standing up to the man 1

 Saturday night I was watching The Magnificent Ambersons.  Pretty good the first time through, and then, as is my habit, I smoked some dope and watched it again.  I always enjoy the second time around more than the first because I notice all these things going on that I hadn't picked up on earlier.  And the dope puts me into more of a speculative mood and what I call dope insights occur.

Sometimes they seem so important that I pause the movie and write them down  I wrote down a dozen things Saturday night, and here is one: Americans' independent feelings.

I remember the scene well. George, the spoiled scion of a wealthy family, now down at the heels, is driving his lady love down Main Street in a horse drawn carriage, asking her to marry him, but she is demurring.  The problem is that George has no job and no plans on getting one.  

There was an earlier scene when they first met, and she was questioning him about his plans for the future and he tells her, quite seriously, that he is thinking about becoming a yachtsman.  It wasn't so disturbing then because his family was not so down at its heels then.

Anyway she is telling George about how Father, a pioneer in the field of automobiles, thinks George should be doing something.  Like what, he scoffs, become a lawyer or a businessman and dirty his hands with commerce?  And here he is getting on his high horse, your father, he tells his lady love, is trying to tell him how to live his life, and he wouldn't let any man tell him that.

And there it was.  This is how the founding fathers felt about King George, the way Dan'l Boone felt about those city fathers telling him he couldn't shoot squirrels from his front porch. The way Uncle Ken, with that fat state job, running afoul of office politics, told those stuffy bureaucrats to take that job and shove it.  

See, that's the thing.  It's not so much that we did the smart thing by going to war with the British, taking the path in the wilderness, not letting the door hit us on the butt on the way out of the office, but we were doing the right thing.  The morally correct thing, we were standing up to The Man.

The next item on my dope insights list has to do with the protestors of the sixties (because we were young and we thought what we were doing what's right) and the mob of January 6 (they thought what they were doing was right, but they weren't young).  What is the difference, what is going on here?

Well I don't know.  My intention is just to amble on because maybe I will come across something (maybe not).  My impression is that the dawgs are not fond of this sort of thing and I have been avoiding it so as not to discourage them from posting.  But clearly that is not working and the stage is empty so I am using it now.