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“The Golden Age of Piracy”

Such a clever, colorful description of a time in Colonial America. A good marketing ploy, for sure, to foster tourism.

The pirates would be so glorified is unfortunate. They were criminals, who committed unpardonable acts of theft and violence. Law breakers.

Why don’t we emphasize “The Golden Age of Gangsters”/ You know, with a focus on Chicago and New York City, back in the days about which so much has been written, and movies made. There is no lack of controversial characters to tout. Vicious, really bad dudes. We can spin that. This has already been done, though.

Then why not “The exciting Age of Jim Crow”? There are so many locales here in the South that could hold festivals and the like. Should generate some tourism dollars.

Also, we could romanticize “The Golden Age of Swinging”, which could recount the years when there were so many lynchings. Creative minds could devise marketing strategies that would bring economic benefits to a lot of places in our land. You know, where the overwhelming majority of lynching took place.

Now lest anyone construe most of what I’ve just written as serious suggestions, and it’s hard to believe that anyone would, let me disabuse you of that erroneous notion.

There are other times in our country’s story over these two-hundred plus years that would certainly lend itself to such satire. One such time was the treatment of Native Americans. Beyond tragic. The interning of American citizens of Japanese heritage during World War II comes to mind also.

Something there is in our national psyche that seems to glorify violence, brutality, portrayed in our film fare. How we love our violence, and “macho” representations by some actors. Guns, explosives, fisticuffs. You know. “Make my day”. War. We just can’t seem to get enough of it.

Is this who we are? What we venerate? Admire?

Okay. Enough of this. Probably not a good idea to even write about such times. An effete attempt at dark humor.

For those of you who hung with me to the end, thanks. I’ll try to do better next week.

May your weekend be pleasant.