The relatively innocent naif coming out of Central NY

 

 

As a relatively innocent naif coming out of Central NY in '68, my eyes and ears (and later my mouth) was wide-open to the propositions suggested and asserted by others. By mid-May '70 I finally had the empirical evidence of who was blowing smoke up-my-ass and into-my-face and able to demarcate my identity as something with at least an idiosyncratic, if not a unique imperative.

Further years proved a repeated seen it-heard it of the expected and the monotonous.BUT EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE... It was those oases of the unique to the thought provoking that kept me from what could be worse sociopathic or psychopathic ventures, since being in the military precluded anything more than a comfortable material port of benignity.

Tho' I shared other's cynicism and skepticism of the Clintons and their ersatz media virtue, and had been on the left as an anti-authoritarian despite my posturing subordination to the decorum and discipline of a military careerist; I thought that maybe the materialistic American Dream of that 'City on a Hill' could be a reality. Until I TDY'ed near Moreno Valley, CA-outside of March AFB. It was then that I was reacquainted with the otherside-of-the-tracks for the working class. The later Dot-com bust, the 9/11 frenzy that led to Iraq after Afghanistan (on hold) and being out in 'Heartland Nebraska'-as close to a 'free market' state you'll ever see, exposed me both to the smug hubris of material success and control, along with the darker side of people hustling as outlaws to get by. Both ends of that spectrum had a laissez-faire attitude about ethics, though an ironic sense of morals and loyalty that had my visceral alarms of disgust going off.

I was in a relatively insulated, tho' a temp-worker/service worker, when the housing-bubble crash occurred followed by all the political-social-public health afflictions that descended on folks who just needed, as well as wanted a fair deal for their efforts. THAT WASN'T GOING TO HAPPEN. The self-aggrandizing and the careerist of mercenary ethics were more numerous and ubiquitous than those found sucking up to title and status in the ivy halls of my alma mater. And that's when I realized that my undergrad speculative theses had been analytically accurate despite the conventionalist reductionism that had been the social rebuttal to my suggestions and proposals.

NOW social media was in full bloom. But I had ONE BIG PROBLEM: my thoughts, as articulated, were a direct transcription from the hard-wiring of my mostly introspective thinking and analysis that had been influenced by the lexicon of the pedagogical background of that analysis. So Me, who'd once been described by a present day Congresswoman and former college classmate, as "So common", was now being labeled pretentious!

Like any intrepid crab leaving the bucket, I pulled myself out and realizing that it's not what I share in common with others thinking that's important, but what can be transactionally shared in deeds that is defining. Opinion, perspectives are more the f(x) of our backgrounds that are discretely unique and diverse to have divergent ways and means beyond our routine and social-cultural milieu.

`That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!'

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