Reverse Ferret?

When I got to Fort Carson I continued to have an issue with something I nearly have come to terms with. My view point of the world has apparently become that of liberal democrat. Those around me seem convinced. At the peak of this state I joined the military. When I went into the recruiter’s office, shortly after my last blog entry of 2006, I was a lifeguard in Flagler Beach Florida making $8.10 an hour. A lieutenant who drove up and down the beach on a 4 wheeler picking up trash and talking to pretty girls in between kayaking out into the surf, swimming and jogging in the sun…and surfing on my breaks while keeping one eye on the people in the water.

I had moved into my own little rental in Saint Augustine, 300 a month, after living in a tent on the beach for three days, after getting kicked out of the house with my girlfriend after a terrible and unresolved drunken argument. I had been seeking EMT certification in various schools in the area but found it impossible to get a loan since it was not a college credit course. I was hitting a wall. Frustrated with the whole situation it became clear that only a drastic solution would create a change. I was actually a little drunk when I went into the recruiter’s office. In fact, after work, I was drinking liquor every day, mixed and strait, depending on the possible encounters of that afternoon.

In the last days of August, 2006, I boarded a plane that took me to the Oklahoma City Airport, then got on a bus with a bunch of other unusual suspects and landed in the 1AM dark of old boring pale buildings beyond rolling hills and amber waves of grey to Fort Sill outside Lawton. What do the brown rounds do to psyche themselves up for the line of white buses coming over the hill? What do they scream at each other like ballers on the field before kickoff? Do they drink a pot of coffee each? Perhaps they just channel the rage of failed marriages, unresolved childhood memory stains, and the like?

At this point not only does the average Joe feel he's made a terrible mistake with his/her decision to enlist, but it also feels like the Drills are also convinced you've fucked up and terrorize the fresh off the bus civilians for not knowing where to stand, where to go and when, how to walk between points A and B, what look to have on a face, and how and what to say when confronted for absurd infractions such as breathing. Add to this withdrawls from the alcohol, missing every single aspect of my old life as I forgot about the difficulties and imagined all the unsung possiblities back home. I had forced myself to turn on a dime. I was on a self destructive and miserable course in a meaningless self-centered life before enlisting and somehow saw a solution in somethingmost considered suicidal at that time, Summer 2006, when the war was snowballing into a critical mass and appeared to be gaining velocity.

Yesterday I was reading an article about Rupert Murdock at Slate.com about the phrase in journalism "reverse ferret." The "genocidal [media] tyrant," owner of the Tabloid The Sun and Sky in the UK, Fox in the USA, and the Wall Street Journal as he is also known has been known to change his political and moral stance without even slowing before the turn and can complete the 180 as needed to benefit his business sense and power. Today, while thinking about my difficulties dealing with The Bush right while on the left, and the Obama lefties back home who feel it's not right that I've gone right, I thought how I've made my own reverse ferret, or personalized Copernican shift, if you like. Or have I?