Soup sandwich

Drill sergeants were fond of calling people and events "a soup sandwich."

"You're a soup sandwich."

"Yes, drill sergeant."

"Do you even know what a soup sandwich is?"

"No, drill sergeant."

"See? That's how ate up you are ... you don't even know what you are."

"Ate up" is another one they liked, and Urban Dictionary is correct to link the phrases.

One last digression: Drill sergeants also practice a kind of kabalistic numerology, sometimes telling people they're "eleven up and three down: EIGHT UP".

Anyhow, I'm feeling like a soup sandwich.

I described something to Ed as "the core of my alienation," after pondering for a moment and almost choosing "radicalization."  And a few days ago I said to someone, "I'm not trying to claim I'm an active revolutionary, but it is hard for me to conceive of what's next without [one]."

... and that's about where I am, because I remain convinced that all you are is what you do, not what you say you are;  and I think that is not where we're at broadly. I think where we are at broadly is that it is dismally easy to take any number of positions that connect to nothing material, impact nobody, change nothing.

The one thing I can say I am doing is feeling, and the way I am feeling is alienated. What I am alienated from is so much of it.

You lost me before the vote-shaming genocide apologetics. Way before that.

Inauguration Day 1997, and I'm a soldier pecking a journal entry into a WebTV in a Ft. Bragg barracks, because I am feeling intensely suspicious of Bill Clinton, and not in a "Waco was a frameup" way, but in a "these people have quietly stuck a knife in the New Deal and we're all good with it" way. 

The new optimism, if there is any, is all about letting the nerds of Washington rhapsodize about the benevolent state while the real money is made and the real power is consolidated. 

I like the cut of 29-year-old me's jib, even if I was waiting out the last 10 months of my enlistment and hoping I didn't burn in on a jump. That guy was wallowing around in his reduced station, serving martinis to the guys out at the barracks picnic table, explaining patiently that the fix was in, and snarling "because fuck it is why" when people would ask "what on Earth are you doing tossing yourself out of airplanes?" 

But what do you call a revolutionary who is not at the barricades? A radical who is upsetting no social order? 

Alienated. You just call them alienated. Everything else they'd say about themselves is just style.