THE GOOD WORD ACCORDING TO · THE ULTRA-HARRIER
WILLIE
One of the greatest things about lifeHarry has ideals too
Chapter 14
Notice that none of this has anything to do with genocide or evil,
2Except that one of the greatest things about life,
3As you will learn, provided you can pay attention for a little while longer,
4hWhich I have doubts about,
5Is that there is always a good and virtuous reason for being opposed to doing what you don’t want to do.
6In this case, you did not want to die in some faraway land,
7And so you discovered iideals.
8And where did these great ideals come from?
9jDid they come from your encyclopedic knowledge of history, which you got from Clark Gable and John Wayne and Errol Flynn and Charlton Heston?
10kDid they come from your vast knowledge of religion, which you got from John Huston and Jeffrey Hunter and Charlton Heston?
11lDid they come from your deep knowledge of politics and government, which you got in twenty-two minutes a night from Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley, unless you got it from the sports page?
12Did they come from your rich experience of culture, which you got from the mThree Stooges and nLucille Ball and oSuperman and the pLone Ranger and qEd Sullivan?
13rDid you get them from each other, through profound conversations that struck deep into the heart of things?
14Did they come from your intellectual awakening in college, where you learned how to smoke dope and screw like rabbits and cut class and read aCliff Notes and grow beards and give up bathing?
15Did they come from the counterculture, where you were exposed to such world class brain trusts as bTimothy Leary and cAbbie Hoffman?
16Did they come from dWoodstock Nation, where you sat naked in the mud and got enlightened by the divinely inspired wisdom of eJoan Baez and fArlo Guthrie and gCrosby, Stills & Nash?
17Or did they come from your hparents, who taught you that the best way to get what you want is to ask for it,
18And keep asking for it until everyone’s sick of hearing about it,
19And make up a bunch of iinane reasons why you should get your way,
20And then demand your way,
21And then have a giant jtantrum and hold your breath until you finally do get your way?
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