The Three Mentors

I was warmly greeted by the Congressional Black Caucus and other dignitaries. I was some type of hero. They told me that my work with the Air Force was intellectual property and that I was a very rich man. “How rich will I be?” Rockefeller Rich they replied. “How much money is that? Between 28 and 30 million”, they said. The Civil Rights activist said he wanted me to be the revenge of all the black inventors that our nation has ripped off. I said “Yes sir, sounds like I am going to be real good at getting our revenge”.  He asked what I was going to do with the money. So I told him when I was in the Air Force we had talked about setting up an anonymous trust fund in five cities for charity that will last one hundred years. With that much money I guess we could adopt 20 cities.

They began boasting of how the young blood stood up to three different Presidents, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. I told them, “We were dealing with matters of honor, and I heard that President Nixon was kind to me, because he didn’t know what to do with the biggest damn hero and the biggest screw up at the same time”. I was faced with a tough decision. In order to be their greatest hero I was going to have to go after President Ronald W. Reagan.

They insisted that I brief them on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). They wanted to see Warrior Theodore! I was not wise. I was foolish. I told them how Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King Jr. and John Wayne were my three mentors. They called John Wayne a racist. They said, “I did not know what he was ready like”.  I was shocked they thought that the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday would not pass and their extreme criticism of Hosea Williams and the SCLC and their relationship with the Republican Party. My passions were flowing unabated. “We could win the Cold War,” I said, “but the president of the United States of America needs your support. The plan is a simple one: we win, they lose. Peace through strength is a real possibility. The grain embargo of the seventies had revealed a fatal flaw in the Soviet Union. They did not have the economic strength to keep up with us if we took our defense spending to another level.” They were absolutely spellbound that a common man like me would make such a persuasive argument. I talked to them about the aces I worked with and the men and women of the armed forces of the United States of America and the warrior way. I talked about SAM 26000 and why I was not able to meet with President Jimmy Carter. I wanted to shock them and boldly said, “We are at war and if there’s one thing I know about America’s history it is that Benedict Arnold was a traitor.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, young man!” the congressman from Detroit said. “We are the Congress of the United States of America and we’ve all heard many things over the years, and I believe I speak for all of us. We’ve never heard anything like that before.” They asked me how I could love the USA so much after they enslaved our people.

 I responded “I can’t dwell on the past sins of our nation when my eyes tell me there’s hope. We should be about the business of our nation’s future and not the past. When I was a little boy I used to have to crawl under my desk and fear being bombed and I would sing ‘God Bless America’ and God is blessing America.”

The Congressional Black Congress had a few more questions when the gentleman from New York demanded satisfaction. In a raspy voice, he said, “We are here to offer this young man more material wealth than anyone of us or possibly all of us could combine.” The gentleman from Detroit was tapping the gentleman from New York on the arm as if to just leave it alone. He said, “No, I have to have his answer. Do you love that Reagan man that much that you would reject us and the offering we bring to you?”