Missing old Mike

A letter to me

I received a kindly (well, I think) single-spaced letter from an anonymous reader the other day. He wanted to remind me of a far more idealistic me from the college years and how I've since morphed into a 68-year-old man who is much different in his view of the world.

Among other things, he and his "liberal friend" appear to view me nowadays as a conservative who only occasionally glimpses the radiance of enlightenment that permeated my spirit as a naïve student. A Vietnam veteran, he particularly disagreed with my praise for late Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle.

I always appreciate it when readers take their valuable time and energy to write. Here, in part, is the essence of what this writer explained of his views, followed by my reflections.

"Mike--Thirty-something years ago you and I were in a college class together, a journalism course I assume and, though I was several years older than you, I enjoyed watching you develop into an excellent writer. Your ideas were unique and fresh and so open-minded, most everyone in class enjoyed the liberal perspective you seemed to have on topics. Off and on for years now I have read your print and it has changed ...

"Though you still write on subjects like the hog farm on the Buffalo and the young girl [Janie Ward from Marshall] who mysteriously died, both vintage Mike M., you no longer write with that youthful zest you once had. And that is sad to me because that is what attracted me and many of us to your articles, that open-mindedness ... I find myself wondering what happened to the guy we all liked so.

"You juggle words well, like you always did ... I wish you would tap your brain a bit more to see if there might be some more of the old Mike in there because I miss his writings ... I miss the old Mike, he was one of the good guys ... we do not always agree and that is OK because we do not need to always agree, but I did want to tell you that I still read your writings ...

"I just wish the words were written more like they were when you were in your 20s, young and fresh and open-minded ... I miss that in Mike's articles. I miss the old Mike Masterson."

While I do understand my former classmate's point and wish he'd signed his name, the old lost Mike he laments losing viewed life through the glasses of a 21-year-old college student more than four decades ago. All the idealism and youthful zest has since boiled into a caramelized goo of realism about the way life really works versus once-ignorant impressions and expectations.

Old/younger Mike actually believed most people usually did the right thing for the right reasons. While there were exceptions, I thought the underlying systems of government and justice in 1970 pretty much functioned honorably and free from polarizing political influences. Then I began to discover, much to my disillusionment, that wasn't the case.

A county's judge really did siphon funds from the road department, a young and innocent black man really was railroaded by an ambitious prosecutor into a rape and robbery charge, the murder of a young black veteran in Conway really was covered up by the criminal "justice" system for 20 years, an innocent man really was wrongly convicted of murder by false testimony from a state crime lab technician, DWIs really did vanish from judicial court records. And with each revelation, another chunk of noble idealistic gullibility dropped from my spirit.

By the time I was 40 and heading the investigative team at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, I'd become a battle-hardened veteran of reality.

Ever since, I've watched so many of those elected to lead we the people blatantly feed us one lie after another while once mutually civil political parties began polarizing to extremes. Money, and trainloads of it, as well as the need for control over all of us began corrupting our democratic republic and its supposedly honorable processes to the point where credibility and trust became bothersome afterthoughts.

Today, I believe in what not long ago were expected values: Personal accountability, living within one's means, helping those who can't help themselves, protecting and preserving the Constitution that made this nation and enabling people to achieve dreams rather than creating unfulfilled indentured servants of them through taxpayer handouts for political gain.

Please feel free to pigeonhole such "radical" beliefs in the most oversimplified way, one that makes you politically comfortable.

The simplest way to answer what happened to the old Mike is that, like all of us who live long enough, he grew up, never to return to his youth when everything still lay spread to a rosy horizon in black or white.

Yet, please don't give up on this ol' word-jugglin' brain-tappin' former good guy just yet. If you've been reading, you're aware I actually haven't lost the sense of outrage over little injustices, or the urge to speak for those who can't, or the good ones among us who seem victimized by bullies. Such motivators linger from my 20s and are one reason I'm here for my brief visit.

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].

Editorial on 02/17/2015

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