Simmons’s words.

“Thanks AFKAN. I might have been too tough on Ian, and I hope he is not too sensitive. I’m sometimes forgetful that most are not like me.”

jogged this thought into print here:

“Bob has been here and done that,” that phrase in “About Bob” was written nine years ago by someone else, and it can’t be improved upon. It also allows me to make a point.

There are a lot of people who are legitimately in psycho wars from doing part of what I did. But obviously they were not capable of being there, doing that, and COMING BACK. Mercs and lot of combat flyers actually ENJOYED what put normal people in the wards.

But in the real world, this is not all that important. That is, it is very critical to ONESSELF whether he is “brave and can take it “ or not. If your big concern is your own image in your own eyes, it is the most important thing in the world. People like the World War II Generation, who gave away EVERYTHING and have only this claim to any bravery at all, depend on it absolutely.

But no war hero ever made the slightest difference in REAL WORLD history.

Truer words was never spoke than a reply to the Greatest Generation types in the 60s who were bemoaning the Peaceniks:

“Before you ask where young people are coming TO, you might ask where they came FROM.”

Like neoconservatives who insist that liberals were right until one particular date when liberalism went wrong, the Greatest Generation cannot AFFORD to face the fact that there was something fundamentally wrong about THEM.

Neoheroism?

The only important thing about me being there and doing that and coming back—sort of, I’m on psychological disability — is that it may help you BELIEVE some points I make. Some people cannot live with the memory of part of my life. Others took it well and went right on, better than I did.

But the point you can use here is made by a man who said two centuries ago,

“Nothing concentrates the mind like the fact that one is to be hanged on the morrow.”

So when I say that the cause is everything to me, I MEAN it. When I tell you being isolated by conservatives and our own comrades really doesn’t affect me, I MEAN it. Otherwise I would be in a ding-a-ling ward over MUCH worse things.

To me, my good name is entirely an asset to what I am trying to do. I want it used to that end. I CARE what you think of me, but my whole life makes it clear what my priorities are. This can make me ruthless TOWARD you, which is the fault that gets me isolated.

I treasure my group. I treasure our leaders. But your opinion of me is NOT my priority.

Not even close. This is not normal.

I am a staffer, not a leader. I am a staffer damned few leaders want around them, because leadership REQUIRES the delicate feel for ego that is too much absent in me. I am a loose cannon, to be set in place and USED by those who have the feel for it, i.e., leaders.
A leader like Ashbrook or Bill Rusher who could USE is not just a rare bird, he is damned near unique.

You of BUGS use me right. The coach has [played as well as he can. He is sending YOU out in the field to do YOUR thing. A coach who is obsessed with your opinion of him is no coach at all.

Win and you are welcome to bitch yourself hoarse.

It is almost impossible for most people to really EMPATHIZE with this. If I say I am isolated, it sounds like I am complaining. Actually it is a natural part of leaders and me doing our respective jobs.

All this, in short, is part of what I always talk about, what the world is REALLY like. My ego is not in it in a way that people understand. The importance of this fact is fully explained above. There ain’t no more to it.