going to kill him. No shit. Four billion a month we’re spending for this war.

  BEN: Yeah, can you imagine the rail network we could build with that?

  JAY: I’m telling you, he’s one dead armadillo.

  BEN: We still make antidepressants. That’s a cheery spot on the horizon. The pharmaceutical industry. Don Rumsfeld’s old stomping ground.

  JAY: Pills, pickup trucks, and war, that’s it.

  BEN: That’s not really it.

  JAY: That’s really it.

  BEN: No, actually, seriously, we do still make balsa airplanes. I like those.

  JAY: That’s something. But yesterday I was shaving and I thought, Hey, do we make any lightbulbs in this country anymore? I kind of shivered for a second. It was like a cat walking over the country’s grave.

  BEN: Well, do we?

  JAY: I don’t think we do. I know that General Electric bulbs are made in Mexico and Canada, because I always check, I check everything now, it’s one of the few good laws left, that a product has to proclaim its origin. And you really have to hand it to those Chinese, I mean part of it is extreme poverty and slave labor, but you’re right, a lot of it is that they’re willing to do careful work all day long, fine sustained work, assembling little parts, painting little patterns, painting those molded dogs, the buildings in the snowy paperweights. And the Happy Meal toys.

  BEN: Yeah, those are—

  JAY: Bart Simpson on a skateboard and you look closely at him and there’ll be eight colors painted on this thing with a very very precise brush, and then, the tiny letters molded underneath, CHINA.

  BEN: Or PRC, People’s Republic of China—I’ve seen that.

  JAY: We’re living in this time of superabundance where’s it’s like there are a billion Geppettos and they’re all doing this masterful work and it’s just being given away, it’s not even valued properly, You want a toy? Here, take it, it’s worthless, finish your fries. The stuff coming from India now, beautiful inlay, kids are doing it, and mea
nwhile we can’t even make an exhaust pipe anymore.

  BEN: Yeah, but I bet you this country could reindustrialize itself very fast. We could do it in five years if we had to. Well, ten years.

  JAY: I’m not sure we’ll ever get it back. We’re at the end. You know what the biggest employer is?

  BEN: In the U.S., you mean? The military. I think it’s over a million people. Heavily indoctrinated, mostly Republican.

  JAY: Well, okay, after that.

  BEN: I’d say, hmm, the road-paving industry. Every little town has its team of road pavers. I’d say it’s asphalt manufacturing, and parking lots and roads and highways.

  JAY: Well, but what company, what single corporation?

  BEN: Oh, you mean Wal-Mart?

  JAY: Yes of course I mean Wal-Mart. Here’s a company whose mission is to buy stuff really cheap from other countries and put it on shelves here in the ugliest architectural environment you could ever imagine, that blue and that gray, big American flags hanging from the ceiling—and the light, God, that shadowless scary light that fills the place, acres of that pitiless light. “I confess, I shot the sheriff, please, take the light away!”

  BEN: I’ll tell you, my son has always loved going to Wal-Mart. On our last trip there I bought a DVD of the Andy Griffith Show. It cost five dollars and fifty cents. We got a delicious pretzel on the way out. And there were friendly chatty women in the crafts and sewing area.

  JAY: What were they chatting about?

  BEN: Who was going to go on break first.

  JAY: Anyway, it’s pretty dang ugly.

  BEN: I’ll concede that. But then, if you’re going to talk retailing, there’s Old Navy. The old truck in the middle of the store with all the T-shirts heaped around it?

  JAY: Old Navy’s good. Target’s good.

  BEN: And the shop windows in New York City—we can be proud of those, can’t we? I mean, are you really trying to tell me that you’re going to kill George W. Bush because Wal-Mart is ugly?

  JAY: It’s a contributing factor, it really is.

  BEN: That’s just plain screwy.

  JAY: Sam Walton’s kids are some of the richest people in the world. The money those four have, twenty billion dollars apiece—it’s enough to make you shit. It’s like they’re sitting in tiny rubber dinghies, floating on seas of hog waste. And it all came from those stores. Our country’s dying, man! We’re killing people and we’re dying at the same time! I brought a hammer along.

  BEN: Oh, boy.

  JAY: It’s a basic tool. Remember What’s-Her-Name who gave her husband forty whacks? The man deserves a good bludgeoning.

  BEN: Stop it, Jay. That’s brutal. Why do you keep singling him out? We’ve had bad presidents for fifty years.

  JAY: He’s the absolute worst. He’s the broken pickle.

  BEN: The broken pickle?

  JAY: The one at the bottom of the jar, with the seeds swirling around it.

  BEN: You’re looking for someone to blame. Everyone does this. I do it. I could feel myself doing it this morning when I was driving down here. I went past about four Staples and two BJ’s Wholesale Clubs and a Fuddruckers and a couple Wal-Marts and a Circuit City and a this and a that—all these cars going in both directions—and as usual I began to think, Why the heck is anyone bothering to drive anywhere in this country? Wherever you go, it’s the same.

  JAY: It’s terrifying, isn’t it? Some places are hotter, some places more people speak Spanish, that’s about it. Nothing’s local, we’re nowhere!

  BEN: Right, it’s the triumph of the galaxy pattern. So I start thinking, What was the demonic force that did this to us? What cabal was it? Who can I blame? You say, Oho, the Republicans. Aha, the president. I go, Oh ho ho, it was those cold warriors of yore, those passive defense think-tankers, who did this to us, who destroyed our cities, but the truth is—

  JAY: Hang on a second. Hi, Inez, just checking on our lunch. Great, thanks.

  BEN: Is it on its way?

  JAY: Shouldn’t be long.

  BEN: Okay, but the truth is we did it ourselves. We thought we wanted it this way. Most people like driving around all day. None of this was the result of George W.—it’s the result of millions of tiny individual decisions.

  JAY: Yeah, but sometimes you reach a point where you realize that millions of tiny individual decisions are condensed into one man. That’s what I’m up against.

  BEN: I’m telling you, they were all bad. Honestly. Truman, Eisenhower, both bad. Kennedy? Devious, totally unfaithful. All he had was a smile. “Ask not,” my ass, he was no good. Kennedy, then Johnson, Johnson was no good. Nixon, no good. Bad. Lousy. Ford? No good. Carter? Meant well, no good. Reagan: terrible. Bush Senior, worse. Very bad. Horrible. Mired us in military debt. Filled the government with intelligence agents. Disgusting, disgusting, loathsome, horrible. And a whiner, too. Godawful man. Who else? Ah, then we had Clinton. What’s the first thing he does when he gets into office? He sends planes into Iraq, some “sorties,” just to show he’s no slacker.

  JAY: Kills people.

  BEN: Lost me right there. Later on he and Wesley Clark bomb Belgrade. They bomb the TV station!

  JAY: And kill more people.

  BEN: Clinton, bad. And now we have George W. Bush. Really bad. Hellacious. Stole the election, etcetera. So you’re going to single out this one guy? Of all these people, one of them was killed in office. You’re going to make it that two of these mediocrities were killed in office?

  JAY: Yes.

  BEN: Well, I’m sorry. We are so close to financial collapse in this country. We’re just on the edge. We’re hollow. The termites have been munching for decades. Then you come along and cause a crisis.

  JAY: Exactly!

  BEN: Great, now we’ve got true panic. Asian countries don’t want our debt. We have no cash, no credit, nothing to sell except weapons. We’re a bankrupt, bankrupt country. Our consumer industries are prescription drugs and corn sweetener. What’s going to happen when all that comes out? If it comes out gradually, maybe the world can adjust. Maybe there won’t be looting. Holland was a world power once. Maybe we’ll end up humble, like the Dutch are, and regroup. If it comes out suddenly, though, maybe there will be a collapse. Who suffers then? The poor suffer. Maybe we end up with several regional territories run by Samoan strongmen. Who knows? I don’t know. It’s all going to come out eventually no matter what happens to any president, but I sure think it’ll be a lot better all around if it comes out at a trickle.

  JAY: No, it’s much simpler than that. The guy can’t be allowed to get away with murder. Period. The government shouldn’t execute him, because the government shouldn’t be in the business of taking people’s lives. It has to be an individual. Which is me. If what I do causes an upheaval, okeydoke. The sooner we get our comeuppance, the sooner we stop being a world bully, and the sooner the dying stops. You know what’s totally fucked us up? Morally?

  BEN: What?

  JAY: Abortion.

  BEN: Ugh. Don’t you have enough to think about?

  JAY: No, this is very much a part of it, because I think one reason this country is so totally messed up and in the viselike grip of these brownshirts and these radio wackos right now is because the left decided, Okay, here’s our big issue, “reproductive rights.” Well, it’s not a good issue at all, and it introduced an inconsistency into the liberal position, a huge inconsistency that the right then exploited, and will continue to exploit until the left is destroyed. If the Democrats weren’t so bullheadedly pro-abortion we wouldn’t be in Iraq now.

  BEN: How’s that?

  JAY: Because Bush wouldn’t have won. Bush won because gentle-hearted people heard the fakery, the falsehood. “Pro-choice.” It’s audible.

  BEN: So what’s your position? Make it illegal?

  JAY: It’s illegal already. I mean, if it’s a couple thousand cells, the size of an aphid, well, fine. Ladybug, okay. Water strider? Hmmmm. But then very quickly we’re talking about something the size of
a mouse, and that’s important. The size of a mouse. A mammal. Then our protective instincts come into play and our instincts say, Hey, this is a vulnerable innocent creature and we can’t just suck it out of its burrow and let it die there on a steel tray. It should be protected under the laws of the country.

  BEN: What’s the law now? I have to tell you I don’t think about this much. I avoid it.

  JAY: The law now is basically that you can have an abortion if the baby would die if it was born.

  BEN: I see.

  JAY: And the pro-choice fact sheets say things like eighty percent of abortions are performed when the fetus is less than two and a half inches long. That’s about the size of the Indian in the Cupboard. Why would we think that because it’s two inches long we can kill it? Dr. Seuss knew what he was talking about.

  BEN: What do you mean?

  JAY: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

  BEN: God, I bet you’re popular at parties.

  JAY: The right wing is right on this, I’m telling you. This is murder. It is. You don’t have to be a Christian extremist to see it. Millions of women get pregnant in this country every year. Do you know how many of them allow a person in a white coat to kill their babies?

  BEN: I really don’t want to debate this with you. It was better when we were talking about assassination, honestly.

  JAY: We are talking about assassination. The objections to war are poisoned by this hypocrisy. About twenty percent. Twenty percent of all pregnancies in this country end up being aborted. That’s hundreds of thousands of infants.

  BEN: Fetuses.

  JAY: Not fetuses! “Fetus” is a scientific word that’s deliberately chosen to be ugly so that the remorse of killing will not attach to it. Infants.

  BEN: Nnn.

  JAY: If it’s an aphid, fine. When they’re as big as a mouse, when they’ve got hands, they deserve our protection. They’ve become civilians.

  BEN: Nnn.

  JAY: That’s the link. I’m marching with all these people against the war, and I’m screaming, “Hey Bush, what do you say? How many kids have you killed today?” And it’s true, the blood is on his hands, so you scream it and scream it, but then it kind of sticks in your throat, you know? Because you look around at the screaming people in the crowd and you know damn well that they would shun you, they would turn all their fierceness and their fury on you if they knew that you believed that abortion was murder. They would! You know I’m right.