I am often careful to sidestep these little confrontations in which I am expected to lash out bitterly against stupid yet powerful people of whom I would rather avoid comment because if I said what I really thought about that, it would just get around and they will find a way to come back around later to bite me in the back side, as often happens. With this huge mess trailing behind me it will not be hard for them to invent some curiously unique way to link me to whatever odd configuration they want and I won't even know what happened, so how can I say something about that, when I really don't know where that came from?
Just because you were at one time in the merchant marine, that does not mean that I know anything about that.
