Wednesday marked the 45th anniversary of Thich Quang Duc's decision to have himself doused in gasoline and set on fire to protest the oppressive policies of South Vietnamese President Ngo Diem's government (not, as many believe, to protest the Vietnam War). The Buddhist monk's final sacrifice was immortalized by Malcolm Brown's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph (Generation Y may remember it from the cover of Rage Against the Machine's self-titled debut), and it has seared itself into the public's consciousness as the desperate, ultimate act of self-immolation against the invulnerable forces of government that seem to constantly overwhelm the power of the individual. Duc's dramatic death, whether or not people agreed with his politics and methods, has meant something enduring and truly special to the world.
But death, as they say, just isn't what it used to be. At 6:30 a.m. on November 3, 2006, Malachi Ritscher, a mostly unemployed "experimental" musician, stood by an off-ramp in downtown Chicago near a statue of a giant flame, set up a video camera, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire. Hoping to make a statement to morning commuters about the "barbarism" of the Iraq war and our own implication as taxpayers in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and thousands of American soldiers (and private contractors), Ritscher instead became nothing more than a sideshow nuisance to a population eager to get to work and annoyed by the extra traffic his spectacular death was causing. So it goes.
