Patron Hunt

Alex Pagliuca is in the process of tearing itself apart. By the lottery of birth and circumstance, there are many ways s/he straddles a number of these divides. S/he was raised in the world of patriarchal white supremacy, as a heterosexual white male. The kind of beliefs which have enabled a large subsection of the country to be engulfed by fascist ideology, white supremacist grievances and terror at the changing ideas surrounding what gender is, what gender roles are, and so much else of what the far right is leveraging, were a part of s/her childhood and upbringing. S/he considers s/herself fortunate this wasn’t all s/he ended up with in the lottery of birth and life. S/he was fortunate to have some strong influences which gave s/her a choice about continuing to follow those ideas as the guiding principles of s/her life. They gave s/her a basis for what has amounted to curiosity and a lifelong passion for community involvement, and what those people who influenced s/her away from the foundation leading so many to fascism would have called, “caring about your neighbor and community,” “respecting others” and “being a good citizen,” which now fall under the umbrella of social justice. A good portion of s/her life was spent attempting to work in favor of social justice, while also, unconsciously answering to the kinds of anxieties created by being raised as a boy, to become a man in a society whose worldview is deeply violent, destructive and dehumanizing. Experience resulting from nothing more than age (which itself is nothing more than not dying), the maturity which is the combination of that experience and the curiosity which has driven s/he to spend most of s/her life seeking out the lessons of the history patriarchal whiteness downplays, the stories we’ve told each other in keeping with and in challenge to the dominant culture, the artifacts of culture we’ve created, and the attempt to best live doing the most good and least damage possible, have put s/he in a place where s/he has what is proving to be a somewhat unique perspective. Circumstance has left it that s/he is no longer able to attempt to unconsciously answer the anxieties created by being raised a white boy, in a society which so privileges white men, and also instills in them a depth of anxiety and fear which is now threatening the nation, and whether they know it or not, all the things all of us, have ever hoped for, no matter how different those hopes may be. What s/he’s left with, is the inevitable, both personally and collectively. The love of the written word so much a part of s/her life since s/her very early years is what s/he has left to use as s/her contribution, if not in attempting to find some workable solution to the problems this collective madness is the response to, than at least to document it and the inevitable decimation of humanity which necessarily comes with it, with less of a favor for the abstract notion of some nation in our collective aspirations and more of a favor for the people who are the nation in the reality we materially exist in. It is now too often the case, the rift between being a good person and being a good American is vast. S/he’s far less interested in being a good American than s/he is being a good person, but circumstance only gives s/her choice about one of these, and the prevailing definitions of the both find s/he at odds with what is probably a majority of the other people inhabiting the legal creations which are our borders.

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