American Dissident(S)

By A.S.O.L.

It is a psychological fact that those who feel the need to judge, rule, or regulate their fellow human beings do not expect their fellow human beings as equals. It is the inability to have any recourse against the abuse by an individual in a position of power that eventually causes the corruption of the position and the inception of dissention among those who are being judged, ruled, and regulated. The dissolving of entire civilizations started with inequality. Once inequality is established, the distrust leads to anarchy. Anarchy leads to revolt. Revolt leads to dissolution. Dissolution leads to the loss of continuity. The loss leads to disintegration of the accrued knowledge, and we are at this point in our civilization. The combination of the lack of involvement in our democracy due to the ineffectiveness of our appointed officials to act on all our behalves, the financial inequality among our people, the growing detrimental changes in our environment, and our growing population, putting a strain on all the Earths resources, are now bringing us to the point where we all are to have to make some really hard decisions whether we want to or not.

The following parables that shaped the life of an American Dissident and the solutions for the thinking revolution that has already started, make up the chapters of this book. Read them at your own risk of being educated, outraged, vilified, vindicated, and empowered. Please do this in the privacy of your own home, before doing it in public, for your own safety, as there are repercussions for associating with, or being, an American Dissident. Dedicated to my children; I never gave you a second thought because you are always first and foremost in my mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514475843

A.S.O.L.

He is a self-taught writer who took writing courses to learn how not to write. He is a da Vinci-esque carpenter with Darwinian insight who solves problems with “outside the box” ideas. He does this because he can push the envelope farther from outside the box than from being on the inside. When all is said and done, he is just a man looking for a playmate.

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Copyright © 2016 by Gary Polacek.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 03/21/2016

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Contents

Foreword

The Shaping Of A Dissident

Pieces Of Bread

The Bike

What About Everyone Else?

The Shirt Hit’s The Fan

The Learning Curve Of High School

Continuing Education

Commentary Subtext Break

The Shaping Of Dissident Continued With Commentary

Bringing A Chapter In Life To A Conclusion

No Mid-Life Crisis

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned

Middle Child Blues

From Court To Jail

The Wheels Of Justice Turn Slowly

Making The Crew Cut

May I Have Some More?

The Wheels Of Justice Grind To A Halt

The Wheels Of Justice Grind To A Halt (& Make Me Mad)

The Wheels Of Justice Grind To A Halt (Continues)

West Side Story

The Wheels Start Grinding Again

Christmas Presence

An Immigrant Has A Better Chance To Get Justice (A.k.a. Send In The Clowns)

If Patience Is A Virtue, What Is Desperation?

End World Brutality Organization

Noah’s Ark

Face-Ing Another Opportunity

The Facepinn Outline

The Results Of The Experiment

The Road Less Traveled

The Predator

Getting Back To Giving Life A Sporting Chance

Equality

Keeping Prejudice Alive

One Tax

The Simple Understanding

The Syphon Project

Marriage And Divorce (A Fifty/Fifty Proposition)

Solutions Not Delusions

The Victim Scenario

The Real Prejudice Of American Socialism

Everything Will Be Alright In The End (If Everything Is Not Alright, Then It Is Not The End)

FOREWORD

It is a psychological fact that those who feel the need to judge rule or regulate their fellow human beings, do not accept their fellow human beings as equals. That is why they continue to stay in a position that judges, rules or regulates their fellow human beings. There has to be someone to do that which those type of positions require. It is the inherent fact that power corrupts. But not all power. Shared power can keep it in check. It is the abuse of power that undermines those positions and their intended use. It is the inability to have any recourse against the abuse by an individual in a position of power that eventually causes the corruption of the position and the inception of dissention among those who are being judged, ruled and regulated. The dissolving of entire civilizations started with inequality. Once inequality is established, the distrust leads to anarchy. Anarchy leads to revolt. Revolt leads to dissolution. Dissolution leads to the loss of continuity. The loss of continuity leads to disintegration of the accrued knowledge and beliefs. Then civilizations are forced to start again to build up to this point again and again, due to not learning from past mistakes, which is necessary to get past this point in order to outlast their predecessors to create a more perfect union. We are at this point in our civilization. The combination of the lack of involvement in our democracy due to the ineffectiveness of our appointed officials to act on all our behalf’s, the financial inequality amongst our people, the growing detrimental changes in our environment and our growing population putting a strain on all of the earths’ resources are now bringing us to the point where we all are going to have to make some really hard changes, whether we want to or not. We have the opportunity to go forward freely as a true democracy or suffer the same consequences that the founders of the principles that our democracy is based upon, the Romans, suffered.

The following parables that shaped the life of an American Dissident and the solutions for the Thinking Revolution, that has already started, make up the chapters of this book. Read them at your own risk of being educated, outraged, vilified, vindicated and empowered. Please do this in the privacy of your own home, before doing it in public, for your own safety, as there are repercussions for associating with, or being, an American Dissident. DEDICATED to my children; I never gave you a second thought because you are always first and foremost in my mind. I will sacrifice everything so that you may live in peace.

THE SHAPING OF A DISSIDENT

We all start as tools. Something that is designed and shaped for a specific usage and kept if valued. I started as a nail. Something driven hard once and left behind to be forgotten about. By the time I worked my way up to a good tool, the world had changed away from hand tools getting the job done, to mechanical tools. Now, things were moving faster, more was getting done and it was cleaner, more accurate work. You had to quickly adapt to the change to stay ahead. Always learning, always adapting, always changing. Constant evolution of a human being from having zero knowledge as a child and having to accumulate it, to having zero knowledge of a new aspect of my career and having to accumulate it in order to survive as an adult.

Funny thing though. The end product wasn’t really changing that much, just the way we produced it. All based on the need to produce money. If you can’t cut material costs, you have to cut labor costs. I have gotten to the point where I have exhausted all the ways to cut corners. This is why the universe has so many round things in it. Like the expression, The circle of life. It is not just about how life goes around in the world, it is also about what makes the world go around. (Take heed of the old expressions and colloquial sayings. They are still here because of the way they simply state the truth, like "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.)

They say that a lie can’t live forever because it cannot stand prolonged scrutiny. You might want to keep this in mind when you are being denied information. This is also known as lying by omission. If you have to ask for it, like you hear all these protests doing when they ask for something and don’t get anything but a shine on, eventually losing by attrition, then you are not on the same plane, sharing a planet together as a species, but you are a sub-species, having to ask permission to survive. That is the reality.

When it comes to genetics versus environment, I could not give you a clear, consise answer to one or the other. What I can clearly tell you is that it is a combination of the two. When there is no clear evidence to point in one direction or another, this usually points to a third choice of a combination of the two. This is usually complicated with the fact that there has to be a certain degree of both factors, that culminate in the right order, to bring about the right combination for any person, or event for that matter, to happen in the first place. This chapter is a brief description of events that will help you to understand the combination of events that shaped the making of a dissident. To put the events in a timeline for context, it starts with birth and goes through the book to present day 2015.

I was born on John Lennon’s birthday, (Of the musical band, The Beatles), in the year they were supposed to release the third prophecy of Fatima. (These references are designed to get you to look up the information for your own education.) By the time I was six years old, I was already outspoken. This was apparent because almost all the pictures of me from that time on, show me wearing t-shirts that say something on them. This correlates to my learning how to read in kindergarten. (I was told, later on in life, that I refused to wear shirts that were plain at that age. My family doesn’t have a history of activism and, in point of fact, due to their religious beliefs, avoid confrontation like it is the plague.)

My upbringing was buffered by living in a large subdivision, where there was numerous children being raised in the same, homogenous way, so shared experiences were common. In school, we all were being taught the same things, at the same time, by the same teachers, by the same religious leaders and these were consistent. While these events were certainly different for each person, how each person reacted to them was different. We all went along, to get along and were brought up to be constructive with criticism or to keep our opinions to ourselves. All the while, hearing criticisms being spewed like water in a fountain, by the very people who preached to us this philosophy. This was tempered by the excuse of Do as I say, not as I do and I’m trying to teach you from my mistakes, even though they could not learn from these mistakes themselves. (This hypocrisy undermines the credibility, the integrity and the wisdom in the philosophy. It also makes it hard to to embrace a philosophy when it is not lived by the teacher. Let alone being beaten down when you apply it and it bites you in the ass in our dog eat dog, survival of the fittest life, we are all trying to get through everyday.)

PIECES OF BREAD

It was a warm, latter part of October day, in the sleepy, dutch themed, suburban, dry town located just twenty miles south of the city of Chicago. The town had a favorite color known as predominately white, an eggshell toughness that held onto prejudice like a yolk on your back and shattered whenever a different race would drop in, as the prejudice was based on fear.

I had just had a birthday so life was great still. I had gotten lots of good toys which included a special, top of the list wants; a metal, die-cast, Tonka dump truck. The good kind. Made from metal so heavy, we used it as a push cart down the driveway. This day, I was playing outside with one of my neighbors. Being a newly built, mostly Catholic neighborhood, every family seemed to have moved in at the same time, both in age and in start of family. A race to have the most children seemed to be the contest of social wealth that was paraded at Sunday services. Our enrollment at the Catholic school which was attached to the church, instead of having to go to public school, was the other social status symbol. This made for a whole block of playmates that were your own age or in your own class. (More or less.)

I was the fourth child and son in our family of six children. My middle child status meant that finding a playmate meant going outside the home. This was back in the days when that was encouraged because neighborhoods were safe, for the most part.

My friend was the eighth child and fifth son in his family of nine children. My friend was the younger of fraternal twins with his older twin brother being born just two minutes before him. As time would go by, the differences would grow greater than just their height, as his older brother would seem to get almost everything that can be achieved with physical size, while my friend would get everything that can be achieved with a larger heart.

On that day, as we played, it was apparent that my friend was slighted in the toy department as well as receiving attention at home. His father was a hard working man who worked nights to earn the extra night shift pay he needed just to get by raising his family. (We nicknamed him The Bear, due to his sleeping in the cave-like basement in the dark and the constant warnings not to wake him up, hence the term, Don’t poke the bear.) It was all he could do to put food on the table, let alone buy the extra’s in life. Our parents were frugal, along with our relatives and most of what we had was hand-me-downs, including things to play with. We were always told to take care of everything we were given including not playing in our good clothes so they could be handed down and used by younger siblings. My clothes had so many patches and mends that I never knew that the original garment wasn’t plaid until I had gotten old enough to know that it had been patched.

That day was like a lot of days in my life. Up at the crack of dawn so I could get a little TV in before it was taken over by older factions that always claimed their age was the reason for the takeover. (This was probably the when and why I started questioning authority when I didn’t feel something was fair.) Not that I really cared about what was on. For some reason, I would want to watch the commercials to see the new products that were being advertised. Probably because they gave me ideas as I was preoccupied with gadgets. A lifelong obsession I would pursue through James Bond movies and Jonny Quest cartoons later on in life. Then, a bowl of cereal for breakfast, usually in the first hour of being out of bed. In those days, being a seven year old growing boy, I was hungry every two hours. I was also burning more calories than I was taking in and it was a miracle I grew at all.

Because it was Saturday and not a school day, there were chores to do and a bedroom to clean before going out to play. I shared one of the four bedrooms in our house with my oldest brother because there was less rivalry between us which kept more peace in the family. Of course, it could have been because we were more compatible as roommates due to our schedules, mine being early and his being late due to our ages. There was our shared neatness factor and the fact that he predated on me less than my other two brothers. We could have been paired up to teach me the lessons he had learned as the example, taking more of the burden of raising the rest of the children off my parents. Anyway, after the room was clean, to the satisfaction of my father, I was free to go play with my friends. This was reward enough for me and was the driving factor to maintain the room as not to infringe on play time. For my older brother, it was the allowance. I always pissed mine away buying candy to share with friends to gain favor. We didn’t get much of that except at the usual times of the year like Halloween, Christmas and going to farm gramma’s.

This day was special, though. I had started a project in the dirt pile at my friend’s yard the day before after school. My friend and I were going to build a whole excavation project like we had seen on the last lots in the subdivision prior to homes being built on them. We were going to play all day. Playing with friends was what I lived for. It was the time I felt the best. It made me feel liked and not like just another child to deal with or the brother who was different. I guess I felt loved the same as when I was at my farm gramma’s. She had experienced a pretty tough life and had learned unconditional love by then. The same as children have at a young age when they play together as friends. (It’s a kinder, simpler time when you are a child, hopefully.)

I go across the street to my friends house to get him and he can’t wait to get out of the house and play. I think life in their house was quite different from ours in a lot of ways but mostly because the daytime was when his father slept. They were herded outside as much as possible and there wasn’t much for them to do except to ask to play with other friends’ stuff or get into trouble.

As we play, he has a car toy and an army man or two but all the play digging toys are all mine. I had some army men, a G.I.Joe, a garden shovel, an old tractor with a scoop on it and my new Tonka dump truck. It was hauling all the dirt from one side to another and then dumping. We made the sounds of the truck accelerating and stopping, the bed lifting up to dump along with the crashing of the material into the hole we were filling. We stopped at lunch time, only briefly, to have a quick sandwich and a glass of kool-aid. Not because we wanted to get back to playing so bad but because that was all there was to eat at lunchtime.

Access to food was regulated at our houses. We were on the strict three meal a day policy without snacks or desserts. Our houses were the food deserts of the past. Snacks and desserts were for special occasions. That was what made occasions special. Things like pop, candy, cake, cookies, potato chips and the like were not readily available as they took away from the bulk food budget or bridge night snacks that my parents had to put out for show, instead of us, their jewish concentration camp lookalike children. Even fruit was regulated to one a day due to our reduced per child budget. Our Catholic upbringing encouraged going forth and multiplying in a demanding way. There wasn’t any thought given to or advice available on how to pay for more children and most forms of birth control were seen as a lack of faith in the Lord providing in mysterious ways. The struggle and strife this caused usually put more strain on families which in turn caused more dysfunction and less ability to achieve that which the religion itself was supposed to be based upon. (This made for us, as children, to see as well as feel more hypocrisy, which, once again, would be explained as, do as I say, not as I do. One more reason to question authority.)

As the afternoon wore on, the grumbling in our stomachs grew louder and could be heard as it grew more frequent. When it became so overwhelming and distracting, I went into the house to ask (more like beg) for something to eat. I was told by my mother that dinner was only 2 hours from then and I could wait. I was in pain by then and, as a child, felt that a snack was the least a parent could do for their child. Times were so tough, my plea fell on deaf ears. All I wanted was a couple pieces of bread for myself and my friend. That shouldn’t have been asking too much but the bread had already been counted to last a certain amount of days, divided by children and giving me a couple of slices would have shorted someone or opened the flood gates for all of us children to get a snack. In our house, laws weren’t meant to be broken. (In retrospect, this method of food distribution did keep us thin and our consumption down to a minimum even though we overcompensated as adults by always keeping mass quantities of a variety of foods in our homes for our children and our guests, as well as our own food desires to be religiously stocked.)

I pleaded with my mother, but this time I was ushered outside with no compassion forthcoming. (I believe the term TOUGH LOVE was used.) I thought my pleas had fallen on deaf ears but my friend had heard every word. He wasn’t as famished and in pain as I was except for the pain of empathy he felt for his friend. He listened to my rants and when I said I would trade my new Tonka truck for a morsel of food, he saw this as a chance to own something nice to play with that he most likely couldn’t get any other way. He told me that he could get me a couple pieces of bread and would take the chance of getting some at his house. It was then that I committed to giving him my Tonka truck if he got me something to eat. I knew this was taking a huge chance, with the possibility of a spanking, if caught. If my friend was willing to chance that which we feared most of all, the least I could do is give him the truck. It meant a lot to me, but I was hungry, to the point of being delirious and food became more important than life with the toy truck itself. Besides, my friend was going to let me play with it, so it wasn’t going to be gone forever. It was just going to be in a new location that wasn’t as accessable. (Concepts of long term loss weren’t so evident yet.)

This plan required my friend to sneak in to his house at a time of day that his father was still trying to sleep in. The kitchen was right up the four steps from the back door, the landing of which led to the basement. It had one end that was open to the dining / living area and hallway to the bedrooms. A gauntlet of opportunities for failure if someone was in any of them. The cabinets opening would be heard from from every part of the upstairs, so he had to be fast and quiet. This wasn’t my friends’ forte but doing anything for his friends and family was so his resolve would have to make up for stealth.

He slowly opens the squeaky storm door prior to the main door and I hold it to keep it from making noise by slamming. We look at each other with success and fright at the turning of the inside doorknob. This door was solid and there could be anything lurking beyond that door. He pushes it open and the door creaks a little. He steps in and onto the first step of the upstairs, slowly closing the door to just a crack of being open. I watch him tiptoe sneak up the steps and out of sight, still holding the door open while being frozen with fear of needing a fast escape if he succeeds. Or worse, gets caught. Seconds seem like minutes as he made his way across the kitchen to the bread drawer. As he closes the bread drawer, I hear his mother call out, What’s going on in there?. My friend replies, Nothing mom! as he makes his way past the opening and down the steps to the door. He opens the door and I see his mother standing in the opening looking down the stairwell at me. I say, Hi out of instinct and my friend quickly steps out closing the door behind him before she can respond. She did not have enough time to recognize me enough to have my name come forward in her memory but I didn’t really want to have a conversation with her and have the truth spill out.

My friend was shaking and smiling as we scurried across the street to the dirt spot we were playing in before we said even one word. As he lifted his t-shirt from his pants, the three slices of stale bread came into sight and he grabbed them before they fell onto the dirty ground. He looked at the three pieces, gave me the two best slices and I was happy. (They were the best two slices of bread I have ever eaten to this day and I have taken sandwiches for lunches for most of my life.) The adrenaline from the success of the heist made us giddy to the point of forgetting the fear of punishment and after finishing the bread, went back to playing until I got the call for dinner. I knew not to keep my parents waiting, so I told my friend that I would see him tomorrow after church. We started picking up our toys from the play area. My friend had turned and started walking away when I grabbed the Tonka truck to give to him. He had already forgotten the deal, as he had never intended to collect on it until I made him take it saying, A deal is a deal. He reluctantly took it and placed his toys in the dump bed. It made him so happy that it suppressed his thoughts of getting in trouble for bringing home such a prize out of thin air, let alone the trouble he would be in if he told the truth.

He carried the truck home, catty corner across the street from our house and played with it in the front yard. My mom saw the truck going out of the yard with him and didn’t ask about it until we were in the middle of dinner. She then asked me if my friend had gotten a new Tonka truck like mine and I had to tell her that it was the one I had just gotten for my birthday. When I told her that I had traded it, the crap had hit the fan. For what did I trade was the question and when I stated what for, my parents fumed, thinking I had been swindled while my brothers and sisters laughed. An explanation that only a seven year old could tell was only more confusing to my parents and after dinner, they were going to take me across the street to get it back. I was in trouble and now had lost my appetite. (Another way to reduce the food budget had been applied and it was working.)

After dinner, the call went over to my friends’ mom and a march over to his house was okayed. My friend was still playing with the truck in the front yard and I was told to wait outside with him while my parents went in to talk to his mom. It wasn’t long before all three parents came out and my friends’ mom asked him to come over with the truck while I was told to Get over here by my parents. My friend and I knew we were in trouble but that explaination was not forthcoming.

My friend was simply told to give the truck back to me. I was told to take it. I told my friend I was sorry and he told me it was okay. I tried once more to tell my parents that we had made a deal but trying to explain to my parents about honoring a deal, or the hit to my friendship by breaking my word, was speaking a foreign language to them. My friends’ mom knew, though, so he didn’t get into trouble, only I did. I was made to feel bad for what I had done. That was the Catholic way afterall. (Another hypocrisy layed on us as children by a misinterpreted religious teaching that stated, forgive and forget, but punished everyone with a zero tolerance for mistakes to teach you a lesson. After all, if there were no mistakes made, no forgiveness would have to be forthcoming. It is easier to justify punishment than it is to find forgiveness or to find a way to prevent the situation to begin with. You know, the easy way out with the least amount of effort.)

I was sent to bed that night with the intention of the shame of it all causing me to give in to the lesson (of hypocrisy) and conform. It only fueled my conviction that I was doing the right thing. I don’t remember being able to sleep that night until I had made up my mind to keep my end of the bargain. I slept well after that, but by the next day, I was on a mission that I wasn’t going to be deterred from. I didn’t talk much the next morning, passing on the cooked breakfast that was offered. I ate a quick bowl of cereal so I didn’t have to show how pissed off I was at my parents. Church went the same way and my snippy attitude was ignored with the thought that I would get over it eventually. (I still haven’t, to this day, but now consider it one of the many lessons that have shaped me in life due to the enforcement of someone else’s perception of what is right.)

After putting away my church clothes and getting dressed to play, I went across the street to ask if my friend could come out to play. He was at the door in a heartbeat, ready to go as always and the day was filled with the forgetful acts of our scheming. We were determined to achieve having fun despite the intentions of our parents to raise us to be unicks who never did anything wrong and, of course, would never have any life experiences to mold us any different from what they wanted us to be. The day was the same as most playdays and ended with dinner at the same uniform time. The only difference was the game plan of the Tonka truck going home with my friend. After being told different by my parents, the plan was to give my friend the truck after school the next day. This was so I was able to say, when I was asked at dinner, that I still had the truck and not given it or anything else to my friend when playing that day.

By that time in my life, I had already learned that the subject would be dropped after being checked once or twice if I passed the usual forms of checking. I had my older brothers’ past failures to learn from, which mostly consisted of lying poorly, resulting in punishment as a deterent. This meant that all I had to do was cleverly deviate from their known proceedures and I could get away with what my mind could create. If I stayed out of sight, I would stay out of mind, so to speak. With my imagination, (and their lack of it) that wasn’t hard. Even at the age of seven. (I eventually learned to combine these two concepts by wording what I would say so that what I said would answer their inquiry but not be a lie.) It had to be smart enough to get them to be satisfied with the answer and not be an outright lie when questioned later.

The next day was Monday, the first day of a normal week of school. The truck was taken with me to my friends’ before school and hidden behind some bushes in the backyard. We walked to school discussing the playing with the toy, in private, by both of us. We hoped that the subject was finished because as far as we were concerned, it was. It wasn’t for the tattletaled brothers and sisters who wanted trouble to come to us in order to win favor with the folks. The truck was soon brought up for discussion at that nights’ dinner and I was caught for an answer that I wasn’t prepared for. Lie or tell the truth. It was too early to know how to manipulate words under pressure, so I decided to stand behind the principles I had heard preached time and again. Keep your word. I was also told that if you tell the truth, you won’t get into trouble, or at least, not as much. I told them that I had given the truck