I Think Therefore I Am...A Little Crazy

When I was young and smart and (contradictorily) in the Navy, I was befriend by another young man, Herb. Herb (whom I have written of before) was a man of much knowledge and intelligence. He had aced both the GCT (General Classification Test) and ARI (Arithmetic test), he claimed at some point of our knowing each other and I had no reason to disbelieve him. He was quite smart. And also quite out of place in the military.

When I was in boot camp, I was told that the "smart" guys were almost always the problematic ones, the ones who "could not, or would not, get with the program." Smart people tend, in my view, to flout authority. So I agreed with the sentiment. The problem is that the military requires conformity above individualism. It's the nature of the beast. Unfortunately, the times called for a large military force (embroiled, as we were, in Vietnam) and so the military needed bodies and didn't much care if they were very smart or very stupid; they thought they could mold them all into what was needed. They couldn't, of course, but they would just muster out the misfits with some kind of general discharge and ignore that their system had made a mistake.

Herb was definitely a mistake for the military. So was, coincidentally, my father. And, perhaps, so was I but I managed to get through my enlistment and get that honorable discharge... as did my father.

What is this all about? It's about Trevor Noah, the next "anchor" of the Daily Show, replacing Jon Stewart. Mr Noah is currently under attack for some tweets he made over the years. They were not very Politically Correct. He managed to insult women, Jews, and a few others. Mr. Noah hails from South Africa. I am pretty sure he is smart and, therefore, has trouble with societal constraints. I can overlook his missteps as I have overlooked my own. But will the public?