joe sixpack, salt of the earth, but boring

I have heard your stories about how your dad sold sandwiches to the black workers and how your store was robbed, so I guess you never picked up the habit.  My parents were both pretty racist, as was everybody else in the neighborhood and all my schoolmates.  I guess I took it in like kids do, but then when I got interested in science, I discovered that this whole idea of the human race divided into these various races who had different mental states was a bunch of bullshit.  So it wasn't morality that changed my mind on racism, it was science.  I spoke up about it a few times but I was always shouted down by whoever I was talking to so I eventually gave up saying anything.

It's my impression that army guys are pretty tight.  Well they all slog through the same thing together, and I imagine that the tougher the slogging, the more they stick together.  Those anti war Vietnam guys, even though their politics were the same as us hippies, they tended to stick together and stay a little apart from the rest of us. 

I'm sure that you know the US army was that way, with some local guy raising a regiment and then they were all the Illinois Third or whatever.  Certainly true in the civil war, I don't know when it changed.  Those poor Brits until WW 2 they were led by some aristocrat who generally didn't know shit and didn't care what happened to his men, probably having a leader like that makes the guys stick together even more.

That guy that you described sounds like a pleasure cruiser.  Maybe it's the budget cruise because he eats meat loaf instead of steak, but he probably cleans his plate at every meal and pats his tummy and is satisfied.  You know pleasure cruisers, sometimes called hedonists or epicureans get a bad name.  People think they are always drinking champagne out of starlet's slippers, and I suppose some do and good for them, but it could just as well be a nice meal and a nice nap and a pretty good tv show and a good night's sleep and a dead end job which pays the rent and puts food on the table.  Or it could be the pleasures of the mind, philosophy and art. 

So that guy you described is just fine, doesn't necessarily make the world a better place but doesn't make it a worse one, keeps the wheels rolling.

But he's probably a little boring to talk to, since according to what you have described he doesn't seem to think much, doesn't wonder, doesn't quest.  Well you know these guys, you run into them every day, and they can go on about the weather or sports or tv shows, but they kind of shy and become noncommittal, and worst of all not interested.  That saw about not discussing religion or politics always seemed crazy to me.  Those are the most interesting things in the world to discuss.