On the road...again!!!
Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek

Déjà Vu and Cognitive Dissidence, All Over again

Youse guys and gals out there, the ones wit da big vocabularies, might get a chuckle or two about how dis jerk who calls himself the Footloose Forester can even dream of breaking into the inner circle of intellectual elites. He doesn’t even know the difference between the words “dissidence” and “dissonance.” Rather than try to impress yinze, or to seem pretentious, the Footloose Forester just wants to grab your attention to get ya’ll thinking about the cognitive dissonance that is re-emerging in the current U.S. political dialogue of autumn 2025. Or is it discourse? Does it matter? Does it happen enough to make a difference in lowering the temperature?

In one of those decidedly stream of consciousness moods, the Footloose Forester is attempting to capture his mood and his ideas first, and sort out the context in a cogent way, a bit later on. The goofy use of regional language like youse, yinz, and ya’ll is part of his effort to collect his thoughts. The ominous state our national political discourse is so vexing, that he doesn’t know whether to file this chronicle under humor, defining moments, or education; in his personal archives of Legacy Stories. To the seminal chronicler who calls himself the Footloose Forester, it is important to keep notes, mental ones and notes for his musings.

As a life-long iconoclast, the Footloose Forester has always questioned theory, doctrine, presumptions of guilt or innocence, ad nauseum. It is merely irritating to some but threatening to others. Being your own man and having your own thoughts and opinions does, however; come at a price. A lone wolf emerged in the persona of the Footloose Forester. That status is neither good nor bad, it is just a descriptive identifier. For example, when it came to calling balls and strikes as a volunteered umpire in a game of high-arc slow-pitch softball, nobody on either team could or would say what they thought about the process or the rulings. Years went by and no opinions or comments emerged. So, high-arc pitches as a topic got stored into his mental files, until the issue again emerged as one of the Chronicles of a Footloose Forester, many years after he hung up his fielders’ glove. There were over 600 readers of that chronicle, but not one response or opinion about its content. Such is the nature of social media and its linked websites, more importantly—an indication of the presumptive attitudes or lack of interest of internet lurkers about selective subjects.

The Footloose Forester has family and friends on both sides of the political aisle, and it is not his intention to fan the flames, muddy the waters, or to provoke anyone into a state of agitation. He merely wants to remind them that we may be, once again, entering into a period of Déjà Vu and Cognitive Dissidence, all over again.