Joe,
I didn't think it was possible, but you might be more cynical than I am. I call the hologram by a different name. The Matrix. I was in the Marines and spent almost two years in Iraq. I enlisted in the Corps after graduating from college and I am about to start my master's degree at American University in Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs.
Thanks for writing the book "Deer Hunting with Jesus." It was strikingly apropos for the times in which we live. The mass majority of men that I served with came from that background you described. I didn't fit in well with my "liberal trash talking." It's great to be out of the Corps and I hope to make a difference. I hope to reach people and let get them to wake up.
If you have any advice for a young patriot, I'm all ears!
Thanks again Joe,
Ryan
Leesburg, Virginia
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Ryan,
We cynics have gotten a bad rap here in the land of propagandized optimism. If cynicism is defined as: "Distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others," then hoooo Boy! America needs a friggin lot more of the stuff, doesn't it?
And besides, I always loved the Greek cynics. They believed virtue was the only necessity for happiness. Fuck money, they said. To hell with what the rest of society does, they said. Better to live like a dog, they said, than to blunder along gobbling up the happy horseshit strewn in their path, which most of society holds so dear. "Why shore nuff, Helen. Them good people at the DeeParwment of Homeland Security wouldn't steer us wrong. Now yew just bend over for that cavity search like the nice man asked you to do."
"Waaaal sir," as my old grandpappy used to say, cynicism "tain't all near as bad as most folks make it out to be." Indeed, I've been living like a dog most of my life, and it ain't all that bad. So when I heard that the ancient symbol of the cynics was the dog, I said to my self, "Self, you has found yore peeps. And it didn't take no Moses partin th' waters o' the Red Sea to do it neither!" Just the proper dee-gree of cynicism.
Two more shots of bourbon and I was forever a soul mate of Diogenes.
In art and labor,
Joe
