Don’t Rock The Boat
I am an OEF/OIF Veteran and a Child of Reagan. My life has been shaped by previous generations of veterans, and civilians, trying their best to imprint upon me a core lesson: “don’t rock the boat.” The ideas of: good ol’ boy cliques, traditions, personal identities, and people who dare to question all relate to this core principle of ‘don’t rock the boat.’ From my perspective, the rallying cry of “take our country back” intentionally leaves off the words “in time” for marketing purposes. I did not fight to watch the country continue to decay further and further away from rational thought. Time is a continuous stream upon which our boat rides. The fight has always been about control of the anchor. Sometimes we progress with time, and others they drop the anchor and time passes us by. Not only are we fighting for control of said anchor, but we’re also fighting to not have the entire boat turned around and try to go against the current of time itself.
Issac Asimov once said “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” As far as I know, this has always been true. I grew up with this being true. This has helped mold me into being a life-long learner. We live in an age wherein facts no longer matter to the people who don’t want the boat rocked. If you start asking questions, backed with facts, and it interferes with their beliefs then you are now the problem. You have made yourself the problem. In many parts of our large boat, we’ve had whistleblowers come forth with information that the public needs to know about problems contained in the boat we all ride. Instead of being concerned about the boat itself, many people went after the people who dared rock the boat. A few were driven to suicide, others exiled from the country and some locked in solitary confinement. I didn’t fight for this. I did not fight to instill fear into people who are trying to improve the boat we all ride in. That’s what the people who don’t want the boat rocked do, fear and intimidation.
Good ol’ boy cliques are another example of this. In some organizations, it’s just negligence. In those places, you can’t get a lot of things done because you simply aren’t one of them. In other places it’s far worse. Money starts to disappear, certain favors are granted without due process and ‘under the table’ become par for the course. Again, people who start asking questions find themselves intimidated. Perhaps it’s a fear of losing their job, or some harm to themselves or property. The system protects itself. The boat is not to be rocked. It is an insular system that does not appreciate interlopers and does not seek cooperation from the outside. This is a distinct difference from people my age. We grew up interconnected. We cooperate with people all around the world without a second thought. Language is often the biggest barrier and a surprising amount of people speak some English courtesy of the internet. I didn’t fight for good ol’ boy cliques and self-preservation above all.
Personal identities is another way that people feel the boat gets rocked. It’s another way they try to exert control. You have a different gender identity? Tough. They don’t want to accept it. You aren’t heterosexual? They’re going to fight you tooth and nail. How hard did they fight interracial marriage? Some still do. There are entire religions that are mistrusted simply for the actions of a few, yet they ignore the radical factions of their own. There are other religions labeled as ‘mythology’ and are studied as such even though there are still active practitioners today, despite no religion being proven true. If you questioned any of this, you’re rocking the boat and are often met with either vitriol or wanton dismissal. I fought for equal protection for everyone. I fought for the pursuit of happiness for everyone. This includes the very people who don’t like the boat being rocked.
The boat is being rocked, and this is why we live in the age we live in now. We are intermingled with people wherein their beliefs and their identities are one and the same. To change or break the former is to automatically to the same to the latter. This is a stark contrast to those like me who bring our beliefs with us and change them as we learn more. We are who we are, and that is more of a fluid concept. Fluid vs. Rigid. Rational vs. Irrational. Anchor up and gliding with the current of time vs. anchor down and letting time pass us by. Meanwhile, other people are progressing. We do not exist in isolation, and it’s my duty to my country to help pull the anchor up for the good of ourselves and the world we live in. The boat will be rocked, and I will get help from people of all: colors, creeds, religions, orientations, identities, et al.
22 Jan 2017 (Draft 1)
Monk Anchorwind