> The key thing about this song and all the other
> stuff like it is that the victims of whatever
> crime was committed do not exist.
Two separate key things.
Key thing 1: like most who respond to Guthrie, including most of his admierers, Max assumes Guthrie was utterly lacking in self- consciousness and sophistication. It follows that Guthrie would have been utterly abashed to realize that, by gosh and by darn, he had never noticed that his song didn't mention any real bad thugs and suffering victims. How could I have been so simple- minded he would have said.
Key Thing Two: But if Guthrie happened to have just a little bit of sophistication, and actually knew what he put into and what he didn't put into his song, then I guess we would also have to conclude that Guthrie was a bit more familiar with Max's own presumed tradition (those traditions going back to Aristotle's "rule of law rather than of men" and including that moldy old phrase in criminal proceedings, "The People vs. John Doe") -- that Guthrie was a bit more familiar with this tradition than Max himself.
(Unless, of course, Max beat Yoshie to the punch, and all his posts on this thread have been parts of a developing modest proposal.)
Because if we stick to this tradition of rule of law, then while it might be a very nice gesture on the part of the people, acting through their government, to establish some sort of compensation for victims of crime, those victims have no damn fucking place in the courtroom, as victims. It is "We the People:" against whom the crime was committed, not some alleged individual victim, and if the court acts otherwise, then we have repudiated the rule of law.
And of course that is what Guthrie's last two stanzas are focused on:
Tell me who makes the laws for that hang knot...
I don't know who makes the laws for that hang knot...
Just because they tied their laws with a hang knot...
Any one who reads or listens to Guthrie without assuming the same subtlety which one would find in Joyce or Stevens or James isn't listening.
Carrol