The Conservative Dilemma
There, but for the grace of God…
NOTE: Within this text, wherever gender is not key to the explanation, I am using the Elverson ey/em construction of the Spivak Pronouns.
Third essay in A Conservatism Triptych.
When I worked at MediaNews Group, the company that owned the Denver Post and dozens of other newspapers in the U.S., I went to work by bus from Nederland, Colorado to Denver. My final bus to work was the 16th Street Mall Ride. Sitting in the shuttle going from Union Station to Broadway, I watched as people would board and disembark. Occasionally, a smelly, scraggly person carrying eir possessions in a trash bag would board, journeying from a sleeping spot to a place where ey may beg with some hope of return.
Many on the shuttle would move to a distance or express their contempt. I, on the other hand, was fascinated by the fact that I could easily have found myself in that horrific trap: to be so far down that no action on my part could save me. To be awash in failure, forsaken by all of humanity and left as refuse in a cold unforgiving city. I would reflect on the fact that I almost decided to study electronics but, by sheer accident, stumbled into software. I was fortunate enough to be welcomed into the Sun Microsystems ecosystem where I honed that craft and was ejected, at the failure of that…
