[Milsurplus] Ignoramus Americanus

[Hue Miller]

Today I took my father up to Naval Support Activity - Smokey Point, at Arlington,

Washington. I left him at the barber shop and walked over to the BX. Altho as a 

civilian I'm not qualified to shop there, and rightly so, there was no entrance check

and I wanted to see how the prices were. There were a lot of people in there today, of

course. I saw a kid about 14 with a large long black pullover shirt with the face of 

Che Guevara on it, and I was stunned. A U.S. military base and some dude in a Che

Guevara shirt. No one lifting an eyebrow. I wandered around and then thought to 

myself, I got to check this out some more. I found the boy, a sibling, and his apparent

mama over in the video section. Yes, it really was Che, superimposed on a map of the 

Caribbean area. When the shirt wearer was relatively by himself for moment, I sidled

up and asked, "Do you know who Che Guevara was?"  He shook his head, no.

"He hated the U.S.", I said. "He wanted to destroy this country. Look into it".

Well, maybe he will and maybe he won't. Maybe he'll ask his mama why that weird

man asked him that. Maybe I should have asked his mother, who presumably paid

for the shirt, but I frankly didn't have the guts. That time. Exercise makes stronger.

Of course my statement maybe oversimplified things a bit - but Comrade Che was

one with the evil empire's philosophy and goals, and his commands caused the

violent deaths of numerous people. 

I was thinking if Junior wore this shirt to school, no one would say anything either.

The young schoolteacher wouldn't want to hinder Diversity, and besides, she'd

never heard that name anywhere in her education either. Probably in another 40

years, it will be perfectly comfortable to wear an Osama Bin Laden shirt. He was

 B--A--D--D--D, man, what a dude!

Does Che appeal to a certain segment of our population, mostly lagging in

education? Maybe so. "Indoctrination" is out. But is education lacking? Okay,

out on the street, I can deal with it. Like a backward baseball hat, or flame tattoos,

it says, "I'm immature and ignorant". Fine, I can deal with the Diversity. But at

a U.S. military base, it seems like sacrilege.  

-Hue Miller

Comments off list, PLEASE.