The Dream Police and The Case of the 5lb Line...

==originally published Jan 2015==

I stand accused in the court of my conscience.  The crime?  Social profiling dishonorable motive.  The scene of the crime?  My favorite little greasy spoon diner, of course.  The particulars of the accusation?  Two kids, out of the bar early looking for a bite to eat before going on to what ever was to become of their evening, of their obviously evolving relationship, and the assumptions and assignments their conversation (carrying clearly across the quiet of a slow to dead point in the evening’s traffic) inspired in yours truly.

Both kids were college students of course.  The lad, by his words, on the edge of graduating with a technical degree of some sort in aeronautics, he spoke of taking a job as a ferry pilot taking aircraft in for maintenance work.  The lass really didn’t reveal her course of study, of her all I have is observation.

They spoke quite formally, really, very polite exchanges of well crafted sentences dealing with events relating to their lives on campus, nothing out of the ordinary at all.  In point of fact it was the very structure of their conversation attracted my attention to them, otherwise I’d have paid them little mind, left my assessment at a first impression: just a couple who’d found each other early in the evening and agreed to adjourn for more private recreations, the only point of interest a slightly voyeuristic chuckle at the difference in their statures: he rather tall, slender, refined in the manner of Scandinavian nobility with exceptionally long fingers, she an attractive and very petite lass of oriental heritage, my first thought concerning them was actually a quite benign hope they’d find a bit of genuine delight in each other as described in David Bowie’s song “China Girl.”  She seemed the sort of woman to fit the devotion expressed in the song, the kind where you just know if she takes it into her head to take a boy’s mind off his worries for an evening she knows exactly  how to go about such a mission of mercy.

If I’d left it there I’d not be where I am, standing in the dock of my own thoughts, but I didn’t.  As their conversation continued on phrase after phrase popped flags from the typical Republican political spiels, the unmistakable markers of the conservative elite, and it was the lad offering them. The lass would echo each he offered almost verbatim several exchanges deeper into the conversation, but never offered one in her own right.  She said several things quite in keeping with them, but never in the exact wording of the propaganda masters.  It got so dense I was entertaining the idea what I witnessed was a lad determined to rise through the political ranks of the Young Republicans using the lass as an audience to practice for the campaign trail.  If that was his intent I’d give him good marks, he had them well memorized, played them at appropriate points.

And yet, there was no evidence to indicate the lad was anything but sincere in his statements.  Ample evidence to indicate he was more than a bit frightened of his companion’s well refined sexuality (I’m not sure he was even aware that he was humming, in a quite pleasant voice, what I think were church hymns every time the conversation would cross the man-woman interface, any time she’d try and dial on even a bit of feminine allure as a complement), but nothing to indicate he was anything but sincere in his goals and ambitions, his values and his ethics.  

It is an impeachment of my objectivity as a pragmatic idealist that I’ve allowed the dishonorable methods and motives of the hypocritical and essentially traitorous Bain-AIG-Halliburton-Enron camp to become the default assumption of motive where a traditional-conservative individual  is concerned. 

Enter the above as exhibit A in the prosecutions case: gross cynicism inspired by  what was, at one time, the American dream being expressed in a social setting. 

Not an acceptable thing, but still, where it might have gotten me noticed by the dream police it wouldn’t have been likely to have gotten me indicted.  What got me indicted was my after the fact speculations concerning the lass.

Every university is host and home to some number of them, the women who attend with an mrs degree her prime and quite undeclared major. She studies hoping she’ll never need to earn her living with what she’s learned. Such women are not as common now as they once were, but they still exist in sufficient numbers to maintain the stereotype as an active subset of current society.  The stereotype is, of course, most often applicable to women where the conventions of her culture specify she is to dedicate her life to being homemaker and mother, her livelihood provided by her mate, her education a resource to enhance and enrich the lives of her children.

Such is an honorable intent, no rational fault to be found with it, certainly not enough fault to justify the venom directed at those who choose such a life by the bitter and jaded-jealous elements of the liberal world who attack the very concept as their morning litany.  Still though, it is true that such women really are predators after a fashion, hunting as they do for a man who truly embraces and internalizes the same code and convention to be her mate; and, it is equally true that such women (and men) are commonly the more if not most conservative of people. 

It was reflecting on my speculations concerning the lass in question that brought about the indictment of conscience.   If it should please the court then enter into evidence what follows as prosecution exhibit B.

The corrosion and erosion of the American ethic has, over say the last seventy five years, produced a subset of peoples who to casual observation in the short run will present the same demeanor as the family oriented conservative people mentioned above.  They will use all the same rhetoric, present themselves in the same manners and yet in objective fact carry agendas anything but family oriented, they who are the bread and butter mainstays of the industries of divorce, they who made necessary the instrument of a prenuptial agreement.   

These people are some of the most absolutely predatory of individuals to be found, and they like their opposites hunting the liberal worlds of the alternate lifestyles are in fact sexual  predators.  Since the instinct to procreation is universal it should be no great surprise that every facet of society will be home to a subset of predators who base their attack on that segment of society's unique deformities of this most primal of instincts, nor should it be a surprise these predators will adopt the closest approximation possible to the appearance of wholesomeness within any given social environment.

In my world the apogee of such predators are assumed (perhaps justly, perhaps not) to be most commonly found on campus living in the Greek houses, the campus’ self appointed elite, members of a fraternity or sorority.  As a matter of course quite a number of derogatory names have been devised to describe such individuals*, and equally of course those innocent of such ignoble motives are often victims of the disdain intended for those not so innocent, an ongoing case of unjustified guilt by accidental association.

That’s what I did to the lass in question, allowed that assumption to take the stage before any other, and that was wrong of me.  She’ll never know it, but I do.  My first thought, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, was to try and assign her a *Sorostitute, the most vile of predators working the conservative side of the equation.  I was actually arguing, in my thoughts, the idea that she was simply a higher class call girl entertaining a client as the more positive of the possibilities, a most distinct secret injustice inflicted upon a perfect stranger.

Like I said earlier, she really was a fine and foxy creature, clearly intelligent, attractive, sensual and seductive.  Equally the evidence of her behavior towards a lad obviously uncomfortable, frightened, of her unabashed femininity showed her to be a rather gentle creature really, she could have hammered him into stuttering silence at many points, but she didn’t.  In spite of all evidence to the contrary my conclusion was she had herself a twenty pound man hooked on five pound test, and with total sarcastic cynicism for my attitude I was wondering if she’d play him out and reel him in, or if he’d manage to break free and flee before being harvested. 

Mea culpa, guilty as charged.  The negative assumptions had control of my thoughts from so many different directions as to almost close away the rational, the real and leave me a peripheral agent of the very evil I was assigning to another.  Got to do better than that in the future if I’m going to do any good for anyone, including me.