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The system was rotten to the core. . . . . and that was certainly no secret to we high schoolers of a more sensitive, intelligent disposition who saw how authority and "the hunt for status" warped the social space into a topological black hole of twisting, turning agony.

But what else was there?

I was a charging young conservative who was versed in some of the darker truths of the world-- the quandaries of being a quirky social misfit who had to come out on top "as a macho tough guy", because if I didn't hack out my vengeful, righteous pound of flesh then I had nothing. In my mind, you either showed acquiescence like a sad, shrugging vegetable or you came riding back on the chariot like Charlton Heston in "Ben-Hur" whipping the horses with flailing muscularity in a grueling race to the finish.

Yet there were stories of danger, lingering death-- like either a mercenary of conflict meeting his end in post-colonial Rhodesia (-- grinning skulls, the existential buzzing of tsetse flies) or a poor kid tempted up a dark alley where he became a victim of brutal street crime as society wandered on "and turned a blind eye", betrayed by what they could not bring themselves to tell him.

You saw chiselers carpet-bagging from our once-prestigious institutions while society mostly did nothing, mostly out of fear for its own safety as we turned into a nation of maneless lions-- matters becoming squishy and syrupy and feminized and the youth evermore sociopathic. The wounds hurt more, gangrenous with the warm Jello rot of infection, and no one could seem to offer solid, reliable answers in the age of the yelping press pack and "irony's times" that looked for the most pukey, worst-cast scenario you could imagine with someone caught off-guard in the unblinking camera lens where anyone could throw stones of mean-spirited commentary like a public pillorying or dunking where you drowned either way in a river of anxiety and depression.

Being "sold out" and betrayed by others "for the sake of expediency" was a fact of life. . . . . either by men thinking of careerism or teenagers in the pursuit of low-down social status, the boredom of public defacement.

It just made me crazier, like the frowning Ayatollah raising his arm before the crowd of his ego.

Sometimes we have to meet the role parlayed by ourselves and what society expects of us "in order to patrol the perimeter" and "maintain credibility". George Orwell in "To Shoot an Elephant" described a scene when as a colonial policeman staring down a raging, near-riotous mob "pushing against the authority structure", he had but little choice to act like "the man in charge". He could not back down; he had to maintain order-- thrust in this circumstance partly by chance, partly by belief in the essential correctness of his station that ultimately forced him to do something very questionable. Ultimately, both oppressor and oppressed had less power.

You'll have a situation where two kindred souls. . . . . fundamentally different, but probably sharing more in common, meet somewhere out there in "no man's land" and swap war stories, laughing out there in the gray fog. There's the fizz of raw hilarity, and they share something beyond the madness of this shattered land. But then it occurs to one of them, that the other is a member of "the enemy camp" and he could get shot if he was seen out here. Gradually the laughter becomes awkward, and then stops. Propaganda paints a picture of who this side of the conflict is. . . . . and it plays on his fears of home and country.

So he throws "The Gay/Straight Alliance" to the mob and profits off of saber-rattling. But in a politically-incorrect incident with "the yelping press pack" on his heels, he decided "to play politics" and make a symbolic appearance to show solidarity "with tolerance and diversity". But it back-fired, when he walked out of the club just when the football team was walking by, and he was "a marked man". And sometimes, when a man feels himself to be increasingly isolated and powerless he'll throw people to the wolves. . . . . which only increases what he doesn't want, like the fall of Richard Nixon when all the oxygen went out of the air-lock.

The irony about life is that if you "push against something", usually there's only more of it. And for all the pain and misery I caused, ultimately I found "it wasn't worth it" when the real loser was myself as the system groaned on, snickering and laughing and pointing and fed on awkward teenaged flesh. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword-- as certainly as Robespierre sent to the guillotine or the sacking of Newt Gingrich. Don't be made into a laughing-stock like me, and learn to transcend the world of dogs and petty men.