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Mar. 23rd, 2004 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lwoodblooI just finished reading elizabeth gilbert's "The Last American Man", about Eustace Conway and his family. Eustace lives on 10,000 acres of north carolina wilderness. He's got the full suite of wilderness skills. He's jeremiah johnson, daniel boone, and davy crockett all wrapped up into one. He's also intractable, brusque, and often rude. And he makes me think a great deal about what it's like to be a man in this day and age. I really and truly believe that it's not easy being a man in this day and age. A male? All you have to do is be born with a dick. But to be a man? Who do you look to? I'm lucky, my dad's someone I can look up to with pride. But where are the positive male role models? Is Eustace one? in some ways, yes. In others? hell no. Most of you ladies here would want to wring his neck if you read what I read. We surely don't look to sports heroes anymore; Kobe Bryant? Gimme a break. How about politics? I actually do have two who I look up to a bit. John McCain and Jim Jeffords. McCain's a Reagan Republican. We'd butt heads on so many things, I'd probably cry. But he has principles. And scruples. And so many things that people have discarded as dross and spangle in this day and age. And Jim Jeffords, to me, is a true public servant, who when the republicans no longer served his constituency, when they no longer listened to him, had the moral courage to get up from the table and say "Sorry, folks, but I can't in any conscience sit here and work with you when you won't work with me". Conscience. Scruples. Values. That's things a real man has.
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Date: 2004-03-23 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-23 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-23 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-23 07:09 pm (UTC)McCain wouldn't have dropped out, were it not for what happened in south carolina. I really believe that.
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Date: 2004-03-24 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-24 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-24 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-23 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-24 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-23 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-23 09:01 pm (UTC)It's hard to be a decent human being, really. We don't have much in the way of role models of either gender that encourage us to stand up for our beliefs, our principles, ourselves, /and/ respect that other people need to do the same. We are so often told that it is wrong to be who and what we are, particularly if we are religiously, sexually, politically, or morally nontraditional. Personally, I fall under religious and moral issues, and in the area I'm going to school, political ones (I'm quite liberal, and living in one of the few /very/ conservative areas of CA).
After all - who are /we/, young Americans, to define ourselves in our terms? Who are /we/ to make our own choices? Surely, we are no one, nothings even in our own lives. Who are /we/ to judge? So society tells us. Shut up, be a good consumer, and go about your quiet little lives. Don't rock the boat. It isn't worth the trouble it'll cause.
Blah.
~Blaze
(As a note, I /am/ sick and cranky; I'm sure that's coming across clearly in my crabbiness and possibly in a lack of coherancy)
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Date: 2004-03-27 12:27 pm (UTC)We never talk anymore, yo.
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Date: 2004-03-27 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-27 02:11 pm (UTC)