Death for Fun and Profit

Ah, Twitter, the bottomless wellspring of magic unicorns.

A Trump supporter actually said, and I quote, "Cancer ... if you don't have insurance, they don't stop treating you!"

“… and if you don’t have insurance they don’t stop treating you!”

Say that out loud to yourself.

Mouth the words.

Say them as if you mean it, as if you believe it.

Pause in the middle, give the sentence a dramatic beat.

      If you don't have insurance...

              ...they don't stop treating you.

Feel the words in your mouth, the sweet, sweet taste of magic unicorn meat like cotton candy spun from the nicotine stained tears of Ayn Rand and red-boned Republican freedom.

If you don’t have insurance, they don’t stop treating you.

How many times have you heard this?

You can always go to the emergency room if you have cancer.

They have to treat you, even if you can’t pay. Nobody goes without healthcare in America.

How many times? How many times have you heard that in this debate, in this endless shitfight about healthcare in America?

Yeah, listen, if you could get treated without insurance in this country, well, then we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place and, actually, they do stop treating you if you run out of money.

Yes, they do.

Some specialized gene-specific cancer drugs are $15,000 PER MONTH. Or more.

In cases of aggressive cancers where all other therapies have failed, these drugs are the only options.

These drugs, they're difficult to develop.

They’re difficult to make.

They're difficult to get.

And they cost.

A lot.

Now, we can argue about the ridiculous cost of drugs in this country (and I'm sure you all will in the comments), but that's not actually the point here.

The point is this: if you can't pay, you die.

Hell, you don't even have to get cancer. It doesn’t have to be $15,000. A couple of hundred bucks is the difference between life and death for many Americans.

If you're allergic to bees and you can't afford $300 for an Epipen, well, you'd better hope somebody comes along with a clean pocket knife and some idea of how to perform an emergency tracheotomy when your throat starts swelling closed.

If you can't pay, you die.

This idiotic idea, that everybody has access to healthcare, that you can just go to the emergency room for any kind of condition and be treated free of charge, is one of the most obviously wrong and most deliberately obtuse blind spots of modern conservatism – which not only rejects the idea of universal healthcare out of hand but also thinks your healthcare should involve their religion and your employer and that the insurance you've been paying for (if you're lucky enough to have insurance) should be able to drop coverage if you get sick.

Earlier this week, Kellyanne Conway, Evil Counselor, ur, I mean, Advisor to the President, said "Obamacare took Medicaid, which was designed to help the poor, the needy, the sick, disabled, also children and pregnant women, it took it and went way above the poverty line and opened it up to many able-bodied Americans. [Those able bodied people] should probably find other — at least see if there are other options for them. If they are able-bodied and they want to work, then they'll have employer-sponsored benefits like you and I do."

If they are able bodied and they want to work, they'll have employer-sponsored benefits like you and I do.

They'll have employer sponsored healthcare.

Employer sponsored healthcare.

Like you and I do.

You. And I.

This is the kind of idiotic blather you get when you elect privileged rich people who have never actually had to work for a living at the bottom end of society.

This is the kind of ridiculous cluelessness that can only be achieved by people who never have to decide between eating and paying for a prescription.

This is the kind of smug arrogance that you get when your politics and your religion come from the same ideology of “Fuck you, I got mine.”

Furthermore, these are the same people who also reject the idea of a living wage.

They have no idea. They literally have no idea.

I'm here in the impoverished South.

I'm surrounded by far too many people who have trouble putting food on the table and paying the rent.

They're good people, these poor Southerners. They work hard. They're mechanics who fix cars. They're yard care workers who mow lawns for rich people in the boiling heat. They run daycare out of their houses. They're students, trying to fit in classes at the junior college between shifts at the local burger joint.

Some of them, like my wife 30 years ago, might through grit and raw determination claw their way out.

But many, the majority, don’t.

I could go on and on. I could show you pictures. I could introduce you to them by name.

These people, some of them work 60, 70, 80 hours, six and seven days a week. And still – and still – they're trapped in an endless cycle of low wages and lack of opportunity, crushed by poverty and the inability to get ahead in any fashion. It’s just how it is. It’s always been like this here. It doesn’t matter if the economy is booming or has gone bust yet again.  These people, they don't own the crappy houses they live in, they rent. They don't have anything in the bank. Every couple of years a hurricane comes along and wipes out whatever it is they have managed to build up. Many of them don't even have teeth – and the cliché of the toothless Southerner is a whole lot less funny when you see an attractive young girl behind the counter at the local hardware store and her smile is full of rotten brown pegs because her parents couldn't afford even basic dental care for their children. And don't you think for one second that won't impact her future, her opportunity, her employment, her health. These people, they can't afford birth control, so they have kids they can barely feed, let alone send to the dentist, digging themselves in deeper and deeper. And the goddamned churches aren't any help, with the preachers and their useless messages of abstinence and damnation and guilt.

These people, they can't afford even random healthcare at some shitty neighborhood for-profit clinic staffed by a single physician's assistant in a dirty lab coat when their kid inevitably gets strep throat much less CANCER.

It’s not just the South, it’s the slowly decaying wreckage of Northern industrial cities, places like Flint and Detroit, Baltimore, Rome, Louisville, Milwaukee, places where manufacturing and industry and jobs long ago fled for more profitable fields. It’s New England where the fishing industry, never particularly profitable in the first place, has collapsed. It’s the Salton Sea. It’s the farms of the Midwest. It’s the coal mining towns of the Appalachians. 

It’s America, everywhere outside the gilded towers of the rich.

If you've got cancer, and you cut yourself, sure, you can go to the Emergency Room and get stitches even if you can't pay.

Of course you can.

But that is as far as it goes.

The ER doctor sure as hell isn't going to give you chemo treatments or $15,000 per dose miracle drugs based on an expensive DNA screening. You'll get a sympathetic referral to an oncologist who maybe does some pro-bono work if you're lucky, and shown the door if you're not.

Emergency rooms treat emergencies, not cancer.

If you can't pay, you die.

And there are far, far too many people at all income levels in this country who don't have access to even lousy healthcare.

There are far, far too many who don't have access to the drugs and the therapies and the doctors they need just to live.

There are far, far too many people who have to daily make a choice between eating and paying for healthcare – even when they've worked their whole lives.

And beyond that, somewhere above the poverty line, there are far, far too many people who did everything right, who got an education, who worked and did without and got insurance, who paid into Medicare for 40 years, who bought supplemental insurance, and then got sick and suddenly they got dropped, or faced lifetime caps, or just weren't covered for that illness because people who are already sick and out of resources can't fight the bottomless pockets of the insurance companies or their employer who suddenly decided covering cancer was against their religion.

This is what happens when healthcare isn't a right.

This is what happens when those in charge are insulated from those they govern, when they are safe in their districts and assured of their power and privilege.

This what happens when the morality of those in power is based on profit and greed and the arrogant certainty that they are better than those they govern.

This what happens when you elect a government that hires armed biker gangs to keep their own constituents away from town hall meetings – exactly as my own Representative did right here in Milton, Florida.

This is what happens when your healthcare is decided by thirteen privileged white men behind closed doors. No people of color. No women. Just thirteen rich white men.

This is what happens when religion and political ideology alike are based on the simple selfish principle of “Fuck you, I got mine.”

This is what happens when you elect billionaires to office and believe them when they try to sell you magic unicorns.

If you can't pay, you die.

The Right Question

Wrong Question. Wrong questions get wrong answers.
-- Master Gregory, Seventh Son, 2014

Is healthcare a right?

You know, a right?

With all the many ideas we Americans consider rights, you’d think we would have an answer for this.

Obviously, here in America anyway, healthcare is not an enumerated right like Freedom of Speech or Freedom of the Press. But is it one of those other rights? The ones not specifically mentioned in the US Constitution but implied by the 9th Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

In December of 2012, the United States along with dozens of other nations signed United Nations agenda item 123: Global Health and Foreign Policy, which among other things encouraged all nations to adopt “sustainable health financing structures and universal coverage” for all people. The resolution also reaffirmed all member nations’ commitment to the idea of “the right of every human being to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, without distinction as to race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.”

Do we believe that? 

Is healthcare a right?

Well, is it?

That’s the question I asked this week on Twitter.

Twitter is a weird place, the howling wild frontier of social media. But it’s pretty good for this kind of thing, polling the public mind. I have a large audience there, large enough to get a good sample across the spectrum of opinion, and so I asked: Is healthcare a right?

Not just here in America, but everywhere. Do you believe healthcare is a basic human right?

Now that seems to me a straightforward question.

And it seems to me that it’s the critical question.

Everything in America’s ongoing debate over healthcare depends from the answer to that simple question. Everything. Until you answer that question, until we agree on the answer to that question, the rest of the argument is largely irrelevant – or at least putting the cart before the horse.

Is healthcare a right? Yes or no.

That’s the question we need to settle first.

But that question is the one never put to America. Never asked. Never answered.

In all the debates over healthcare in America, from debates surrounding Medicare in the 60’s and Medicaid in the 70’s and Hillary Clinton’s efforts as First Lady in the 90’s and right on up to the Affordable Healthcare Act and the American Health Care Act, that’s the question we keep avoiding. If you look back, if you wade through all the millions of comments made about healthcare in America, that’s the one question that is never asked. The one question never debated in congress. The one question never discussed by all the talking heads on all the TV shows. That’s the one question never settled.

That’s not a coincidence.

It’s by design.

Why? Because it’s not the question we can’t face, it’s the answer.

We’re all afraid of the answer.

The press is afraid of the answer.

The public is afraid of the answer.

The politicians are terrified of the answer.

The people who don’t believe healthcare to be a right are afraid of their answer.

And the people who do believe are afraid of their answer too – maybe them most of all, because they put the most conditions on it.

The answer to that question, yes or no, has consequences, big ones. If we don’t ask the question, then we don’t have to face the answer. Not as individuals, not as politicians, not as a nation. We can just keep arguing.

Nevertheless, that’s where it all begins, right there. With the answer to that question.

Is healthcare a right?

What if the answer is no?

Look at Scott Walker’s tweet up above.

Obamacare is collapsing. If nothing changes, 28 million Americans will lack insurance by 2026 under Obamacare (according to CBO)

Look at John Cornyn’s comment:

Obamacare has left about 30M uninsured and individual market is in a death spiral.

And it’s not just conservatives:

Those are three examples of literally thousands of similar remarks made by politicians on both sides of the debate.

Essentially: If X happens, y number of Americans will lose healthcare.  Swap in Obamacare or Trumpcare for x and 10, 20, 30, 50 million for y. The sides and the numbers and the plans don’t matter. If x happens, y number of Americans will lose healthcare.

That’s the drum both sides, left and right, Republican and Democrat, keep beating. Millions will lose healthcare.

Millions will lose healthcare.

Millions will lose healthcare.

Millions will lose healthcare.

So?

So, they go without healthcare.

So maybe the quality of their lives is diminished.

So maybe they die as a result.

So?

So? So what? I mean, so long as it isn’t me, why do I care? Why should I care?

As an American, why should I care?

If healthcare isn’t a right?

If healthcare isn’t a right then why should I care how many people don’t have it?

Why would any politician give a damn about how many people lose healthcare, if healthcare isn’t a right?

No, really.  If healthcare isn’t a right, isn’t a right of all citizens, then why does Scott Walker care? Why does Nancy Pelosi care? Why should Donald Trump care? Why should anybody care? If healthcare is just a privilege, something nice to have, but not a right of every American, then why should anybody care? The argument, Oh no! Millions will lose healthcare! just doesn’t hold water – unless you believe that every single person is entitled to healthcare as a right. Not deserves it. Not can afford it. Is entitled to it as a right, as an American, as a citizen, as a human being.

It is a simple black or white answer. Yes or no. Either healthcare is a right, or it’s not.

Everything else in this argument depends from that one fundamental ideal. Everything.

Either you believe people are entitled to healthcare as a right or you don’t. The rest is just details.

Now, before we go any further, let’s get something straight:  I don’t care if your answer is no.

I don’t. Really. I’m not going to condemn you for it. I spent most of my life in the military defending your right to see the world how you want. If you don’t believe that healthcare should be the right of every human being, well, I fully support your right to that viewpoint.

If you’re embarrassed or ashamed to admit your answer is no, that’s on you.

If you don’t believe that healthcare is a right, then at least have the goddamned courtesy to be honest about it.

Own it. Don’t pretend otherwise or try to make it sound like you do when you don’t. Don’t blow smoke up my ass. Don’t move the goalposts. Don’t dismiss the question. Don’t try to rationalize it.

Let me give you an example: a large number of people responded to my question by saying, well, I don’t believe that healthcare is a right per se, but I want you to know that I do believe we should have universal healthcare.

What? How’s that work?

If healthcare isn’t a right, then why do we have a duty to provide it?

If healthcare isn’t a right, then why would society and community have any obligation to provide it?

I mean, what’s the impetus for universal healthcare if it’s not a right?

If providing healthcare is the right thing to do, if it’s some kind of moral imperative, then why isn’t it a right?

Now don’t get me wrong here. Sure, a rational civilization should obligate itself to provide healthcare for all its citizens, because healthy people make for better citizens if for no other reason. Just as a rational civilization would obligate itself to provide quality education, adequate food, clean air, clean water, decent housing, energy, and so on.

We don’t live in that rational society.

And if healthcare isn’t a right, then what’s to keep your universal healthcare system from denying healthcare to certain people? For good reasons and for bad?

That seems an odd definition of universal, doesn’t it?

Yeah, said the responders, but, see, you set up your universal healthcare system so that it can’t deny healthcare to anybody…

Can’t deny healthcare to anybody? Well, haven’t you then made healthcare a de facto right?

Stop playing games. Stop acting like you’ve thought it through when you obviously haven’t.

Look here, if the answer is no, then own it.

Just own it. All the way. And stop pretending that you give a shit about how many people don’t have healthcare. If you don’t believe that healthcare is a right, then don’t use the fact that people don’t have healthcare as an argument. Because you’re insulting not only my intelligence, but yours too. And that kind of cowardice irritates me.

If your is answer is no, that’s fine.

But I want to hear you say it.

Is healthcare a right? Yes or no. Everything else is just details.

If we all agree that healthcare is not a basic right of human existence, then we must acknowledge that healthcare is a privilege.

And not everybody is privileged.

That’s the whole definition of privilege. Some people have it, some don’t.

If the answer is no, it’s not a right, then healthcare is a privilege and we are not obligated to guarantee every person will be able to get healthcare. The privileged get it. Those of lesser fortune don’t.  Simple as that. Oh sure, we might provide some charity, some help for the non-privileged, but we are by no means under any moral obligation to do so.  If we’ve got extra money, if we’re feeling generous, sure. What the hell. But otherwise, no.

If you can afford it, you get it.

If you can’t, you don’t.

And you should at least be honest enough to admit that’s what you’re up to. I want to hear every politician, every candidate for office, go on the record, yes or no. And if it’s no, if you believe healthcare is a privilege of those who can afford it, then have the guts to look into the camera and say so. And if you’re voted out of office as a result, or stripped of your privilege by the mob, well, that’s just too goddamned bad.

If healthcare isn’t a right, then it’s just another line item in the budget, next to bridges and warships and farm subsidies.

And the only argument is where we draw the line between the haves and have-nots – and the best part about capitalism is that we don’t have to draw the line ourselves, the free market will do it for us. Leaving our hands clean.

You just have to hope that you’re privileged enough to be on the right side of the line.

And that the line doesn’t move.

And you never lose your privilege.

What if the answer is yes?

Well, hang on. We can’t just say yes, can we?

Not without caveat. Not without conditions.

We need to know some things first. Before we say yes.

Because as it turns out, it’s really difficult for a lot of people to say yes.

What was it Anatole France said? The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

They want to.

They want to say yes, that healthcare is a right.

But they need to know things first. What kind of right? Like fundamental? Inalienable? Enumerated? Civil? Human? What kind of right, man?

What kind of right?

What are we talking about here? The kind of high ideal we give lip service to but don’t have to follow up on? Well, sure, Jim, I believe healthcare is an inalienable right, like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Just like that. Nobody can keep you from pursing healthcare if you want it. Go ahead. Sure. No problem. No action required on my part, on society’s part. You have at it. Pursue away. The government can’t stop you. Pursue that healthcare. It’s a “right.” Wink. Wink. 

Like that?

As soon as you define the kind of right, you can start finding ways to weasel out of it, to find ways to deny that right to others.

Some people seem to think rights only exist if they’re specifically enumerated in the Constitution. I don’t know if they think other countries don’t have rights, or if they even bothered to think it thought that far. And I wasn’t inclined to ask. They are also apparently unfamiliar with the 9th Amendment.

For them, the paperwork comes first, rights second.

I’m not sure how they think the Constitution was written in the first place, i.e. your basic chicken and egg problem, and more on that in just a minute.

A lot of folks were reluctant to answer the question without the exact parameters of the right defined.

Define “Freedom of speech.”

Define “Freedom of religion.”

Define “Right to peacefully assemble.”

Define “Right to keep and bear arms.”

Those rights were enumerated without definitions by the Framers and put into the Bill of Rights.

In other words, the rights came first. And we’ve spent two hundred and forty years since figuring out the details.

And we’re going to have to keep figuring out the details and how they apply to our time.

Why? Because the details are dynamic. How we define those rights changes over time.

The limits of the rights change depending on evolving context. Society, civilization, community, are a living things and so are rights. For example: The Framers never envisioned how Freedom of Speech would apply to social media, because social media didn’t exist when they enumerated the right and they couldn’t peer across time into the future. It’s up to us, in the moment, to figure that part out.

This is the mistake gun rights advocates keep making. Rights are not absolutes.

Of course, this being America, rights always seem to come down to … money.

Predictably, I got hundreds of responses like this one.

If healthcare is a right, how do you pay for it – OR – essentially, we can’t afford it.

It amuses me when people explain how rights are “God given” or “natural” or some other lofty idea – then they want to hang a price tag on it.

Funny thing, these same people never say, whoa, hang on. This right to keep and bear arms, how much is that going to cost us?

When it comes to healthcare, they always bring up money. How much is it going to cost? Then they bring up the freeloaders and start quoting Heinlein, TANSTAAFL.

They want everybody to pay for their own healthcare, which is fair enough I suppose, but like the woman in this example, they don’t want to pay people enough to afford to buy their own healthcare. Again, making healthcare a privilege of the affluent.

It is a matter of priorities. And if you don’t believe healthcare is a right, then there’s no reason to make it a very high priority, is there?

But at least she was honest. 

Horrifyingly so.

For her, rights are about money.  For her, healthcare isn’t a right. It’s a privilege for those who can pay for it. And if you can’t pay, then you’re a cockroach.

She’s not the only one. This is by far and away the most common response I got, how are we going to pay for it? How?

As if rights were some commodity, like gold or corn or nuclear aircraft carriers.

This is the kind of thing that once led ultimately to civil war in America. Because when you believe rights are dependent on money, those that have no money have no rights. Q.E.D

And from there, it’s a damned short hop to the idea that people are property.

We went to war here in America once upon a time because the South didn’t believe it could afford to free the slaves. Because the South’s entire economy was based on the idea that rights belonged to those who could afford them, otherwise, you were property. If black people gained rights same as everybody else, the Antebellum South would be out of business. And they spent millions upon millions of dollars, and thousands upon thousands of lives, trying to maintain that economic model.

When rights depend on money, those who can’t afford rights, well, they’re just cattle. Or cockroaches – the same term the Nazis used to describe Polish Jews.

But then there’s this:

No one says food is a right.

Well, actually, a lot of people do think food should be a right. But even if it was, shoplifting would still be a crime.

Americans have the right to keep and bear arms. That doesn’t mean you can just take any gun you happen to come across. Stealing a gun is still a crime. You still must pay for a gun and for the bullets. There’s still freedom of choice, you can choose not to have a gun, you can choose what kind of gun you want.

This argument is stupid.

But (and there’s always a but, isn’t there?), for a truly ridiculous argument you have to go full Ayn Rand:

I got hundreds of responses like this one.

Most from self-proclaimed libertarians.

The logic goes that if healthcare is a right, then healthcare providers become slaves.

If healthcare is a right, they say, then I (for example) am entitled to the labor of doctors and nurses and they cannot refuse me. If healthcare is a right, according to these Randian libertarians, then any doctor, any nurse, any healthcare provider must provide me with their services free of charge at any time. Because it’s my right, you see?

Which is a damned good example of why Atlas Shrugged should be regarded as a tediously mediocre science fiction novel and not a blueprint for civilization.

In America, guns are a right. The right, in a lot of ways. But you can’t just walk into a gun store and demand a gun as your due free of charge – not without getting shot, probably. The government isn’t obligated to provide you with a gun. Hell, we don’t even have subsidies for poor people who want a gun and can’t  afford one. And instead of turning gun manufacturers into slaves, it made them fabulously wealthy.

Look here: in America, you have the right to legal representation. If you’re accused of a crime and you cannot afford a lawyer, then one will be appointed to you by the court. Does that make you entitled to another’s labor? Yes. Yes it does. That’s what Public Defenders do. They’re not slaves, they chose to do that job and they’re paid for it. And just because you’re entitled to legal representation doesn’t rob lawyers of their rights.

This argument is idiotic to a degree that boggles the rational mind.

I received thousands of responses to my question. The responses are still coming in a week later.

And despite all of the above, the resounding, overwhelming answer was YES.

Yes. Healthcare is a right.

Now, I don’t pretend that my survey was scientific. And I don’t pretend that my twitter feed is a non-biased representative sample of America or the world, but I’m looking at thousands of people who believe that healthcare is a basic human right. A basic human right. Without caveat, without condition, without question. Yes.

And I agree, without reservation.

How will we pay for it? I don’t know. How do we pay for every other right? For guns. For the free press? For freedom of Religion? We’ll find a way. How do we keep this right from becoming oppression? I don’t know. How do we keep guns and freedom of speech and freedom of religion from becoming oppression?

Those are just details. Big ones, sure. But just details nonetheless. Just like every other right.

If we agree that healthcare is a right, a basic human right of not just all Americans but of all people, then we’ll find a way. We’ll figure it out. We’ll keep figuring it out, just like every other right.

And it matters.

It does.

Because right now, right this very minute, as I write this, as you read it, as the world wonders at Donald Trump’s next Tweet, and Congress chases after threats to the Republic, and the crises of the day fills the headlines, right now, a handful of powerful men are secreted away from the public eye, working in confidence, working in collusion with those who profit from misery, deciding the fate of healthcare in America. 

I don’t know for certain what their priorities are, because healthcare is not a right and as such their motivations are secret and I as a citizen am not entitled to know. You are not entitled to know. They’ve locked the doors and they are deciding our fate. And from their track records I am forced to guess that the focus of this law is not my rights, not your rights, not the rights of humanity.

No, I am forced to suspect this committee’s priorities are money and privilege.

And I suspect that this law they are currently penning will reflect that when it finally emerges into the light of day.

And that is the point of this entire essay.

That, that right there, is the point of the question.

Because when healthcare is not a right, then it becomes a privilege doled out by a handful of powerful men hidden away from accountability and the consequences of their actions. You don’t even have the right to question them.

And you had better damned well hope that when it comes, you and those you love are privileged enough to be on the right side of the line.

And that those men don’t one day move the line.

And that you never lose your privilege.

Is healthcare a right? Yes or no. Everything is just details.

But some of those details will kill you.

---

Correction: Originally the article said Hillary Clinton was First Lady in the 1980s. That has been corrected to the 1990s.

Donation Drive

As previously noted, every once in a while I have to ask for money.

Having given up military consulting work and having shut down my woodworking business and art studio (hopefully temporarily) when I left Alaska, I subsist for the moment solely on income derived from my social media sites and this blog.

A few years back, I wouldn’t have believed this possible.

A few years back it wouldn’t have been possible.

But despite the sneering criticism of certain vocal critics, it is possible for a writer to make a reasonably decent living this way.

Yes, writer.

It used to be “writer” was defined as somebody who assembled words and ideas into books, short stories, articles, and perhaps screenplays, fact or fiction, and submitted those efforts via various means to editors at publishing houses or various presses or various media outlets, and then lived on cheese sandwiches hoping a check of some modest amount would come back. Traditionally the profession of “writer” meant you repeated this cycle without healthcare or adequate hygiene or presentable clothes until you died, or gave it up for a real job – both of which happened with distressing frequency.

That model, that definition of writer, still very much exists.

And a lot of writers make varying degrees of living from it.

As previously noted, if you’re a Stephen King or a John Scalzi, you might make millions and live in a golden mansion high on a landscaped hill in the middle of a private island waited on hand and foot by an army of nubile, scantily clad olive-pitters (this is totally true and I heard it directly from one of George R.R. Martin’s gardeners). But more likely you’re a stringer for the local paper, and you might make enough to buy a cheese sandwich or two providing you’re not particular about the definition of “cheese” or those weird green spots on the bread.

Various degrees of success exist between those poles.

And that’s where I exist. In that strange new middle ground. I wanted to be a writer since I was kid. It’s a sickness, writing. A weird mental disorder that makes you sit in front of a keyboard for hours, daydreaming and playing with ideas and wondering why anybody would read the blather on the screen. But my grandmother gave me a Hardy Boys book (#8; The Mystery of Cabin Island) for Christmas one year when I was about 8 or 9. I’d been an indifferent reader up to that point, but that book captivated me and my lifelong obsession with words began right there. Somewhere shortly thereafter, in a staggering moment of epiphany, I realized there were actually people out there who got paid to sit in front of a keyboard and daydream and those people didn’t have to put on pants every day. Hell they might not even own actual pants – unless you consider pajamas legitimate work apparel.

I knew then that’s what I wanted to do.

I’d always intended to go the traditional route, cheese sandwiches and all.

I’d never intended to write about politics. But evidence would suggest that’s where my talent lies – if you’re charitable and agree that it is indeed an actual talent and not just something you could train a chimpanzee to do (they taught ‘em to fly spaceships, so I imagine political pundit wouldn’t be that difficult).

But by the time I was free to write what I wanted (upon my retirement from the military) and I started writing in earnest with the idea that someday somebody would give me actual money for it, the world had changed. How we connect to it had changed and continues to evolve at a rapid pace and a new type of “writer” became possible – well maybe not new new, but perhaps a more modern version of the political broadsides and pamphlets penned by the likes of Thomas Paine.

It’s amazing to me how fast this has gone.

Ten years ago, hell five years ago, I would never have guessed that Facebook would become my primary platform for day to day short form.  Facebook is a horrible platform for the kinds of things I write. It’s a bastard cross between a blog and public forum and doesn’t do either very well. It’s subject to arbitrary and random censorship. There’s no protection for intellectual property at all. It lacks the most basic of editing tools and formatting functions, its search capability is ridiculous and all but useless. Facebook’s interface, timeline management, and display are one of the single most infuriatingly horrible experiences in an age of limitless customization – limitless to everybody but Facebook users that is. It’s impossible to get any kind of help from the operators and it’s subject to every kind of cyber-abuse from bullying to trolling to sexual assault.

And yet – and yet -- it does one thing very, very well.

It does one thing that other technology cannot do, that traditional publishing venues cannot do.

Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and other social media platforms connect writers to people in an organic, viral, geometrically expanding manner that is completely impossible anywhere else.

Now, interacting with readers on a real time basis for hours upon hours every single goddamned day isn’t for every writer. It takes a certain degree of masochism to do it. In point of fact, a lot of writers become writers because they are anti-social bastards who enjoy living on moldy fake-cheese sandwiches and sitting around all day in dirty pajama pants and who tend to break out in a cold sweat when they actually have to put on pants and go outside where all the other people are.

So real time interaction with their audience isn’t something they consider a feature.

And that’s okay. “Writer” is a loose enough definition that it accommodates the gregarious right alongside the smelly hermit.

But, if you write well, if you write the things people are interested in, and if you’re willing to interact with your audience directly and in real time, then social media makes it possible for your work to spread far beyond the size of audiences normally available to traditional writers. For example: Two years ago, when I started doing this full time, Stonekettle Station averaged maybe 20,000 visitors per month – and that was after 8 years of writing every single day.  Maybe 3,000 people followed me on Facebook. Two years later, with some considerable effort, my daily Facebook audience exceeds 100,000 people and a single long form essay on Stonekettle Station can exceed 60,000 unique pageviews in a few hours.

Social media, for all its ills, has created new opportunity, an alternative to traditional writing models. Not a replacement, a supplement.

And that’s where I ended up. That’s where I exist.

I admit that in my case there is some degree of luck. I happened to be in the right place just as opportunity opened with the right experience and skillset and enough free time to take advantage of it.  It suits me. It’s not easy. Really it’s not. It sometimes (often) takes 14 to 18 hour days (I spent six hours last night just screening new applicants to the Stonekettle Facebook Group), research, writing, swearing at the screen, it can be incredibly frustrating at times for reasons you never imagine or anticipate. It requires constant attention, a constant presence, and everything becomes grist for the mill, making much of your life public – something that is often less than thrilling to your spouse.

It’s work.

Goddamn is it work.

I’ve been invited to a number of writer’s conventions to talk about this with other writers – or those who want to become writers under this new paradigm. That’s something I’m happy to do. I’ve been pretty lucky and I’m glad to pay that forward. The world is a big place, there’s plenty of room for many, many more writers in this new arena and I’m happy to help get them started.

If every one of those quarter million daily readers signed up for Patreon and donated a buck a month, well, I’d be writing this from the deck of my personal yacht and looking for property next to John Scalzi.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way and so every once in a while I need to ask for money.

I don’t like this.

But it’s necessary.

And it’s to your advantage.

Because this way I am independent. I don’t owe anybody, no business, no agenda, no political party or ideology, no boss, I don’t owe any of them a damned thing.  I write what I write, be it long form, short Facebook posts, or a simple Tweet, to the very best of my ability and as I see it – not as somebody else has directed me to see it. I maintain my social media sites, my Facebook page and the Stonekettle Facebook Group, my Twitter feed, as independent entities, managed by me and me alone to my standards and not some corporate agenda. 

That seems to be important to you, dear reader, and I take that responsibility seriously.

By remaining independent, I owe only you, the readers, the very best work I can put out and that’s it.

But it only works if you provide support.

I doubt I’ll ever get used it, asking for money, and I’m not sure I want to.  That aversion always, every time, makes me more determined to improve, to work harder, to produce a better product for you and to expand opportunities for YOU to have your say, to interact, in a safe and intelligent forum.

So, here it is: I’m asking you to donate.

Because my business model is evolving (IRS regulations, state and federal laws, etc, all of these things impact this process, I’m still learning the best way to go about it), I’m doing this a little different than the last few times.

The donation drive runs from June 1, 2017 to July 15, 2017.

I’ll be giving away a dozen Charter Member Stonekettle Station shirts (customized to the winner’s size and color preference. Also note: Charter Member shirts can only be gotten via this process, they are unique and are not available elsewhere. See the footnote below regarding shirts) and at least three signed copies of Alternate Truths – the best-selling political anthology which contains my short story: Gettysburg.

Any subscriber who donates any amount via the PayPal DONATION BUTTON between those dates will be put in the running for one of those prizes.

Winners will be announced July 20th, 2017.

To donate, click on the “Donation” button, either embedded in the text below or on the upper right side of this screen and follow the directions.

You may enter more than once. Each donation will be counted as a unique subscription.

If you’ve already donated to Stonekettle Station this month, you’re already on the subscription list.

Those of you who already donate via an automatic monthly payment, you’ll be entered automatically in the giveaway. (See the footnote below for additional information regarding automatic reoccurring donations)

Legal Disclaimer: To be clear, this is not a lottery or a raffle.  Donations are voluntary subscription fees specifically in support of this blog and the associated social media feeds and conducted in accordance with state and federal law.

That is:  you’re paying for content not a chance to win something.

I am not claiming any tax-exempt status or charity. Donations are considered business income and I pay all applicable state and federal taxes on that income and I have the records to prove it.

The items I give away are my intellectual property, created and paid for by me.  As such I chose to randomly gift them to supporters, just as I give away my custom made pens to my fellow writers.  The giveaway list is generated randomly from voluntary subscriptions, since I have no other way to determine who readers are.  You are not donating for a chance to win a prize, you’re paying for the content of this blog and my associated social media feeds and I’m using this opportunity to give something back other than just my usual blog essays, Facebook posts, and Tweets.

As always, thank you for your support.

---

1. Shirts: I recently acceded to reader requests and began selling Stonekettle Station T-Shirts. There were some production problems with a few shirts in the original run. This is to be expected of a new process from a small business. Especially in the volume we’re suddenly doing. Anyone who purchased a shirt and who experienced a problem needs only to contact the vender via her Etsy site and it will be fixed. That said, we’ve made a number of improvements to the process. All future shirts, including the Charter Member special additions, will be created using this new improved process. New shirts will be available for purchase later this month. I’ll put up posts here and on Facebook telling you how you can get one for yourself.

2. Reoccurring Payments: If you’ve set up a monthly donation via PayPal and you suddenly realize it’s been cancelled, that’s not me rejecting your money (because I would never do that. I need the money and I’m not too proud to say so). Likely it’s something to do with the PayPal process, usually your card has expired. I have no control over that.

Memorial Day 2017

Note:  The original title said 2018. That was a typo, not some subtle message. It’s been corrected, though this essay it will likely apply to 2018 as well // Jim

Last night the air was torn apart by the flash of lightning and shook with the crash of thunder.

I slept fitfully and dreamed of war.

This morning the world has gone silent.

Cold rain falls and the sky is the color of gunmetal.

This seems fitting to me. This quiet melancholy day, leeched of color.

For this is the day we Americans are supposed to pause and remember those many who have fallen in service to the United States.

Memorial Day isn’t about honoring veterans.

No, it’s not.

Not the living ones anyway.

Memorial day is about the dead.

This is the day some dutiful Americans visit the graveyards and the military cemeteries to place flowers and flags and to remember husbands and brothers and wives and mothers and sisters and sons and daughters who wore the uniform and came when called and gave the last full measure. My own father lies out there, under the cool white marble of a military cemetery, and today I dearly wish I could stop by for a visit – but it’s a thousand miles away and too far. Dad would understand.

Today is a day when we will lay the wreaths and sound the lonely trumpet and shed a tear and a salute for those comrades long gone.

Today is about the cool gray ghosts who still wander the countless battlefields of America, from Lexington to Antietam, from the Ardennes to the Chosin Reservoir, to Tet, to Basra, to Kamdesh, and all the terrible battles yet to come.

And come they will.

Oh yes, come they will, those new battles, in this endless and unending war.

For that is our nature, we Americans. This is who we have become, a nation of endless war.

Once this day was called Decoration Day in honor of those who died during the American Civil War.

Later the holiday became a day of remembrance for those killed in all conflicts.

Today, Memorial Day supposedly marks the passing of those  who died in uniform, both in peace and in war – but it’s been so damned long since there was a peace, the distinction is moot.

Today is supposed to be about those who gave their lives for freedom and liberty, for justice and right, for the ideal of a more perfect union.

 

But in reality, it’s not the soldiers we remember. It’s the endless war.

 

Do you realize that it’s almost two decades now, now since those terrible days in September of 2001?

Seventeen years of war and death and sacrifice and the supposed Global War on Terrorism.

For our children, this most recent generation, the ones just now reaching the age of reason and awareness, they have never known an America not at war. 

They have never lived in a nation at peace.

Never.

Think on that. No, that’s not a rhetorical statement. Think on that. Think on how this conflict has shaped them, this generation, how it defines their worldview during the most formative years of their lives and how this world will shape the one they create a decade from now for their own children.

For them, this new generation, war has become so commonplace, so ubiquitous, that it’s simply business as usual.

For them, war simply is.

For them, war is just another aspect of American life, like plumbing and electricity and the flow of money, invisible and all around. The dead come home from conflict invisible, hidden, silent, returned to their grieving families in quiet ceremonies far away from the public eye, unlamented and unnoticed by a nation grown jaded and bored with slaughter. America does not see the dead, not until days like this one, when the bodies are safely hidden away under slabs of white marble and fields of green manicured grass and draped in words of patriotism and valor.

For them, this generation, war is normal.

And those of us born in the 1960s? Well we certainly can’t tell them that this is wrong.

We certainly cannot tell this generation war is not the normal state, that normality is peace without conflict. 

See, because we grew up in a nation at war too.  By the time I was seventeen, America had been fighting in Southeast Asia for my entire life.  The media was daily filled with images of blood and death, body counts, mangled and maimed soldiers, of burning helicopters and a terrifyingly incomprehensible enemy.  We were told we would go next, that we had to, or the enemy would come here, to America, and slaughter us all.

Back home? Well, back home, the streets were filled with violence and unrest and it seemed that America was about to tear itself to pieces in a clash of violently opposed ideologies – because no matter how much the enemy might despise us, we hated ourselves, our neighbors, our fellow Americans, even more. 

And how did that shape our worldview, the world we have given to our own children?

For us, war is the normal state of affairs too.

And our parents?

They remember a brief period of idyllic America, the perfect peaceful 1950’s, sock hops and ducktails and white picket fences, providing you lived on the right side of the tracks, providing you were white – while Korea raged unseen and ignored in the background and at home they dug fallout shelters and waited for the Soviet bombs to fall and saw commies hiding in every shadow.

Their parents had World War II, and before that … well, the list goes back a long, long way and perhaps war is a normal state of affairs for us Americans after all.

There are a lot of dead to remember on this Memorial Day.

 

And so it goes, this endless cycle.

 

Today there are those who instead of picnicking  with their familiars, instead of working in their yards or enjoying the day, will be patrolling the dark and dangerous corners of this world.  They’re out there, right now, walking the bitter broken mountains of central Asia. They’re out there right now standing the long watch on and below and above the seas. They’re out there in the fetid festering jungles of South America, in the dry dusty deserts of Africa, in the blistering heat of the Middle East, in lands so remote you’ve never even heard of them – and wouldn’t believe the descriptions of such places if you did.  They are out there right now, as far away as a cold airless orbit high above the Earth and as close as local bases in their own states and the armories of their own home towns.  

Some of these men and women will not live out today.

Some will most certainly come home to Dover Air Force Base in a cold steel box beneath the draped colors of the Stars and Stripes, their war over, their dreams ash, soon to be just another restless ghost in America’s legion of the dead.

Today, there are those who wear the uniform, but can no longer serve – their duty stations are the crowded and forgotten wards of military hospitals around the world. They won’t be working in the yard or grilling out today either. Some will spend the day with family, even if they are unaware of it. 

Soon too their last battle will be over.

Today there are those who no longer serve, no longer wear the uniform, but they still fight. They fight the nightmares of Vietnam and Beirut and Mosul and Firebase Alpha and a thousand other battlefields you’ve never heard of.   They are the walking dead, killed in action only they no longer have the wit to know it and so they haunt the streets of America, the forgotten unseen discarded cold gray ghosts of war and conflict, poisoned by nightmares, by pills and alcohol and poverty, slowly fading away.

And today, of course, there are those who no longer fight, no longer struggle, no longer remember.  They lie entombed in the soil of foreign nations, at Normandy, at Tunis, at the Ardennes, at Brookwood and Cambridge, at Flanders and Lorraine, at Manila, Mexico City, in the Netherlands, the Somme, and many other places whose names most Americans no longer remember or never knew. One hundred and twenty four thousand, nine hundred and nine American servicemen lay interred forever in twenty-four cemeteries on foreign shores and there they will stay, never to return to America.  They were the lucky ones, if you can call it luck, found and honored and laid to rest by their fellows.  Others, well, their bones are myriad and they litter the sea floor beneath all the oceans of the world or are lost in the jungles and deserts on all the world’s continents, their resting places unknown and unremembered. 

Today, here, within the boundaries of the United States, there are one hundred and forty-six national military cemeteries, and more than a million Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, and Guardsmen lie beneath the cold white granite, my own father among their brave company.  And one day I will join them.

Their battles are long, long over, even if the war still rages on.

They, all of them, came when called, some of their own free will and some not, and did their duty and no one, no one, can ask any more of them.

For them, for all of them, for those who have fallen or will fall in this lousy war, and for all those who have fallen in all the conflicts we’ve fought lo these many years, for those who will fall tomorrow, today raise a glass and give a nod towards the flag.

Remember them.

Remember those cool gray ghosts.

If only for a moment.

Antipodes

 

Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.

You notice things.

I spend an hour each morning on my bike.

I ride quiet low-traffic roads, mostly through residential neighborhoods.

My daily route varies, but always includes both city and rural areas.

I’m riding for exercise, fitness, and mostly just because I enjoy it. It helps me write. It gives me time to think.

I ride a minimum of 60 minutes each morning, more if conditions are good. I typically cover 12-20 miles (further on the ultra-lightweight racer, less on the heavier hybrid). If I ride in the evening too, I might cover 25 to 30 miles in a day.

You notice things.

You notice things on a bike that you don't in a car. At least I do anyway, both because of natural inclination and by dint of training.

You travel further on a bike than you can on foot. But like being on foot, you're closer to your surroundings, unenclosed, unprotected. You can feel it. You can smell it. You study the landscape, the houses, the buildings, the yards. The dogs. You say hi to people you pass. They wave back, some of them. Others just stare suspiciously and frown, it’s that kind of place.

You've got time to think, time to process what you see, while your legs push you over the tarmac and through the thick sweltering air.

And you notice things.

See, I live in Florida, a little town called Milton, in the Panhandle.

This is the Deep South.

This is old Florida.

And Milton is, well, it's a very old, very Southern, backwater town.

In this case "backwater" isn't metaphor or allegory. Well, okay, it is, but it's also the literal truth in that Milton (Once Mill Town due to a long ago vanished logging industry, also Hell-town, Jernigan's Landing, Hard Scrabble, and Scratch Ankle) is tucked into a bight of the Blackwater River, surrounded by swamps and bayous and boggy mosquito-infested wetlands, cut off by the Inland Waterway. This is the South of ancient enormous oak trees festooned with hanging Spanish moss, alligators, steam bath humidity, and Confederate flags. Now that summer is upon us, I very often have to dodge snakes, some small, some as big as a large man’s leg, some harmless and some emphatically not, sunning themselves on the warm morning pavement like leathery sausages broiling on the grill at the local Circle-K.

Go east, go west, along the Gulf Coast and the Redneck Riviera  and you'll find bright and glittering tourist towns, from Orange Beach to Panama City, full of wrinkled sun-browned retirees and happy young people on summer break, all drinking and dancing and turning boiled-crawdad red in the unrelenting sun.  There are hundreds of great restaurants, Gulf seafood places mostly, of course. Nightlife. Music. Boardwalks. Festivals. Wonderful beaches. Sailing, surfing, fishing.

Salt Life they call it.

But not Milton.

Time and the Salt Life just sort of passed this place by. It's a tidy little town. It’s the county seat, the courthouse is here and the government offices. It’s a got a certain charm, but it’s a bit crumbly around the edges, full of working poor and lower Middle Class, military retirees (mostly Navy, but a lot of Air Force types too, leavened with some Coast Guard migrated over from Mobile looking for a lower cost of living). It’s the prototypical rural South, peanuts and cotton, a bit off the highway. There's a tiny Navy base, Whiting Field, where they train helicopter pilots. Tourists don't come here because there's nothing much to do. No beach, no clubs, no boardwalk, no kitschy little shops, no casinos. The shiny little Navy ensigns have to drive to Pensacola or Mobile for entertainment. There's nothing here but cheap fast food joints, pawn shops and second hand stores, redneck dive bars, and a lot of Baptist Churches. This is the kind of place you take a vacation from, not a trip to.

You can count ten billboards for ten different accident lawyers within fifty yards, a density of ambulance-chasers unmatched anywhere else in the world.

Here, churches are like hermit crabs. Any empty building, no matter how small or how large, will eventually house one. Abandoned gas stations, a falling down barn, warehouses, former grocery stores, an old mobile-home, a large enough drain culvert, and a congregation newly molted and homeless scuttles in to try on the accommodations. Sometimes the itinerant preachers go through a dozen places until they find one that fits – like a crab proudly wearing a soup can for a hat. And religious signs sprout in profusion among the palmetto shrubs alongside the roads. There are almost as many of those as there are advertisements for lawyers.

Other places, a little town like this would be a bedroom community, but Pensacola is across the bay 30 minutes away via a highway that is perpetually in various states of demolition and while there's certainly commuting there's none of the daily mass migration to new urban developments you'd find elsewhere. There are dozens of empty buildings that once housed some kind of small business and now are empty and fit only for hermit crabs. The last real growth this place saw was back in the 70s and most of the homes date from that time – or before. The neighborhoods are old and overgrown, poverty often jumbled together with modest wealth. You routinely see huge well maintained homes on a dozen acres next door to a squalid one-bedroom shack.

And that's what I ride through each morning.

That weird Deep South Panhandle disparity.

And you notice things.

One route takes me through a neighborhood of huge houses set back from the road on large lots. Homes of the well-heeled local gentry. Doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs, as my mother-in-law says, recalling both the old jump-rope rhyme and the popular Hoagy Carmichael song of her childhood.

Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.

The houses here are well kept with manicured lawns. In the morning as I roll past, there are always trucks and trailers identified with the logos of various lawn services parked alongside the road and the buzz of hedge trimmers and the muted roar of lawn mowers fills the air with the smell of cut green things. The houses here are new, modern, large.  You see a lot of columns and fancy gabled windows and large porches and screened-in Florida rooms. Almost all of the homes have in-ground pools in the backyards, surrounded by white picket fences and flanked by stylish patio furniture. If the owners are young there will be a late model SUV in the drive, if they’re older it’ll be a Lincoln Town Car or some other large luxury sedan.  The people here aren’t particularly rich in the grand scheme of things, most of them anyway, but they’re not poor either. They are overwhelmingly white. Many of them are doctors and lawyers. Sometimes they wave as I ride past, usually they just ignore me.

Another route takes me through a predominantly black neighborhood.

The houses here are smaller. Closer to the road – close enough to smell dinner cooking in the evenings or backyard BBQs on the weekends, almost always strong enough to make my stomach growl in hunger. Here it’s mostly modest brick homes built in the 50s and 60s. All similar floor plans set on half or quarter acre lots. The tiny single stall garages are almost all long ago converted into living space. It’s Florida, these people don’t need a garage as much as they need another bedroom. Car ports are common. Most of the places are neat and tidy, with well kept yards and small gardens. Here, people mow their own grass and if there’s a pool it’s usually an inexpensive above-ground. The cars are a few years older and there are more vehicles that double as both family transportation and work trucks. This place is firmly lower middle class, a workingman’s neighborhood. People are much more friendly here, they almost always wave or shout a greeting as I cruise past.

Sunday morning I rode sixteen miles through town and out into the rural countryside.

You notice things.

7:30 AM, in a more affluent neighborhood, a grizzled old white man sprawled in a lounger on his front porch surrounded by empty beer cans. He was shirtless and doughy and sallow and gray hair grew in patches on his chest like fungus. He wore bright pajama bottoms decorated in cartoon characters and unidentifiable stains and he was as drunk as a preacher in a whorehouse on Saturday night. He cackled at me as I rode past, mouth gaping open in intoxicated mirth so wide I could see it was empty of teeth. An older woman in a flowered robe sat on her porch across the street reading the paper and drinking coffee. A large black and white cat sat on the steps near her feet watching me with yellow eyes. The woman never looked up. Not even when the drunk shouted something unintelligible and threw an empty beer can in my general direction. It fell far short and came to rest in the middle of his manicured yard.

A half hour later in a much poorer neighborhood I passed a small house, the yard filled with weeds and the rotting hulks of old cars, the eaves sagging, the paint fading and in need of a new coat. Not a dump, just the kind place where people are too poor and too hard worked  to worry much about what the neighbors think. On the cluttered porch were two young African-American boys. Nine or ten. Both wore crisp perfectly pressed white dress shirts with ties, black pants, polished shoes. They were seated opposite each other at a small table, staring intently at a chessboard, the pieces arrayed for battle. From inside the house a woman’s voice asked if they were ready for church. One of the boys answered in the affirmative and they both waved to me. Good morning, Sir, one said. Good morning, Boys, I answered. Enjoy your game. We will, Sir, have a blessed day.

I’m not much of a religious person but I’d rather be offered a polite blessing than an empty beer can any day.

In another neighborhood, on a road I hadn’t been down before, an older brown brick house was surrounded by a chain-link fence, with a mesh gate closed across the drive. Dogs. You can always tell. So I was ready for the furious barking when it came. And I damned near lost control of my ride and crashed into the ditch howling with laughter when this tiny ball of fury came at me out of the flowers. I thought it was a lawn gnome at first. There was Chihuahua in its pedigree and something else, maybe Mexican jumping bean. The creature couldn’t have weighed more than a pound, it had a little dog shaped round head with bulging eyes glowing with the kind of kaleidoscopic madness you only get from a hundred generations of dedicated inbreeding. And it was wearing, I swear to you, a tiny pink dress. But what did it for me was the sign on the gate: Beware of Dog. I lost it. I swerved and nearly went over the handlebars. I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe in the thick air … and looked up as an older woman in curlers and a pink housecoat and giant fluffy pink slippers appeared in the drive. She grinned hugely at me and waved. I grinned and waved back. She was clearly enjoying the joke.

You notice things.

You notice the lack of things.

These neighborhoods are the middle. Poor or modest or moderately wealthy, this is the center.

These neighborhoods are all very different, but they have at least one thing in common.

There are almost no political signs.

There were plenty of signs before the election, Trump, Clinton, various others, and not always where you might expect. But by the end of November they were nearly all gone. And now I can ride for blocks through vastly diverse neighborhoods without seeing a single political sign. 

They have moved on.

Now, I don’t mean they’ve surrendered to the current situation, and I don’t mean they haven’t. What I mean is they don’t feel the need to advertise an allegiance to one side or the other of an election that’s long over.

They’ve moved on.

Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.

But then there are the other places.

The edges.

The extremes.

And in those places, the signs are still up.

They want you to know they are on the winning team.

Far down a back road, unexpectedly, is this … house.  

The road is very rural. The lots are large, the houses aren’t fancy. Old ranch style mostly with Spanish influence. Large yards, many fenced in for horses – oddly I almost never see an actual horse, though one place has a whole herd of miniature donkeys.

And then you come to a wrought-iron gate.

It’s massive. Custom made. Old. Locked with a heavy chain. There’s a sign that says “East gate closed, use west gate.” Not other gate, west gate. Because it’s so far away, they have to give directions to it using the cardinal points of the compass. You ride west along the fence, past a row of huge old palm trees. The house is enormous, a vast sprawling red brick edifice. Google Earth shows that it’s shaped like a C, with two large wings off the main structure wrapped around a courtyard and an Olympic sized pool hidden from the road. The place must be nearly 10,000 square feet. There’s a huge garage and an even larger barn and what appears to be a guest house big enough for Charlie Sheen. I count at least a dozen outbuildings, maybe more, some as big as the house. The football field sized yard is shaped around century old oak trees and paved drives, there are fountains and flower beds and sculptures. There’s a large white cross prominently affixed to the central oak. Past the “west” gate are acres of what look to be vineyards gone to seed, punctuated by tall sprinkler systems that look as if they are no longer used. The place is a little seedy, as if the wealthy owners sold out to a retired Mafia hit man who just wants to die of anonymity and natural causes. The security cameras are hard to spot, but they’re there and new and professionally installed. As are the no trespassing signs.

And on the gate posts?

Brand new Trump/Pence signs.

A few miles away, I pass another place.

This place could not be more different, the complete opposite, as far removed from the mansion as if it was on the far side of the world.

The house is a shack, and that’s probably an insult to shacks. The place is literally falling down, the roof sagging and buried under sickly looking moss. The paint is not peeling only because it long ago fell off leaving behind exposed mildew speckled wood. On the eaves, the soffit boards are missing and you can see into the attic and the gray dry-rotted ends of the roof joists. Most of the shingles are gone, replaced with various patches of tin and tarps and tarpaper. A window is covered with warped and buckling plywood and the carcass of the missing frame complete with broken glass is laying in a mangled heap under the window where they dropped it (or it fell out). The yard is choked with weeds and garbage, a half dozen decaying truck engines dead beyond any resurrection short of the divine, the carcass of some unidentifiable vehicle from the previous century sunk to the top of the wheel wells into the soil, the twisted springs of at least a half dozen different mattresses, broken furniture, shattered blocks of concrete, empty paint cans, those horrible mass produced blow-plastic children’s playsets faded by the unrelenting sun to dull pink and sickly green and diseased yellow like the stiff corpses of giant dead birds, and piles of other less identifiable detritus. There’s a leaning carport packed full of random castoff trash, the kind of worthless junk that’s important to people who don’t have anything of value and never will. Places like this, they don’t have security cameras, they have dogs. Not some toy breed in a pink dress, but pit bulls or some diluted version of a Rottweiler, usually tethered in the junk with a chain and a padlock, abused, neglected, half psychotic, and you can smell the piles of dog shit from a hundred yards away.

And there, on the rotting mail box post?

Brand new Trump/Pence signs, likely the only new thing in the place.

I pass other mansions and other shacks. All with Trump signs. These are the extremes, the edges, the antipodes of society and wealth and opportunity and education here in this little town, and yet they share this strange similar viewpoint. Four months after the election. Trump/Pence. Make America Great Again.

The mind bending part here is that these people, these opposites who share Trump as their only commonality, are more than anything else terrified of each other.

The people in that giant mansion?

What does make America great again mean to those people?

I don’t have to guess, Trump himself told us in his speeches and at his rallies. The wealthy told us what makes America great to them, they do so in TV interviews with famous personalities, they never shut up about it.

They’re terrified that some black gangbanger or some white trash bottom feeder is going to kick in their door and murder their families and steal all their stuff. That’s what the wall and the gates and the security cameras are for. These people, they love the idea of a wall around America, of course they do. They voted for Trump because they’re mad, certain they’re being ripped off, held at gunpoint, paying too much in taxes, forced to support the lowlifes and the freeloaders who live just down the road.

The people in that moldering shack?

What does make America great again mean to those people?

I don’t have to guess, I watched them cheer Trump’s talking points. I read the slogans on their shirts and their social media posts.

They’re terrified some rich guy is going to come kick in their door and enslave their families and take all of their stuff. That’s what the “Protected by Smith&Wesson” window sticker and the pit bull are for. These people, they love the idea of Trump sticking it to the “elites,” of course they do. They voted for Trump because they’re mad, certain they’re being ripped off, held at gunpoint, their rights and their jobs stolen by illegal immigrants or shipped overseas by the rich sons of bitches living just up the road.

These people could not be more opposite in station, in fortune, in economic opportunity. They are the most unlikely – and impossible – of allies.

These people are almost literally terrified of each other.

And yet, there it is, the thing that binds them together, that bridges the vast, vast gap between them. Donald Trump.

You notice things.

If you look carefully.

Trump appeals to the edges, not necessarily the edges of political ideology, but the edges of society. Those who live in the mansions and those who live in the shacks. See, both the rich and the poor, they think Trump is somehow not only going to make America great again, he’s going to make America great specifically for them.

Think about that.

Think about how utterly impossible that is.

The policies and ideologies that make America great for the people who live in those mansions, well those things almost never benefit the people who live in the shacks. In fact, it’s often just the opposite when the effects of deregulation and a lack of environmental protections and the empty promises of trickle down economics become fully realized.

And the changes necessary to lift those shack dwellers permanently up out of their poverty? Education, healthcare, adequate nutrition, decent safe jobs with benefits, equality, access, opportunity, those things almost never benefit the wealthy. The wealthy and privileged have those things already as a birthright and if they were willing to share, well, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Trump pandered to the extremes. He continues to do so. But it’s the middle that has pragmatically moved on.

This, this right here will be Donald Trump’s Waterloo.

It is impossible to make America great for these two opposites, because what each really wants is to take from the other.

Trump will have to choose. The only way forward for him is to sacrifice either the rich or the poor.

And he cannot make that decision.

He can’t.

It’s impossible and he’s starting to realize it.

He wants to throw in with the mansions, like Reagan and Bush and his billionaire friends.

But he can’t abandon the shacks, because his ego needs their cheering more than his wallet needs the billionaires’ money, that’s what the rallies are all about. That’s why he daily contradicts himself – because he’s trying to tell each what they want to hear and those things are mutually incompatible.

And so he won’t choose. He can’t.

He’ll try to please both extremes and end up pleasing nobody.

Let this be a lesson, an opportunity, for those who would be president.

It’s not the edges that matter.

It’s the middle.

But you must take the time to notice.

Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.

This children's rhyme was chanted during recess almost every day that weather allowed us to play outside. I remember hearing older girls chanting as they jumped rope, but I cannot recall the first time that I was included. Jumping rope was a favorite activity because there were many paved sidewalks and play areas at the Cherokee Indian School. Those of us who attended the school were from homes without side-walks and paved roads. Some of us day students only had opportunities to jump rope on school days, while boarding students had access to paved areas even on weekends.

We jumped rope, chanted the rhyme, and laughed when we missed a jump on any one of the "occupations" named in the rhyme. We knew it was a game because we did not read about or know any women who were doctors, lawyers, or Indian chiefs. I do not think we even thought of what it was to be a rich man, poor man, beggar man, or thief. Yet we were amused with the game because we thought it might somehow predict our future.

- Carmaleta L. Monteith
Doctors, Lawyers, Indian Chiefs: Indian Identity in the South
Cultural Diversity In the U.S. South (Anthropological Contributions to a Region in Transition)

The Hubris of Ignorance

Have  you been following this? All these airplane crashes? And everyone is so confused. Everyone is going, Gosh, how come there are so many airplane crashes? Well, um, I gotta theory here. You remember, what was it? Like, uh, four years ago? The air traffic controllers, they went on strike? And then, um, Ronald Reagan fired ‘em? So then they just hired anyone who was hanging out at the time. And now everyone is going, Geez, how come there are so many airplane crashes? How come there are so many airplane crashes?! I dunno, maybe Walt the janitor isn’t qualified to land a Boeing 707!”
  -- Bobcat Goldthwait

 

Maybe Walt the Janitor isn’t qualified to land a Boeing 707.

But then again, in America we’d love to believe Old Wally could maybe pull it off.

Because we Americans, we sure love the heroic myth of the common man.

Oh we do. We prefer myth over reality every time.

We love to tell ourselves that one.

It’s the myth of our country’s birth. We love that myth more than all the others combined.

We tell ourselves with great pride how a bunch of raggedy assed, untrained colonists one day rose up against tyranny.  The Minutemen were roused from their beds in the middle of the night by Paul Revere and they rallied to the Stars and Stripes. They threw all the tea into Boston harbor and sent England a stiff upraised middle finger, up yours, we ain’t paying no taxes no more.  And then a bunch of farmers grabbed up their muskets and formed themselves into a militia under good old George Washington and this army of amateurs chased the Redcoats all the way back to England without any help from anybody except for Jesus.

Because Americans are special. Exceptional.

And when they’d thrown off the yoke of tyranny, well, then a bunch of common men gathered in Philadelphia to receive the Constitution directly from God. They wrote down the sacred words and everybody signed it, especially John Hancock, and America was born.

Amen. 

That’s the myth we tell ourselves, we Americans.

We’re special. Exceptional. We pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps and forged the Republic out of the mud with our own hands.

We’re a nation of amateurs. Bunch of Good Old Boys beat the best army on the planet. Bunch of farmers wrote the Constitution and laid down the foundation for the greatest country in the world. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people. In America, we’re not ruled over by kings. We don’t owe our allegiance to some hereditary weak-chinned inbred royalty.

No, Sir.

In America, why the people are the government and anybody can be president.

Anybody.

 

We are a nation of amateurs and damned proud of it, aren’t we?

 

That’s what this election was about.

Drain the swamp!  Throw the bums out!

That’s why we hated Hillary Clinton.

Sure. Crony capitalist. Career politician. Corruption. Business as usual. You heard it from the Right and you heard from the Left. Hell, go check out my Twitter feed, I’m still getting it full bore from both sides.

That’s why we elected Donald Trump, isn’t it?

Because he was an outsider. Because he’s not a member of the Washington elite. That’s what Trump’s supporters said. That’s what they say now. He’s not like other presidents. He’s not a politician. The normal rules don’t apply. He’s gonna do things different.

Because he’s not a politician.

That, that right there, is a very American belief.

This idea that anybody can be the president.

That’s what we tell our kids. Eat your broccoli, Sonny, and some day you might grow up to be president. 

Moreover, we Americans by and large tend to be suspicious of education and experience when it comes to government.

Anywhere else, brain surgeon, airline pilot, corporate CEO, dog trainer, we want the most experienced person we can get. But the President? Not so much. Power corrupts, right? You got to clean house every once in a while. Throw the bums out.

Except…

 

Except, in retrospect, perhaps ignorance and a suspicion of “elites” isn’t the best way to go about selecting a leader.

 

Once upon a time, I despised Jimmy Carter.

I mean, who didn’t, right?

President Jimmy Carter.  He was weak and cowardly I thought, and I certainly wasn’t the only one. Iranian revolutionaries had just overthrown the Shah, stormed the US embassy in Tehran and taken fifty-two American diplomats hostage.  And there was Carter, the hapless peanut farmer, and he wasn’t doing anything about it. We had the mightiest military in the world. Those were our people. Our embassy. Our soil, our property. A bunch of goddamned towelheads were touching our stuff, defying the United States of America.

And it just went on and on, four hundred and forty-four days.

It was infuriating.

It was embarrassing that a bunch of camel jockeys should have us – US – bent over a barrel like that.

I mean, how dare they? We were America, Goddamn it.

And Carter, well, Carter did nothing.

I was just out of high school. I worked in a restaurant then, taking classes at the local junior college. After work, over beers, the air thick with cigarette smoke, we smacked our fists on the tables and we cooks and dishwashers seethed in outrage. We hatched endless military campaigns, we mighty generals. It was simple and obvious. We’d send in an aircraft carrier, you see, and not one of those old rusty conventionally powered ones either. A nuclear warship, the very symbol of American military power, her decks bristling with fighter jets. One look – one look, by God – and those Ayatollahs would shit themselves in fear.

Oh, we would get our people back, you bet.

Eventually Carter did send in the military. Operation Eagle Claw. And it ended in horrifying failure. Eight Americans died in the desert, we lost millions in equipment. Iran mocked us from our TV screens. What a bumbling fool Carter was.

Anybody could have come up with a better plan, even a bunch of line cooks and dishwashers with no military background.

Eventually Carter lost the election, Reagan took his place, and the hostages came home.

Reagan, boy, those Iranians feared him, didn’t they? Ronald Reagan was strong, a genuine American cowboy. By God, he’d send in the fleet first thing, you bet. The minute that guy was in office, those sons of bitches let our people go rather than risk it, didn’t they?

Carter went back to his peanut farm in shame and defeat.

And me?

I joined the Navy.

And one day, many years later in the wake of 911, I was on the bridge of a cruiser as we steamed north through the Straits of Hormuz, past Iran, headed for Iraq and war. By then I was salty navy intelligence officer, an experienced war planner, with peculiar and unusual skills. It wasn’t the first time I’d been there and I had actually served with men who had been in the desert on that horrible day when Eagle Claw crashed and burned. I knew a little something of Iran, more than a little in point of fact. I knew a great deal about about the staggering complexity of the Arabian Gulf, its convoluted history and politics and the endlessly shifting powers of the region. And I knew more than a little about what it takes to stage a successful hostage rescue in hostile territory – or even an unsuccessful one. I was an expert in our capabilities (and the very, very real limits of those capabilities), in the astoundingly complicated intelligence problem spawned by a dozen impenetrable regimes (some willing allies, some less than willing, some openly hostile, some undetermined), mixed with a dozen shades of the same religion all mutually hostile, grudges going back a thousand years, the arbitrary interests of the Great Powers, the economics of oil and power and unimaginable amounts of money, the constraints and pressures of geography, and the complex ever shifting unknown and unguessable permutations of a dozen military forces, mercenaries, smugglers, pirates, and random criminal organizations mixed in with commerce from a hundred nations in unbelievable density. It was my job to know those things, and I was very, very good at it.

As we cruised past miles of Iranian coast, alert for danger, ready for action, hemmed in by the geography of the Straits, past lumbering vulnerable tankers laden with vast wealth, dogged by foreign warships, bathed in the electronic energy of hostile fire control radars, knowing we were in the crosshairs of dozens, hundreds, of shipkillers, well, let’s say I knew very, very well indeed how utterly naïve that 18-year-old dishwasher had been all those years ago.

There are few certainties in the Middle East, but one thing I knew for sure was that this was no place for amateurs.

It’s a funny thing though, isn’t it?

We want an amateur President, but when I sailed up that dangerous strait in 2003 on my way to Iraq, a significant percentage of Congress, both in the Senate and in the House, had been in their jobs since long before the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

Some of them are still in office.

Funny perverse, I mean.

And that Iranian Hostage Crisis? Funny thing about that too.  Carter had sent a nuclear aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, at that time one of the newest ships in the fleet. To this day, one of the most powerful warships in the world. Her decks had quite literally bristled with fighters. She was accompanied by USS Coral Sea, and a fleet of nuclear powered cruisers and a screen of destroyers. That fleet carried enough firepower to lay waste to a continent.  And the Iranians simply shrugged, they weren’t impressed and they certainly weren’t intimidated. Iran has been at the crossroads of war and empire since before the beginning of recorded history – a history so vast and so complex that an America barely 240 years old has nothing we can compare to it. The reasons for the Hostage Crisis were woven deeply into that history and included resentment over things most Americans still don’t know about their own past let alone Iran’s – such as the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953. In America, the Iranian Hostage Crisis was the birth of modern shallow mindless patriotism, of overdone flag displays and empty gestures of self-indulgent nationalism. USA! USA! In the end, the release of the hostages had very little to do with the election of Ronald Reagan and a great deal to do with the patient statesmanship of Jimmy Carter. Despite endless conspiracy theories ala Richard Nixon’s diddling the Paris Peace Accords to win his election, there is no evidence whatsoever that Reagan sent agents (supposedly William Casey and George H. W. Bush) to Paris to delay release of the hostages until he could win the election and take office. No, Iran’s decision to release the hostages was a complicated process that owed as much to the Iran-Iraq war and convoluted diplomacy via Algeria (a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map without Google and would be outraged if told they owed a debt of gratitude) as it did to American efforts.

What I’m saying here is that the situation was fantastically complicated and even to this day not all of the details are known. In point of fact, we are still arguing over the details, who owes who, who was at fault, who was involved, who was wrong, who was right, and all the infinite shades of gray in between. The Obama Administration’s release of frozen Iranian assets from that time, 30 years later, and the seething outrage it caused here in the US is a prime example – though few of the outraged could tell you where that money came from or why we ultimately paid it back. Ask those same righteous patriots about Canada’s involvement and what we owe them and before the Ben Affleck movie Argo came out, not one of them could have told you (and few can even now). The crisis was hideously complicated. It involved religion and politics and vast sums of money and power and war and ancient grievances and the wills of a dozen nations, and no mere display of strength back then, no matter how powerful or determined, would have simplified it. And in fact, every such display, every rattle of the sword, every threat of force, every waggle of dicks, only made matters worse. And Reagan? Hell, five years later Reagan was trading arms to Iran through Israel in exchange for hostages held by Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon and funding a secret war in South America in direct violation of US law.

I watched the Iranian coast slide by, and in that moment, I knew the terrible choices President Carter must have faced and how unfair the judgement of the mob and history had been to him, the things few Americans will ever know – or care to know – or are even vaguely equipped to understand.

And why a nation run by blustering amateurs is a foolish and idiotic conceit.

 

The world is a dangerous and complicated place.

Almost unimaginably so.

And nothing is as simple or as straight forward as it seems and as the mob apparently believes.

Foreign nations do not kowtow to the United States.

This is not something new.

This is no weakness of Carter or Clinton or Obama – or Reagan and Bush for that matter. These nations have never bent a knee to us. From Morocco during Roosevelt’s time, to Cuba and Vietnam during Kennedy, to Libya under Reagan to Haiti and Grenada and Panama and all the nations that fill your news feed today.

It is the nature of nations, large and small, to push back – and in fact, like dogs, the smaller a nation is, likely the more fierce and furious its bark.

 

 

At home, we Americans face the same problems we’ve always faced, energy and resources, civil rights, race, age, religion, law and order, unrest, left and right, young and old, health care, education, infrastructure, jobs.

It’s complicated and difficult and always on the verge of failure.

 

This is not a world for a government run by amateurs.

As the man said, Walt the Janitor isn’t qualified to land a Boeing 707.

 

As we are right now finding out.

 

Trump was going to repeal and replace Obamacare on his first day in office.

He was going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.

He was going to defeat ISIS in the first 30 days.

The Iranian deal was history.

He was going to get us out of NATO.

He was going to get rid of the Import-Export Bank.

Trump spend a decade or more railing about China. Oh it was simple. It was easy. It was so clear. Currency manipulation! We have to stop it!

The mob cheered. Of course the mob cheered. Mobs despise “the elites,” the educated, the experienced, and complexity.

The simpleminded demand simple causes for complex problems.

The simpleminded demand simple solutions.

To the howling mob it’s clear, it’s us and them. We’re right and they’re wrong and there’s no problem that can’t be solved with the correct application of high explosives. The big stick. Send in the fleet, that’ll scare ‘em. And if it doesn’t, drop enough bombs, kill enough people, sooner later, you win. Right? That’s America, we punched old King George right in the nose, created democracy, and popped open a cold one.  Back then all a man needed to forge freedom from the wilderness was a good horse, a sturdy woman, and his six shooter. That’s how America beat Hitler and the Japs, that’s how Reagan beat the Soviets, you bet.

Except…

Except it turns out it’s not simple and it’s not easy and it’s anything but clear and it didn’t happen that way.

It’s right there, in the news, in your face, obvious to all but the most obtuse.

Trump spent a decade telling everybody who would listen how easy it was. And he ought to know, right? He’s a billionaire. Billionaires got money. Right? That makes him smarter than the professionals. Sure it does. Just ask him.

Except that simplistic view was wrong – as evidenced by Trump’s own words, even if he doesn’t have the moral courage to admit it. 

And being wrong on this scale has consequences.

Trump was stunned by how difficult it was to come up with a better health care plan than Obamacare.

“Nobody knew health care could be this complicated,” he lamented.

Nobody.

But the thing is, the professionals did know. The people with the most experience knew.  And they said so, over and over and over again. It was only the ignorant and the foolish and the howling mob who didn’t know. Who didn’t want to know. 

Turns out Mexico isn’t going to pay for Trump’s wall, so we’re going to pay for it. Turns out defeating ISIS is going to take a hell of a lot more than the Mother of All Bombs. Turns out the deal with Iran is far better than anybody had any right to expect and Trump isn’t going to negotiate any better deal because there isn’t one – and man, don’t you wish we had that same deal with North Korea? Turns out NATO was a good idea after all. So is the Import-Export Bank. Turns out Moscow isn’t much of a friend. Turns out the FBI isn’t much of one either.

Turns out, Trump’s ideas of how to run a government aren’t much better than that of an 18-year-old dishwasher – though it should be noted: the ignorance of youth has an excuse, the President of the United States does not.

Foreign relations, international economics, the balance of powers, the art of diplomacy, it’s complicated and difficult and nothing is as it seems to the simpleminded mob. You can’t just bomb your way to peace and prosperity. You can’t just send in an aircraft carrier.

You can’t manage foreign policy via Tweets.

 

“See what happens.” Literally, the foreign policy version of Come at me, Bro!

Meanwhile, the warships supposedly dispatched to show Kim Jong Un the Big Stick, well, that fleet was sailing in the opposite direction, blithely unaware that they were at the center of a threatened nuclear war.

Why?

Because the President of the United States of America has no idea whatsoever how to command the very military assets he’s threatening the rest of the world with.

And neither, apparently, does anybody else in his administration.

That’s how utterly unprepared this bunch of amateurs is.

And now they’re shoveling shit against the tide in an effort to dig their way out of it.

“The bottom line is, in our effort to always be open about what we are doing we said that we were going to change the Vinson's upcoming schedule. We don't generally give out ships' schedules in advance, but I didn't want to play a game either and say we were not changing a schedule when in fact we had.”

That was Secretary of Defense James Mattis today in Saudi Arabia in a statement that is patent nonsense.

That’s what it looks like when a military man who’s used to speaking plainly tries to spin like a politician.

And he knows he’s sucking at it. He can’t help it. Because he knows that last week the Navy, for which he is personally responsible, announced the Carl Vinson strike group would divert from Australia and proceed to the western Pacific Ocean. Trump administration officials along with Trump himself were explicit about it.

And Secretary Mattis himself said on April 11th, the Vinson was “on her way up there.”

A day later, Trump himself said on Fox Business News, “We are sending an armada, very powerful.”

The danger here is even worse than most Americans imagine. It’s not that he might start a war via some belligerent ham-fisted Twitter accident, which would be bad enough, but he might start a war on purpose with no idea the status of American forces or how to deploy them in any coherent fashion. Nor does he have the focus or the intellectual curiosity necessary to find out.

And nobody else in his administration, including General James Mattis, apparently knows either.

Meanwhile, somebody in the Administration claiming to represent the US Central Command told the press,

This was regarding the MOAB drop in Afghanistan last week. A strike apparently conducted by the military without Presidential authorization because according to Trump he prefers the generals to handle the details.

Except shortly thereafter, CENTCOM issued an official press release saying in essence, “We have no idea who that guy is.”

And while the whole thing suddenly reeks of John Miller, more likely the Press got pawned by some over zealous mid-grade officer who wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.

And it’s not just the military.

A month ago, Trump fired all the US Attorneys.

Today, Attorney General Jeff Sessions says aggressive law enforcement is the administration’s priority.  He’s going to crack down on everything from illegal drugs to illegal immigration.

Except that’s impossible without the 93 US Attorney positions currently vacant via his own President’s order.

Add to that the fact that all of the Justice Department’s top divisions are currently without permanent appointees.

This disarray is evident in every department of the Trump Administration, from Defense to Education to State to the Interior.

Just like in any other profession of any difficulty, education, training, practice, experience, advice, these things matter.

There are real world consequences, terrible consequences, for ignorance on this scale.

There is no position of comparable complexity – or even approaching such complexity as the office of President – anywhere else in America that we would trust to someone so utterly lacking in qualifications as is Donald Trump.

And nothing demonstrates the sheer staggering incompetence of this bumbling oaf than threatening North Korea with a fleet that didn’t even know it was involved.

 

The Founding Fathers weren’t amateurs

 

The men who freed this country from King George and then went on to forge a new nation were intellectual elites, the educated inheritors of The Renaissance and products of the Early Modern Age. They were able to create a new government because they were experts in government, educated in war and politics and science and religion and economics and social structures and all the hundreds of other things it takes to build a nation instead of tear one down.

Unlike their foolish descendants, the Founders knew that liberty and democracy and good government take far more than shallow patriotism.

Good government takes intellect, education, experience, curiosity, and a willingness to surround leadership with expert advice and support.

More than anything, it takes the cultivation of intelligence instead of pandering to the lowest common denominator. 

Myths are important to a nation, but a firm appreciation of actual history serves a free people to far greater effect.

There is no virtue in ignorance.

And amateurs make for a lousy republic.

If you want a better nation, if you want better leaders, you have to be better citizens.

 

The doctor turned to me and asked, “Mr. Goldthwait, would you like to cut the cord?” And I said, “Isn’t there anyone more qualified?!
-- Bobcat Goldthwait