Eighth and Roast, a coffee shop on 8th Street in Nashville, TN that roasts and grinds its own beans, was teeming with hipsters complaining about their music careers when I walked in Thursday morning. I had honestly never seen so many people wearing flannel shirts in one place. Most seats were full but I managed one at the end of a long table, eavesdropped, and sipped my latte. It was worth venturing twenty minutes from home for, but I wished it tasted a tiny bit creamier.
Outside, a man on a bicycle pulled up to the door. He was old and looked a bit homeless, but as I watched him longer, I realized he was probably just wearing older clothes and riding his bike by choice. After ordering he came around to a seat next to me, one of the only empty ones. He indicated it apologetically and I nodded, politely shifting my chair away slightly in a gesture of making room that actually did nothing.
He sat down with a newspaper and began a long, rambling conversation about politics. I was fine with that and talked to him a little bit, but suddenly he got on the topic of wealth inequality. “I HATE rich people,” he said, sipping his four-dollar specialty roast. “Hate them. It’s Wall Street that messes everything up for us. Like those people who were responsible for the market crash in 2008? Nothing happened to them, it’s us taxpayers that footed the bill!” He was raising his voice now, causing the hipsters at the other end of the table to ignore us even more pointedly.
He realized his volume and dropped his voice again. “If I had my way, all those Wall Street executives would be dead.” He nodded at my raised eyebrows. “We would shut down Wall Street for a week or so, line ‘em all up, and…” he trailed off, looking at me significantly. “Why not a mass execution? They deserve it.”
“How interesting,” I think I said, and went straight to reading an article on my phone. We didn’t talk much more before he left, and I was a little relieved when he finally did go. What he said has stuck in my head for the past few days, though, and not just because of its bizarreness and shock value.
My gut reaction was instant judgment on him for having so much anger toward basic human greed. Sure, what they did was reprehensible, and I don’t think they felt the consequences of their actions enough either, but to want to kill them? That’s wrong. It’s way too severe a punishment for their crime.
But then uncomfortably enough, I recognized these thoughts from conversations with friends, and in those conversations, I had been the unreasonable one. With violence against women still an issue all over the world, and especially after the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne, Germany, I’ve been frustrated enough with the sluggish justice system to wish harsh punishment on perpetrators of violence against women. I realized it’s easy to justify whatever cause you feel strongly about. As much as I don’t like admitting it, there are issues I feel just as unreasonably angry about as the guy who wants to kill off rich people.
As much as what this man said was gruesome and absurd, I can’t simply write it off as ravings of a lunatic – that would be hypocritical. I have the capability of feeling just as angry. Maybe I’m a lunatic too, or maybe anger over injustice is as human as committing it.
One thing’s for sure: none of the above make for good conversation between strangers over coffee.