New Essay by Matt Bracken

[JohnyMac]

Here is a new essay by Matt Bracken,

It was late June and I was sitting in a caf? seven hundred miles from home, doing a little web surfing. There was plenty of room at mid-morning, so I could sit at the end of the coffee bar with my laptop. I was scanning the breaking news about the new mass-shooting. Like most people I was morbidly fascinated with the deranged young man who was the killer. That is, the trigger puller. But I was looking over his shoulder for something else: signs of a guiding hand.

Why? Because I know something about the subject.

You see, being a guiding hand is my life?s avocation. My secret avocation, that is. Outwardly I?m a tenured professor of sociology at a Mid-western university. A life-long bachelor, so my summers are my own. Ostensibly for writing, research, quiet reflection, bungee jumping or what have you. My summer hobby is traveling and meeting interesting people. Everything I do on these road trips can be explained under the rubric of field research, but even so I pay with cash and move like a ghost. I?m old school. It?s a harmless quirk. Nobody cares.

I suppose if you polled my students, they?d declare me to be left wing, but not a rhetorical bomb-thrower. Am I closer to Karl Marx than to Ayn Rand? Well, naturally. Progressive politics were part of my upbringing and education. And of course that is also the best way to get along in academia, and I do like to get along.

http://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/bracken-professor-raoul-x/

[APX808]

That's a nice short story, leaves you wondering how many cases similar to the depicted one exist.

John, you really confused me calling it essay, when he started calling himself a left winger I wonder WTF I was reading.
An essay is when the author writes his point of view about some subject.

[crudos]

Had to chuckle a bit, and wonder if Matt isn't conducting his own little psy-op experiment with this statement.

I suppose if you polled my students, they?d declare me to be left wing, but not a rhetorical bomb-thrower. Am I closer to Karl Marx than to Ayn Rand? Well, naturally. Progressive politics were part of my upbringing and education. And of course that is also the best way to get along in academia, and I do like to get along.

That said, the whole right/left paradigm of political divisiveness drives me bonkers at times.

[JohnyMac]

Thanks APX.