The Status Quixotic ...

Republicanistas and the new McCarthyism 

The Status Quixotic ...
by Alfred Lehmberg


Fact is?  I have a quickly dwindling free expression. All of us are effected by this creeping loss... we get used to that being the way things are, or we rage at the dying of the light.  I'm moved to rage.

For my part I remain one of the genuinely disenfranchised (denied a more decent living) for expressing rational views and criticisms regarding interesting subjects piece, part, and parcel of our flawed human consciousness and experience. These are subjects in no way extreme, violent, or prurient. They're just critical even if uncomfortable. What's the problem, really, where I'm the one out nearly a half million in lost wages over the last 15 years and not allowed a job few want to do in the first place?  My "punishment" in no way fits my "crime."

Is it the interminable essence of my writing style?  Is it my PAQ ("prosery" of arguable quality)?  Is it the starkly conscientious contentiousness of my social commentary? Is it my very rational interest in UFOs and the abduction phenomenon—among the other ancillaries of same—a reason for a summary dismissal and obvious blacklisting?  Is it age bias preferring more malleable young women to an over 50 combat vet driven to truly teach?  Is it a small public notoriety vis a vis my unwavering defense of liberal values on a 21st Century communication system?  ...Is it my breath? 

Is my composed art disturbing and unsettling—a reminder to the reader of something seemingly convenient (but unethical) to forget? Do you think that I might confuse the kids (forgetting for a moment that it is better to confuse them than to bore them)?  What?!

No one has seen fit to challenge me directly on the foundations (or the appropriateness) of my rational convictions or teaching method. All evaluations were ironically top drawer. No one does me the courtesy of an eye to eye sit-down for a little logical and fair-minded mentoring. I'm not a know-it-all, I live to learn, and I will only admit to a fairly low toleration for "dogs" (of any stripe) that won't hunt.  Regarding those "dogs" (ideas, methods, and techniques et al)... why bother except that they degrade our human experience and make us prey for powerful psychopaths?

I write epic songs, the PAQs alluded to above; they are meant to be re-sung. I find them exhilarating, myself! Each of them has its own little jazz/folk tune attendant to help carry it along and, collectively, they are like little keyholes into the universe for me.  On the astonishing ride that these things have become for me, I am allowed to see a little deeper into the murk (actually a lot deeper) than I ordinarily can.  I go *somewhere* with them, on the natch.  Folks reading have told me they can go, too, sometimes.  They may chap your butt but that is, more likely, a reaction to being pinned down and exposed.

Every sentence of my composition aspires to stand alone. Every word is carefully chosen and, as I taught the whole of a professional career and remain hard-wired for it, even a mini education if the reader should have to look one or two of them up... There're not too many of those. They are the *right* words, reader, accurate to the high nines, and they are an honest attempt to switch out verbal lightning bugs for more compelling lightning bolts.  No apologies here.  It's my understanding that's what writers do.

I'd write them, have to write them, even if I was the only reader. I have some small indication that there are a few more reading than just me, so the worst possible thing has happened... abandon all hope... I've been encouraged.

...Now you've done it...

The positive response as regards my situation by far and away exceeds the negative response which is almost nil. None have suggested that I should NOT be a teacher in a substantial amount of personal mail, while my few cowardly attackers and arbitrary detractors continue to hide in the anonymity of faceless officialdom. So, again, what's the problem, really?

Why am I paying this unreasonable and wholly unearned social price for writing songs of conscientious expression (if that's the problem)? Why do I have to endure this back-shooting dismissal for exercising "guaranteed" civil rights? Why should I allow this totally unexplained and completely unjustified reflexive disrespect for my very reasonable and conscious if fiercely secular sensibility—a sensibility well within the assumed bounds of refined civility... I mean, really, where I'm not writing about this stuff, popular culture is otherwise shoving it up my... ...nose...

You might argue that a career soldier documented as singularly gifted as regards following orders creatively is cut from a cloth not presently suited for public (and certainly private) schools, and that I would cause a disruption in the status quo. You might be right... but one must struggle to REMEMBER that that is simply not the point! The POINT is that education largely fails in this country, is an uneven academic smear of regressive, grudging, and minimal efforts, and that it only teaches children how NOT to lead (or intelligently follow) in the 21st century.  Correct me where I'm wrong.

The POINT, moreover, is that American public education is a place where the exuberant are drugged to a convenient conformity, the creative are dulled and discouraged to the lowest common denominator, and the intelligent are summarily broken to suit short term social goals. The special are largely ignored at both ends of the spectrum. It's an environ where the academic penny is saved at school to incur the pound debt cashed in on later at the penitentiary... Could that be the system: a 21st Century slave class.  Not a question.

One had better hope and pray that someone questions the status quo! See, the "status quo" creates more misinformed criminals and rational psychopaths than it needs to. The status quo deserves every test and question leveled at it. The status quo is just another dog that won't hunt. Besides, the status quo by definition must remain unchanged, and to remain unchanged is to die suffocating in your own wastes, intellectual and otherwise.

Are these the expressions that I am to be pilloried for? My "apologies"? I have eyes; I see. I have ears; I hear. Besides! I have every right of free expression this side of shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre, don't I? My expressions, further, do NOT: require my expiation, justify my continued persecution, nor do they warrant the arbitrary dismissal I've continued to suffer since I left the Army in 1992!

As I have written before, "mash something down without GOOD reason "here", and just have it pop up over "there"—only meaner." I'll leave it to the reader to appreciate what that might mean...

For my money all would have been better served by figuring some way to employ me in the necessarily vast system, but it is too LATE for that now. I was made, much too casually, an item on a professional blacklist even down to non-teaching positions in the system. It remains to be seen what the end result of that arbitrary assignation will be. A victory by either side is likely to be Pyrrhic, but I cannot go quietly away for having been merely dismissed by just ANY convenient, contrived, or arbitrary faux-academic functionary prosecuting personal faiths and philosophies regarding what he wants in his school system.  It's not just his school system.

NO, I'll NOT be silent about this new social McCarthyism persecuting the secular. I'll do as I promised many moons (or so) ago and be VERY strident about reporting any affect I've experienced as a result of my ufological interests and the unfettered artistic expressions of those interests. I'll also keep making lawful expressions of conscience and social commentary. I owe it to the best ideals of this nation (and myself) to continue, and I've not forgotten that this is America even if most everyone else CAN and HAS.

"Meet me at camera three, America."

...I was in your bosom and I am representative. I patterned myself after the best of what you taught me! For conducting myself in your best traditions I was turned away and cast out? Given opportunity (?) I'd reconsider, were it me. That would be the "Christian" thing.

The implication is that if you can't accept me at MY low octane level of civil conscientiousness, then you won't be able to accept what you MUST accept later on to survive a future that roars down upon us all like a long-tailed comet from deep space. I'm no enemy.  I'm that needed friend of conscience who breaks the inconvenient—but needed!—news, of needs, for all of us. 

I'm also you... ...and a man named William Lester, a man reportedly better educated, more experienced in public education, better read, and more communicationally with it than I to be sure. I'm not worthy.  ...And he was summarily dismissed, is my understanding, from public teaching as a result of not being a chalk dust and impotent bore to his students, as was my aspiration.

Read on.