Dear George,
Dear god, how I miss the fifties. What a time of communion it was. In whipping the Japs and the Nazis, we’d discovered the strength that comes from total conformity along with the impenetrability of a bland sameness.
How my heart glows with memories of my youth in lockstep with my comrades down the polished corridors of our high school, our penny loafers clicking on the marble, our asses sheathed in khaki pants with the spiffy belt in the back, and our button-down shirts tucked neatly in their waistbands. When the weather tuned cold, an olive brown crewneck sweater topped it all off. It was a uniform that proclaimed our entitlement, which would one day allow us to climb the corporate ladder to our sinecures in middle management.
We slept well at night knowing that a national security apparatus was hard at work squashing any outbreaks of non-conformity that might pierce the thin veneer of civilization that was all that stood between us and the anarchy of freedom. This apparatus hounded Mort Sahl, ignored Samuel Beckett and blacklisted Dalton Trumbo.
What serenity it was to have your entire life planned for you. You drifted down a lazy stream that took you from high school to a Big Ten college where became engaged in the last term of your senior year. On graduation, you betrothed yourself to a major corporation and after thirty years, you drifted into a comfortable retirement.
There is a song some of us old timers sing when we are stoned and nostalgic about the good old days when our lives were uncontaminated by choices and options, when we knew what thoughts to think and what clothes to wear.
Oh, the moonlight’s fair tonight upon the drive-in,
In the air there is the breath of greasy smoke.
Through the smog the auto headlights are aflickering,
By the banks of my cesspool far away.
What happened, George? How did we sink so far and so fast into the anarchy of freedom?
When these thoughts trouble me, I drop to my knees and thank God Almighty that he ordained you our leader. You’ll bring it back! I can hear it now, the cadence of penny loafers marching smartly through marbled corridors as legions of the uniformly same bring back unity of conformity as they reduce liberty to an archaic museum piece we display for all to marvel at as a relic of an age of chaos long past.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
7:08:27 AM 
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