I think more of our thought workers need to take on the mindset of soldiers in the figurative and literal trenches. They fight, and they die. When they die, most of them are missed by only a few family members and members of their units. They die in unspectacular ways, often, including simple traffic accidents. Yet, they die serving their country, and I don’t think it is over-idealizing most of them to say they do it without complaint. Not by design, of course, not eagerly, but because they accept that possible outcome as part of their job. I was once told that explicitly by a man who did in fact later die in an IED explosion.
For my part, the writing I do is not intended to reflect on me in the slightest. I prefer to be in ths shadows, and let the words spark ideas in others. Nothing pleases me more than to be copied, and if I were to see something lifted verbatim from here or my other site, I would likely delete the original to prevent controversy.
My intent is to get ideas out there, and hopefully ones that are better than the ones currently in circulation. This means that if other people are mouthing them, then I am succeeding. That is the point and plan.
A motto of mine is Benjamin Franklin’s “There is no end to what you can accomplish, if you don’t care who gets credit.”
We are in a war, and a war in which many Americans have literally died. Surely the chattering class can content itself with getting useful work done, without self aggrandizement, and image-consciousness?