YLC Lexington

I'm back from my conference guys! Woke up at 3:30 on Sunday morning and got home at 10:21 Thursday night. Spent over seven hours on the bus. In the event that this fic is up for years and years to come, I want it to be known that the Conference lasted from June 11-15 of the year 2017.

I know that after a week of no updates, a long Author's Note is not what anyone wants, but this conference…I feel that it needs to be talked about.

During the conference, we got to listen to a POW who spent six years of his life in the 'Hanoi Hilton,' an economist with a PhD, a judge, another judge, this one having escaped communist Russia and is Jewish, a retired Marine Captain, several members of the Coast Guard, and a retired general from the United States Army.

Now, bear with me as I fail to get my thoughts in any semblance of an order.

The POW told us about how he was tortured for information, kept in a cell with no light or air circulation, and about how he and his fellow prisoners developed a communication system of tapping, but wasn't Morse code. Obviously, he made it out alive, and after his presentation, we got the opportunity to ask questions. I asked him two: what do you think is wrong with the government, and what do you think of President Trump.

The first one got a laugh because the XO of the conference, the second in command, said we only have a few minutes not a few hours, bit anyway. The POW didn't give a straight answer on the government question, but this is what he said about Trump:

"I like him. He's doing what he can to change this country for the better, and no one likes him because he's trying to change things. That's why the media does nothing but criticize him and paint him in a bad light. Even though this is a country of free speech and opinion, everyone seems to have forgotten about respect. You may not like Trump, but he's still our president. If Hillary had won, I wouldn't have liked her one fucking bit, but I still would have given her the respect the president deserves."

I interviewed him in private for that and took notes.

The economist was a great guy, I liked him. He had us do an activity regarding a reservation wage and entrepreneurs looking to hire people. The majority of the class was looking to be hired, with a few people doing the hiring. Now, the problem was that the entrepreneurs were only looking to hire for a certain amount, and those with reservation wages that were too high didn't get hired. I had a reservation wage of $12.50, and couldn't hired for shit, no matter what sob story I came up with.

Starving family, war veteran, sick parents, anything. These bastards just wouldn't hire me on for at least $13 bucks an hour.

This exercise was meant to teach us about negotiation and the power of profit. See, the more the entrepreneur had to pay us, the less money was in their own bank account after payday, so of course they would only hire the cheapest of labor. This was also an exercise used to reflect the real world.

I asked myself: are these entrepreneurs just greedy bastards then, looking to line their pockets, or were they simply men and women like the rest of us trying to do the best they could for their families and themselves in a world of cruel competition?

Moving on, I asked the economist a single question: do monopolies exist today.

He said yes.

Now, when one thinks monopoly, the game is the first thing to come up, but for those that know of the Gilded Age of America, you guys know that monopolies are like Standard Oil, Trusts, and the Northern Security Rail Company. Those kinds of monopolies are the kinds that drained competition, and made themselves the only ones to buy from.

It would be like Walmart if they put Target, Brookshire's, and Kroger out of business and left only themselves as America's grocery store.

The economist told us that monopolies exist today in that the monopolies are controlled by the government. He said that corporation would go and lobby the government to pass certain regulations. These regulations wouldn't destroy competition, but it would limit what other competition could do. In this instance, the corporation in question now has less competition to fight, and more opportunity to make money.

Since it's the government that passed these regulations, it's the government that controls the monopolies.

The first judge that came presided over a mock trial regarding the sinking of the Titanic and a suing, grieving wife. I think it was a real trial at one point, but I don't recall; the trial was handled in a way that left half the class asleep and bored.

While I forget the trial itself, I do not forget what I thought of this trial. The people that made the Titanic claimed it was unsinkable, yet it sank, many people fucking died, and they were sued for it. My cynical nature revealed to me what I found to be a dark truth: these companies know they fucked up, they know that they went wrong and cost people their lives, destroying families, and instead of owning up to this, they do everything they can to keep every single penny they have in their pockets.

I like to think of those people as greedy scum, but I suppose the counter argument to that would be that the companies need their money too, so they can pay their workers and provide for their own families. To quote Cutler Beckett:

"It's nothing personal, Jack. It's just good business."

The cruel world of corporation.

The second judge to come in didn't preside over any trials, but she gave us a bountiful wealth of information. She came from communist Russia when she was thirteen, travelling across Europe before finally making it to the USA. I forget what she said about her childhood, because it was what she had seen as a judge that caught my attention.

When she ran for her current position, of which I forget, she had a single opponent. She didn't give his name, but she said that this man used intimidation to keep other potential judges out of the game. This man intimidated her as well, saying that if she ran for judge, he would ensure she would practice law ever again. That convinced the second judge to run even harder, campaign stronger.

She won, of course, but the message I got from this was corruption. This man, this intimidating judge, used his reputation and reach to make sure he was always at the top. I wondered that if he did this, how many others did the same in our country?

The second story the judge told us was of her time as a juvenile court judge. She told us of her most 'interesting' case. There was a boy, thirteen, who was in court for curfew violation. The judge asked him why, and he said because it was rude to smoke around his momma. The judge felt a little relief in that, seeing a bit of light in the situation, and she told him that it wasn't good to smoke tobacco.

The kid freaked out and said:

"I wasn't smoking tobacco, I would never smoke that around my momma!"

We all got a little confused, but most of us quickly picked up what he was really smoking. The judge asked him this, and the kid said that he was smoking pot. As it turned out, his mother was a drug dealer…so yeah. The judge moved on from there and gave him his curfew time, and the kid asked if this applied to the weekends. The judge got confused and asked why that was relevant.

"My girlfriend's pregnant and I need to make sure she's okay."

Keep in mind that this kid is thirteen, smokes pot, his mother's a drug dealer, and said girlfriend is fourteen. Not a word was said anywhere in there about a father, and it went without saying that the everyone thought this kid was black.

I was able to pull aside a buddy I had made, and we talked about some stuff. I brought this up, and we both agreed that it was just fucked up in general, and it was fucked up how, just based on what was said about this kid, that everyone just knew he was black. It was a stereotype, my buddy said, an unfortunate one, but still. We talked about more things, and then we got to the System.

What is wrong with America to where a mother has to sell drugs to get by? What is wrong with America to where a thirteen year old smokes pot and is an expecting father? What is wrong with America to where seventy young men and women, upon hearing this story, all assumed the kid was black?

I told my buddy that when a System becomes so fucked up, so broken and corrupted like it is today, like a checker board in which neither party could see a move to make because of how muddled the board is, the only way to fix the System, to fix the board, is to wipe the board clean and start again.

Granted, we can't exactly just wipe out the American government and establish something new overnight, but still. Something needs to change.

Anyway, the judge said she kept up with the kid, and she told us that the birthing went off fine, he stayed in school, graduating high school with an education, stayed with his girlfriend, and now has a job to support all three of them. I'll think of that as the proof that not all hope for America is lost.

The Marine Captain that spoke to us was an older gentleman. Regrettably, I forget what he said, for at this point in the day, it being 4:30 in the afternoon and me waking up at 6:00 in the morning after hours of previous lessons and lectures, was irritated and fatigued. However, at the end of the conference, I spoke to him one on one and thanked him for his service after shaking his hand.

He looked me in the eye and said:

"I've been watching you. Out of everyone here, I think you're the only one that can make it in the Marines. If you ever think about joining, give me a call and I'll get everything in line."

I said thank you, sir, and I sat down at my table, pondering that. I personally have no intention of joining the military, much less the Marines (sorry to that one guy that reviewed thinking I was in the military; your salute is flattering, but sadly misplaced), but damn. This retired captain thought that I could do it, and offered his services to help make it happen…so yeah.

The Coast Guard members came in and talked about the stuff they did, their area of jurisdiction, the things they'd seen. I got to talking with one man, and he said that slavery today was higher than it was back when slavery was legal. Granted, the modern slave is a woman crammed into a shipping crate and not someone from Africa, but still.

I asked how he felt about that, and I saw his eyes dim. He said that in the beginning, it was horrible, terrible, disgusting, and it made him angry to know that it happened. But that was in the beginning, and he told me how it was in the present. He said it was nothing to him now, he said he was jaded to it.

He said it used to be like 'Oh my God! This is horrendous! This needs to stop now!' to 'Oh look, another human trafficking crate. Let's get this over with.'

I asked how he felt about Trump and America today, and he said that he stood with Trump, saying that the President was trying to push America back in the direction of God, trying to clean up the government. The Coast Guardsman said that, with the mess that Obama left to clean up, Trump was doing a good job. That's what he said, so please, for the love of God, do not start a political debate in the Reviews. Thank you.

Now, we get to the general, and this where things need a little more prior information.

When we got to the conference, we were all separated into different groups, and each group had their own jobs that needed to be attended to. My group was saddled with the responsibility of greeting and introducing all of the guest speakers and then saying a few words when their time was up. Well, after giving my groupmates their respective speakers, I ended up with introducing the general.

I got up to the podium and realized that my notes were not at all with me or within arm's reach. So there went Plan A. Plan B was to recite what I had from memory, and it would have gone great, if not for all the adrenaline suddenly coursing through me, which rendered me a stuttering mess. However, I persevered, and said aloud that I wasn't about to give up, because I'm an American.

I got applause for that one.

This is what I said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we welcome a true American hero. This man was drafted in the February of 67, and was deployed to Vietnam in the July of that same year. In the February of 69, he left the military and continued to serve our country from the National Guard. Duty would call again, and he would be directly commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant, where he would go on to serve valiantly for over 30 years. It was in 2005 that he retired with the rank of Brigadier General. During his career, he was awarded with the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, and numerous others. However, it is not only brawn that this man brings to our country, but brain as well. He is a graduate of the Army War College, and has an MBA from St. Edward's University. Ladies and gentlemen, please stand and join me in the welcoming of our guest of honor, Brigadier General Jim Bisson!"

Only add more stuttering and broken speech.

What the general spoke about is lost to me, as I was far more preoccupied with how much I just bombed that introduction. However, I remember vividly that the general handed us all a lemon, or at least the people around us a lemon, and he told us to get to know that lemon before putting it in a box. Then a member of our group had to go find our lemon. It wasn't hard, there were several landmarks on the lemon, and the message was simple as it was cliché.

That was all the events of the conference, now on to the slightly more personal stuff.

I said that we were split into groups, and those groups were named after the planets. There was Mercury, Mars, Venus, Saturn, Neptune, and my group, Jupiter. Each group had about somewhere between nine and thirteen members in their group. At the end of the conference, we all exchanged numbers and we have a group chat going. It's an endeavor of ours to meet back up one day, although how that'll happen is beyond me. One of our members lives in fucking Oklahoma for God's sake.

Anyway.

This conference was a conference of leaders, meaning that all of us were privately interviewed during the school year, and were chosen to attend. On Wednesday, the groups had to pick amongst themselves who the group leaders were, and Jupiter Group chose me.

With six groups, there were six 'Leaders of Leaders,' as I liked to call ourselves. The XO, the general, and three of the councilors took the six of us to a private room elsewhere on the Lexington, and interviewed us all as a group. The question they asked and our answers are unimportant, because the point was that night, during the banquet, they did not pick me as Top Leader.

I got with the XO at a later time and asked what set the winner apart from the rest of us, and he said he wasn't at liberty to discuss the deliberation between himself and the others…most disappointing answer of all time, but anyway. I didn't let it bog me down, and I shook hands with the Top Leader, smiled, and wished him the best in life.

Wednesday night, they let us all stay up late, giving us till 12:30 to get in bed…not the best when you have to get up at 6:30 to pack your stuff. Anyway, with all this time given to us, we all got in little groups and toured the ship. And when I say 'toured the ship,' I mean we went past the little yellow chains that said Authorized Personnel Only.

Of course we didn't find government secrets or private meetings or anything out in left field such as that. All we really found was dust, dirt, darkness, and enough rust to give you Tetanus just by looking at it. In the first area we explored, we found an old ladder that led down into a void. Me, being the adventurous idiot I am, went down that ladder…and found nothing but emptiness, dirty water, and dead cockroaches.

Most places were like that actually, just old, untouched, and waiting to be attended to. Although, in one room, an old berthing area left to time, I opened a cabinet and found a set of keys. Nothing major, just two little padlock keys on a string. I took them for myself, my own little treasure from the bowels of the U.S.S. Lexington. I wonder if those keys were truly just forgotten trinkets, or if someone is desperately looking for them…oh well.

With two of my bunkmates, we explored the fine details of atheism and religion.

My first bunkmate said he was an atheist, but not the kind that profusely believed in science and hated God, the idea of God, and people that worshipped God. No, he was the kind of atheist that used to believe, but something happened in his life to where his faith died.

He told me that when he was younger, he watched as his parents argued and yelled with one another, before eventually splitting up in a hateful divorce. He told me that he lost his faith because he couldn't believe that God would just stand there and let that happen…he also told me that since he once believed in God, he also believed in Satan.

I told him that it wasn't God that let his parents fight and divorce, I told him it was the work of the Devil. He just shrugged, and we moved on with our evening, content with our beliefs.

My second bunkmate overheard our conversation, and he jumped in himself. He said that he wanted to believe, but he had doubts. The question he asked me was that if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and that he knows what we are going to do no matter what, do we truly have free will?

I did my damned hardest to answer to him, but for his expectations and standards, I came up short. Our debate ended up attracting half of our side of the berthing area, and they all went into their attempts at convincing my bunkmate that we had free will, but I could tell that he wasn't convinced with anyone's argument.

What I have to say about that, for anyone here asking that same question, is that it all comes down to what you will believe, and what you won't believe. I believe that, even in the face of an omniscient and omnipresent being, we have free will to do as we want, when we want, and how we want to do it. Of course, there are limits to what we can do. I'm not about to fly to the moon, and you probably aren't going to jump fifty feet in the air.

Also, just because we have free will, does not mean it's okay to kill a man. That's why we have laws to govern free will, so that we don't live in a society of anarchy and violence…all evidence to the contrary.

Now, you're probably asking is there a point to all this beyond telling us all how my vacation went, and the answer is yes.

Each fold of the American flag has a meaning to it. For those that already know this, you can skip it. For those that don't, please keep reading.

The first fold is symbolic of life, the second is symbolic of the belief in eternal life. The third is honor the veterans retiring from the military, and the fourth represents the weaker nature of humanity, and that it is in God that look to for guidance in times of peace and war. The fifth fold is made in tribute to our country, and the sixth is for our heart, the heart which we place our hand over during the Pledge of Allegiance to this country. The seventh fold is done in honor of our armed forces, and the eighth is made in the name of our mothers. The ninth fold is performed for womanhood, in the name of their faith and love and loyalty, and that it was in these things that the men and women of this country were molded by. As the eighth fold is made in the name of our mothers, the tenth is made in the name of our fathers. The eleventh and twelfth folds of the flag are done in the name of religion, with the eleventh representing the Hebrew God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the twelfth representing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

When the flag is completely folded, the white stars of purity stand proudly against the blue hope of the night sky, representing our country's motto:

In God We Trust

I find that to be a source of irony, honestly. In a country that allows for freedom of religion, no matter what, be it Christianity, Judaism, Catholicism, Muslim, Wicca, Satanism, atheism, scientology, etc., that the motto of this country revolves around trusting a single being.

I ask myself what it means to be an American, and I debate that if this country trusts in God, then part of being an American is believing and trusting in God, and those that do not, whether they are atheist or otherwise not a believer in God, cannot truly call themselves Americans.

However, the counter to that is that there's more to being an American than religious faith, or lack thereof.

During the conference, they had us fold a piece of paper a certain way, and cut it. When we unfolded it, we had made a perfect five-point star…assuming you folded everything correctly. On this star, they had us write down what we thought it meant to be a patriot. This is what I wrote:

Patriotism is adhering to the principles of the American Creed, believing that that government is created by the people, for the people, of the people, and all of us are a united people, be they gay, atheist, Christian, Muslim, Catholic, or Jewish, under God.

I believe that part of being an American is recognizing that this nation was founded on the principles of the Bible, and that our Founding Fathers put their faith in God. Before anyone grabs their torches and pitchforks, I want you to know that I am not condemning atheists and other pagan religions. I am merely stating my beliefs.

When I say the American Creed, this is what I mean:

I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon. I seek opportunity to develop my whatever talents God gave me—not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refused to barter incentive for a dole.

I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any earthly master nor bend to any threat.

It is my heritage to stand, erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say—'This, with God's help, I have done.'

All this is what it means to be an American.

My favorite part of this is the very beginning, where it says that it is my right to be uncommon. I like to think that applies to every community of America, from religion to Furies, ABDL to LGBT, and beyond. If it's what you like, go ahead and do it.

One of our unalienable rights is the pursuit of happiness, so if it's reading a Bible, or Quran, or Torah that makes you happy, go for it. If it's dressing in a cartoon animal suit, more power to ya. If wearing a diaper brings just a bit more light to your life, wear a diaper. If being lesbian, gay, bi, or trans puts a smile on your face, then keep smiling.

Only, do everyone a favor, and pursue your happiness in private. There is no need to make people uncomfortable in public, no need to draw attention to yourself, and no need to end up on the news with a headline like 'Gay couple murdered after kissing in public.' Although, if you feel the dire need to engage in exhibitionism, please, for the love of all that is sacred, have some tough skin.

No one wants to read on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, or on the news about how insulted you got when you were dissed in public for wearing a Furry suit.

Now, far above these lines of texts that may or may not have been read, I told you there was a point to all this and then proceeded to launch into the Flag Folding Procedure. At the very end of the conference, just before we got our bags and loaded up the bus, we were given the Final Challenge, and that Challenge was to continue to lead off the ship, and lead in life.

On the way down to the bus, I felt a void inside me, this huge pit of emptiness. This pit was created by the ending of the conference. We just spent the past four days undergoing sleep deprivation followed by more learning and interaction than four weeks of school, learning about America, the government, patriotism, economics, and what the American flag truly meant…and now what are we supposed to do?

Start a blog about government corruption, lies, and secrets? Start a hometown organization about patriotism? Join the military and fight for the country? Become a politician, or lawyer? Just…what the fuck are we supposed to do, man? Sleeping in and blearily waking up in the morning just to spend the rest of the day on the couch or with a controller in hand definitely isn't the answer. So what is the answer?

My answer was over four thousand words.

I can see how many people look at my fics per update, and there's generally a few thousand people that read said update. I know that a few thousand is just a few drops in a country of several hundred million, but that's still a few thousand people that I've reached out to.

That's still a few thousand people who have read this, and have asked themselves their own questions, formed their own opinions, created their own ideals and beliefs. That's a few thousand people I've lead down a path that's made them think.

And that's good enough for me.

During the conference, I gave a few people my pen name so they could look me up. Whether they will or won't is in the hands of not me, but if they stop by, and they do read all of this and have gotten down to here, then I want to say to those people:

It was a blast, guys.

To close what it is probably the longest author's note ever written, this goes to everyone that has read this, no matter what walk of life they come from, no matter what they believe, no matter what they've done in life/plan to do in life, no matter about anything that makes them who they are:

Find for yourself what it means to be an American, and may God be with you always.