My Cousin Mike

I've been thinking a bunch recently about my cousin Mike. You probably don't know him.

He should be 40 years old, now.

Did I say, should be?  Yeah, I did.  Even 12 years on, thinking about him like that doesn't get easier.

In my memory, he's 13 years old.  We're sitting in my bedroom, playing video games.

He looks up at me and says, "Let's write a book!"

I don't remember looking at him like he was totally crazy, but my memory is unreliable on the best of days.  I did say something to the effect of, "About what?"

He proceeded, over the course of a couple hours, to tell me the whole outline of this story he wanted to tell, along with all the characters, complete with names and detailed backgrounds, and dictated the first chapter to me.  It was about pirates, buried treasure, treasure maps, booby traps, and all the things that 13-year-old boys would want to read about.

Mike's interest in the project didn't last long (about an hour and a half), but I pecked away at it for a couple years, from time to time, and showed chapters to Mike, and he'd get excited about it all over again. Eventually, I got distracted, and the half-finished story fell by the wayside.

When Mike died, I took out the old trapper keeper (yes!) that held the notebook in which we'd hand-written the first few chapters of our book.  I read it again.  I cringed a lot.  And I thought, why not finish this?

I took a few stabs at it over the next decade, but it still didn't feel write.

Recently, I took another shot, and feel better about this story now than I have since that first night, when 14-year-old Dave and 13-year-old Mike scribbled down a bunch of ideas in a notebook.

Maybe it still sucks, but it at least sucks in ways that Mike would have loved.  It's still full of pirates, ghosts, curses, and fun stuff like that.

I've decided, just for fun, and because this is what the internet is made for, to throw the first chapter out there.  If you like it, at my current pace I should finish it shortly before my kids go to college.  I should say, a lot of this first chapter is true.  A lot of it isn't.  I won't tell you which is which.  The rest of the book is totally fictitious, but this chapter, it had to be rooted in what I remembered.  So here it is. (For brevity, I've omitted the prologue.)

We never had a title for our book.  These days, I'm calling it, Pieces of Eight.

Chapter 1:

I should begin this account by apologizing for the liberties that I have taken with the true and verifiable facts to be found within.  But narratives of this sort are by necessity fraught with dangers for veracity and circumstance, which must be sacrificed for the sake of making it readable.  Plus there is the distorting lens of time, and the inequities of memory, for the following events occurred in a world very different from that in which we find ourselves today: the internet was still young and considered by many a sound investment, phones still made phone calls, and the Red Sox had not won a World Series since 1918.  I wince sometimes at how much the world has shifted, and realize that these memories that I hold dear belong now to a bygone era, a time and place that so firmly belong to the Past.

But my own memory is not the only difficulty I am forced to consider, but also the difficulty of writing about a single person, and a singular personality.  Indeed, I’m writing about several people, but my concern is focused on one. I’m not worried about Sam Bellamy.

I am Michael McCarthy’s only biographer.

We were not brothers, but we were bound by the blood of ancestry, and we were born less than a year apart from one another.  We grew up like brothers, though we had two different sets of parents, constantly in each other’s company and constantly enjoying every minute of it.  When I think back to our childhood together, I remember adventures wandering through the woods near my house, or the cornfield near his house, or recounting parts of our favorite movies, which included Goonies and Stand By Me.

I should point out I don’t always talk this way.  Just when I start feeling nostalgic.

One event stands out in my mind.  It was a summer day when we were about ten or eleven, and we were at the beach, climbing over the rocks around the tide pools at one end of the beach, a part of the beach commonly referred to as Crabtown.  We’d been climbing these rocks since we were old enough to climb rocks, catching fish and looking for crabs and clams.  This day, we were doing nothing much more exciting than throwing rocks, trying to hit an outcrop some fifty feet out on the water.  Mike turned to me and said, “Do want to see a pirate ship?”

Coming from anyone else, this question might have been surprising, ever ridiculous, but from Mike, my immediate reaction was sheer anticipation.  “Let’s go!”

We climbed along the rocks for about half an hour, out farther than we ever had before, far away from the sandy beach where our mothers were sitting under an umbrella laughing and gossiping.  Along the way, Mike told his story.

“I was out here last week and was climbing along here, and I found a cave just up there.  It was low tide, so I went inside, and you wouldn’t believe it!  It was a ship, not huge, and not much left of it, just like a skeleton of wood, but it was a ship.  And the mast was still standing, and on top of the mast was a pirate flag.  I’ll bet there’s treasure in there, too, but I didn’t look.  Probably booby trapped.”

I nodded along with every beat of this story.  Of course it was a pirate ship!  Of course there was treasure nearby!  Of course it was booby trapped!

So we walked along the rocks, until we reached the point where the rocks stopped.  Sure enough, it was a cave of sorts, though a narrow cave, thirty or so feet high but at most ten feet wide.  Perhaps only six or seven feet.  Perhaps no more than two or three.  It was years ago, and my memory may exaggerate its width.  The water flowed into the cave, or crevice, which is a most accurate description, and Mike explained, “Last time I was here, it was low tide, and you could walk right it.  We’ll have to come back some other time.  But I’m telling you, I saw a pirate ship, and I think, up on the deck, I think I saw a skeleton.  With a patch over one eye.  And a wooden leg.”

We walked back toward the beach, over the rocks and past the tide pools.  I knew there was no pirate ship.  But that didn’t seem to matter.  What mattered was the sense of adventure, the sense that next time, the tide will be out, we’ll be able to go inside, and we’ll see something amazing!  Because that was what I wanted to believe.  And that was what Mike made me believe.

Of course, we were just kids climbing some rocks at the beach back then.  But as I remember that day, it seems now that it was the beginning of an interest that grew into obsession.  As I mentioned, Mike loved adventure and loved the movies.  Whether sitting with our legs up on the seatbacks in front of us at the downtown Newport movie theater, dubbed the Opera House for reasons that totally escaped our younger selves, or laying on the floor of Mike’s living room watching a movie on VHS tape, movies were a driving passion, and Mike always seemed to take the adventurers from the big screen and try to push them even farther into our own lives, as he wove his ridiculous, but wholly believable stories.

And somewhere between One-Eyed Willy and Indiana Jones, Mike’s imagination ran head-long into the history of our town.

“Did you know that Newport used to be the pirate capital of the world?” he shouted at me after school one afternoon.  “There were pirates everywhere!  Eventually, they got so sick of it that they hung a bunch of them out on Goat Island.  And get this: They left them there as a warning to other pirates!”

Then, a week or so later, “Thomas Tew came from Newport.  He was one of the most feared pirates of his day.”

And then, he found his favorite story: “Sam Bellamy, they called him Black Sam, but I don’t think that was racist back then, he was from Cape Cod.  But his quartermaster, that’s, like, second-in-command, his name was Paulsgrave Williams, because they had weird names back then.  I think he probably was Paul to his friends, and he was from Newport.  They sailed all down the East Coast, stealing treasure and sometimes stealing whole ships.  Eventually, they split up, because Bellamy wanted to visit his girlfriend.  Williams came to Newport to hide some of his treasure.  A storm hit that night, and Bellamy’s ship sunk.  Williams went back to the Caribbean and swore he’d never return to claim his treasure.  He said it was cursed!”

And that was it.  There was buried pirate treasure right here on Aquidneck Island.  And it was cursed.  I think it may have been this last facet of the story that really captured his attention.  This was, after all, not long after the 1986 World Series, when we young Red Sox fans were finally introduced to the Curse of the Bambino.

Any true, dyed-in-the-wool Red Sox fan reading this doesn’t need me to explain it.  But here’s the gist: in 1918, the Boston Red Sox, then considered probably the greatest team in the major leagues, traded a young pitcher to the New York Yankees named Babe Ruth.  You might have heard of him.  Well, the Yankees took Ruth off the mound, and he started knocking every ball out of the park, drawing huge crowds and leading the Yankees to numerous World Series victories.  And, supposedly, he cursed the Boston Red Sox to never win a World Series again.  And ever since 1918, they hadn’t.  Every time they came close, the ghost of the Babe seemed to step in and make some wildly improbable event happen that went against the Sox.  It happened again in 1986, against the New York Mets, when the Sox were one out away from victory until an error on a ground ball up the first base line allowed the Mets to win.  It seemed like just bad luck, but then we were told, “Read about ’67.  Or ’49.  This isn’t the first time.  It’s not bad luck, it’s the curse.”

I remember Mike even trying to break the curse, performing weird rituals he completely invented, though he said they were, “totally real, ancient secret rituals!”  He’d chant nonsense words over his Red Sox souvenir bat, or burn the complete set of the ’86 Mets baseball cards like a voodoo sacrifice.  He was determined that he, and he alone, could finally bring the curse to an end.

So curses were very much on his mind when he first came across the story of Paulsgrave Williams and his cursed pirate treasure.

Mike’s research into the life of Williams and Bellamy was thorough and impressive, especially since I was much more of the bookworm than him.  And while normally he wouldn’t have any interest in an afternoon reading at the library, when he was determined to find some fact or examine some book, he could talk his way into any rare book collection or any otherwise off-limits archive like a con man fleecing his mark.  It was truly a beautiful thing to witness, watching Mike flex his charm like a weight-lifter flexing a bicep. 

Years past on, and high school took our minds off other pursuits, and girls took our minds off of high school.  And for Mike, his time was additionally taken up by (depending on the time of year) football, basketball, or baseball.  As I said, I was the bookworm.  But summertime, that was still devoted to Red Sox and pirate treasure.  And if every ancient book, every locked archive led to another dead end, those summer days of exploring the beaches, rocks and coves of Aquidneck Island were adventures enough by themselves.

A decade after he first discovered the name of Black Sam Bellamy, we were both out of college and just settling into our lives of being twenty-something slackers.

It must have been in August when Mike called me.  It could have been July, or maybe September, but the best I can remember, I want to say it was August.

August is the very worst month to live in Rhode Island, excepting perhaps February.  New England summer is beautiful, especially along the coast, when the breeze comes in off the ocean, full of salt in the air and the faint smell of seaweed that reminds you of the waves crashing just a few miles away; the breeze keeps the worst of the summer heat at bay.  And come September, and fall, New England transforms into a blazing carnival of colors.  And in between is August, one of those months when New England makes a sincere attempt to convince you to live anywhere else.  The sun blazes down, the tourists line up on bridges crossing into Newport, and all the moisture that refuses to fall in the form of rain hangs in the air like a blanket. 

As the old timers say, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”

I must confess, I’ve never ever heard an old timer say, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”  I’ve heard plenty of middle-age jabbering morons say it, always preceded by “as the old timers say…”    But even if the old timers are full of it, it is the humidity that kills you, especially in August, when its feels like your breathing under water, and not even the sunset brings any respite.

And I think it was during one of those New England heat waves, the summer of 2000, the world having just survived into the new Millennium and caught up in election year politics and who would be voted off Survivor, that Mike called.  I remember the conversation clearly, especially my end of it, which consisted mostly of sounding bewildered and saying, “What?” over and over again.

“Dave!  You wanna come find a skeleton with me?” he said in his loud, exuberant voice, the kind of voice that makes you want to say yes even if you have no idea what he’s talking about, which I didn’t.

“What?” I said.

“I think I found it!”

“What?” I repeated, trying to sound less confused and more conversational.  And failing.

“The burial spot of Paulsgrave Williams!”  His enthusiasm was more infectious than any cold, and I could feel it pulling me in.  But I couldn’t help thinking this sounded more like a fever dream than a reasonable conversation.

“What?” I said one more time.  Then, for clarity, “Where?”

Mike didn’t rise to that bait.  “Come with me.  Tonight.  We’ll check it out.”

“Why do we need to find a skeleton at night?” I asked.  “Isn’t daytime a much better time for finding skeletons?”

“C’mon!  We have to do this!”  And for just a second, I knew, just knew he was right.  We had to do this.  To go out in the middle of the night, to God knew where, to unearth a human skeleton.  And then, just as quickly, sanity reintroduced itself, and the feeling passed.  Mike’s enthusiasm was indeed infectious, but I’d spent twenty-some years building up antibodies.

We’d both gone to college in Massachusetts, instead of Rhode Island.  Stonehill for Mike, Clark University in Worcester for me.  Mike had gone back home after college, and now had an apartment in Newport.  I’d been there a couple times.  I’d gone back home as well, but my parents were mid-divorce at that point and I decided to move back to Worcester and find an apartment there.  An hour and a half of driving separated us, and I wasn’t about to make that drive for a wild goose chase for some pirate’s old bones.

I tried to get that point across to him.

He was insistent.  “There’s a skeleton in Touro Park!  Under the Tower!”

I knew exactly what he was talking about.  The Newport Tower, sometimes called the Old Mill Tower, sometimes the Viking Tower, was an icon of Newport.  Suddenly, I understood why he wanted to go at night.  What he was planning was the kind of thing that got you arrested.

“Don’t do it,” I told him.  “You’ll just get yourself into trouble.  There’s nothing there.”

Mike took the rejection in stride.  Which is a nice way of saying that, several hours later, we were skulking around Touro Park, pacing off various numbers of steps in various directions from the Tower, looking for something that Mike swore he'd know when he found it.  Somehow, acting totally suspicious in the middle of this park in downtown Newport (holding shovels, in case I forgot to mention that, because Mike said we'd have to dig to find these bones), we managed to not see a single police officer.  We kept this up until after midnight, until the Newport bars disgorged their drunks, but found nothing.  Mike said he'd be back the next night.  I yawned my approbation and drove groggily home.

A few more years past.  Mike never mentioned a skeleton or Touro Park again.  But Mike, I felt sure, stuck with treasure hunting, though he talked about it less and less on the increasingly rare times when we spoke, mostly over the phone.

Until September, 2004, when the phone rang at 5 o’clock in the morning.

In case it’s never happened to you, there is never a good reason for the phone to ring at 5 o’clock in the morning.  It only means bad things.  On the other end was Rose, Mike’s girlfriend, whom I had met exactly once.

“Wha-huh?” I said, my words still thick with sleep.

“Have you heard?” she said, not the least bit sleepy.

“Heard what?”

“I guess not.  Listen, last night, at the Patriots game, there was an accident.  Mike…he didn’t make it.”

Feeling myself getting dumber by the second, as I refused to let reality into this pre-dawn world, all I could utter was, “Didn’t make what?

The funeral was held a few days later, a picture-perfect New England September day.  The skies were clear of all but the lightest clouds, the leaves not yet turned, as we walked in solemn procession bearing the casket of my best friend.  You’ll excuse me if I stop my description there.  I don’t do well with funerals, lens of time be damned.

I went back to my apartment in Worcester, to the job I didn’t much like, to my mundane life and daydreams about writing the next amazing American screenplay, which would of course be filmed by the next Spielberg, and tried to pretend everything was normal.  But it wasn’t, and wouldn’t be, couldn’t be, ever again.

And I thought about Mike, about growing up, about his stories, his adventures, his tall tales.  I thought how nothing he ever told me turned out to be true, but somehow that never mattered, and I was always ready to believe.  I never felt cheated by his stories; I always felt better for having gone on his adventures, and now, I missed them.  But time would go one, the Red Sox were going to be in the playoffs, and he’d like that.  And I could imagine him walking up to the ghost of Babe Ruth and saying, “Seriously, what the actual Hell is going on here?”  And if there was a pirate treasure somewhere buried under Newport, which I knew, deep down, there wasn’t, it would stay buried for a while longer.  And that was as it should be.  I was, essentially, backing myself into a proverbial corner, curling up into a metaphorical ball, and sulking.

My bout of self-pity last for two weeks, until the first of October, when I got the letter.

It was, at first glance, an ordinary letter.  I opened the envelope without much thought, pulled out the single piece of paper, unfolded it, and read it.  A strange, unearthly sensation came over me, like cold air blowing against the back of my neck, only this was happening to my entire body all at once.

I looked at the envelope; read the return address.  It seemed to have been mailed by an M. McCarthy, from Newport, Rhode Island.

I only knew one M. McCarthy from Newport, Rhode Island.

I looked again at the paper the envelope had contained.  It was two lines.  Just two.  And with those two lines, my whole life changed.

41 degrees 29.356 minutes

71 degrees 19.231 minutes



(That's it, the whole first chapter.  Hope you liked it.  Thanks for reading it.)

Founding Mothers

I’ve spent the last two posts boring you all to tears with discussions about our founding fathers and trying to glean from their writings, particularly the opinions of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, what they might think of our current election.  The simple answer, which I’ve avoided because it would make for a very short essay, is that they are dead and so don’t think anything at all of this election.

But after spending so much time on the Founding Fathers, I would be remiss if I didn’t spend at least some small amount of space on a similar consideration of the opinions of our Founding Mothers.

What’s that?  You’ve never heard of the Founding Mothers?

No, you didn’t fall asleep during history class. (Well, you might have.  But that’s not why you missed this part.  Now grab a cup of coffee and stay with me!)  You’ve probably never heard of our Founding Mothers because no one talks about them, or their vital contributions to our country, or about WHY no one ever talks about them.  (I’m give you a hint: no penises.)

So let’s pause and consider some of the contributions of just a few of the women, there at the very beginning, whose influence on our nation can still be felt even today.

1. Mercy Otis Warren helped get us the Bill of Rights and wrote everything you know about the Revolutionary War

Mercy Otis Warren was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts and lived in Plymouth after marrying James Warren, who was a respected politician and sympathizer to the patriot cause.  Because of her connections with various patriots of Massachusetts, including Samuel Adams and John Adams, she was soon introduced to, and corresponded at length with, other revolutionary leaders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. 

Warren, like Jefferson and Adams, fought for independence using her pen as a mighty weapon, and wielding it with a strength that set her apart and above most of her contemporaries, both male and female.  She wrote satirical plays lambasting Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and was a fierce and loyal supporter of the revolutionary cause.  But her greatest contributions came after the war.

Published anonymously, Observations on the New Constitution was the opposite of the Federalist Papers, railing against the “men who tell us republicanism is dwindled into theory- that we are incapable of enjoying our liberties- and that we must have a master.”  It was one of the earliest, and clearest, calls for a Bill of Rights to be included in the Constitution, something strongly opposed by Hamilton, who argued, “I go further, and affirm, that Bills of Rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous.” (Federalist 84)

So you can thank Warren, not Hamilton, for your freedom of speech

The book was so important and influential that everyone thought a dude must have written it (specifically Elbridge Gerry, one of the better-named second-tier revolution-era politicians).  It wasn't properly attributed to Warren for over a century.  Because, c'mon, how could a woman write something so influential?

She also wrote and published (this time under her own name) the first major history of the Revolutionary War, the somewhat cumbersomely titled History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution (1805).  This book was the first to fit the events of the revolution into the narrative structure that is so well-known to us, starting with the Stamp Act first fanning the flames of liberty, through Jefferson drafting the Declaration of Independence (signed on the crucial date of July 4^th, 1776), and past the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, on up to the ratification of the Constitution.  She singled out Jefferson as the soul of the revolution, citing his declaration as representative of the “the natural equality of man, their right of adopting their own modes of government, the dignity of the people.”  And she marginalized and even criticized John Adams, her one-time literary mentor, to a secondary role in the revolution, and for having a “partiality for monarchy.”

Her words, combined with the fall of Federalism and rise of the Democratic Republicans and the Jeffersonian version of American History, meant that this narrative came to dominate our history books.  Nevermind that history didn’t really happen in quite so neat and tidy a fashion.  Her view of history became our view of history.

And yet, you’ve never heard of her.

At least the same can’t be said for:

2. Abigail Adams was our first female vice-president

John Adams, besides being the guy who made Washington commanding general of the Continental Army, the guy who asked Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence, and the single-handed author of the Massachusetts state constitution (no, really!), was the first vice-president and second president.  He is widely considered to be an unsuccessful president, unable to act strongly against France at a time when France was attacking our ships, passed the despicable Alien and Sedition Acts, a clear attack on free speech, and was defeated for reelection by his own vice-president, Thomas Jefferson.

When John Adams was elected our second president, he had a very tough act to follow.  Despite all of his unquestionable political genius and patriotic dedication, he was, quite obviously, not George Washington.  But he did his best, relying on the sound judgement of his closest advisers.  And by “closest advisers,” I’m not talking about his cabinet.  Adams chose to largely keep the same cabinet as Washington, thinking this would help keep the country on a steady course.  Unfortunately, he despised nearly everyone in his cabinet, especially Hamilton.  He couldn’t turn to his vice-president, as Jefferson was actively spreading rumors to turn the nation against Adams.  Instead, Adams relied on his own one-person cabinet: Abigail.

John Quincy was busy.

She was, not just as first lady, but at every time of their lives, his most trusted and most capable adviser.  More than that, John Adams was not really John Adams, but just one half of the political team of "John Adams" that they created together.  Their mutual trust and dedication to each other is clear in their considerable correspondences, which began always with “My Dearest Friend.”  Many in the government even took to referring to Abigail as “Mrs. President,” acknowledging her vital role in the administration.  In fact, some historians have argued that Abigail was the driving force behind her husband signing the much reviled Alien and Sedition Acts, the blackest spot on the Adams presidency.  Of course, while she supported the measures, nothing in the historical record indicates that she was active in convincing her husband to sign them, making this rumor maybe the first example of an embarrassing, cowardly act by Congress retroactively blamed on a woman.

Meanwhile, Abigail set herself apart from her male contemporaries with her unwavering support of women’s rights.  In her letters to her husband during the Second Continental Congress, she reminded him, “Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors…Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.”  (John didn’t accomplish much on this score, which is hardly surprising, considering his would have surely been the only such voice in all the Congress.)  She later wrote to her husband, “If you complain of neglect of Education in sons, what shall I say with regard to daughters, who every day experience the want of it?”  Then, in another letter, pointed out that women were every bit as patriotic as the men of this country, despite being excluded from having any voice in the governing of the nation.  “Yet all of history and every age exhibit instances of patriotic virtue in the female sex; which considering our situation equals the most heroic of yours.”

Up until our own time, no other First Lady has formed such a strong partnership with her presidential husband, advising him so openly on all matters and being a true political force in forming our nation.  Although neither of them alone were as formidable as the sum of their parts, it’s intriguing to speculate that if we could bring the Adams partnership into the future, could it be Abigail who would be the better choice to run for president?

3. Anne Hutchinson gets banished, helps found a new colony

If you’re not from the town of Portsmouth, Rhode Island (as I am), you’ve probably never heard of Anne Hutchinson. So here is the basic story:

Anne was a Puritan, born in England, married to a successful merchant, and a follower of the Puritan preacher John Cotton.  She came to Boston in 1634, where she and her husband were well-received by Cotton and governor John Winthrop.  She began hosting Bible study groups for women in her home each week, which became popular; so popular that she had to start one for men as well.  Soon, she was being accused by Cotton and Winthrop of preaching heretical views.  She was placed on trial, and eventually banished.  She was forced to trudge for days through the New England snow (did I mention she was pregnant?) before settling, with her family and many others who supported her and followed her, on an island called Aquidneck Island, also known as Rhode Island, which they purchased from the Narragansetts.  This was the founding of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, marked by the signing of the Portsmouth Compact, which the town of Portsmouth will point to as the beginning of American democracy.

Today, a statue of Anne Hutchinson stands outside the Massachusetts State House, where a plague declares her a “Courageous Exponent of Civil Liberty and Religious Toleration.”

Bullshit.  That plague gets it completely wrong.  Anne is being commemorated as someone who was persecuted for her heretical religious beliefs, her life being set up as a testament to the injustice of religious intolerance in government and the need for a separation of church and state.

But Anne was just as Puritan as any Puritan in Boston, and more than most, probably.  The Portsmouth Compact reads:

“We whose names are underwritten do hereby solemnly in the presence of Jehovah incorporate ourselves into a Bodie Politick and as He shall help, will submit our persons, lives and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and to all those perfect and most absolute laws of His given in His Holy Word of truth, to be guided and judged thereby.”

Not exactly the model of secular democracy.  Indeed, the actual differences in belief between Anne Hutchinson and John Cotton and the rest of the Massachusetts theocratic government is something called the Antinomian Controversy, which is such a splitting of hairs over slightly different interpretations of the meaning of grace that I’m not going to bore you with trying to recount it.  Suffice to say, people who spoke publicly about these different ideas of grace were in danger of banishment.

But Anne, as it became clear during her trial, never spoke these ideas in public.  Only in her own home. At her trial, John Winthrop tried to trick her into admitting her guilt, but she was far too intelligent and clever to fall for that.  Winthrop, after two days of constantly questioning her, utterly failed to prove her guilty of anything punishable by more than disapproving look.

Near the end of the second day of the trial Hutchinson, who at this point had basically won and would in no way have been banished, asked to address Winthrop and the court.  She said, “You have no power over my body, neither can you do me any harm- for I am in the hands of the eternal Jehovah, my savior… Therefore take heed how you proceed against me- for I know that, for this you go about to do to me, God will ruin you and your posterity and this whole state.”

"You think you can intimidate me by making me stand here while you ask me stupid questions?  I have fifteen children.  You guys are amateurs." - Hutchinson (I assume)

In other words, she called heresy on Winthrop and all of Massachusetts.  In blatant defiance of those passing judgement on her, she passes judgement on them.  This is a woman who would have gone free, who did not have to be banished.  Instead, she essentially chose banishment, rather than submit to the authority of Winthrop.

She was brought to trial partly for her insistence on a slightly different theological interpretation of the meaning of grace, but mostly for daring to teach her ideas to other people.  In particular, in daring to teach them to men.  As a woman, she was forbidden to direct her Bible teachings to anyone besides other women.  Yet she was so popular, her teachings had such an influence on the community, that she had to start a special Bible study meeting for men.  This directly challenged the authority of Cotton and Winthrop, and led to her trial, where they tried to paint her as part of a larger group of trouble-makers (many of whom were men who followed Anne and had already received banishment for publicly espousing her ideas), but that strategy backfired on them. 

But instead of submitting to men who insisted that she stay quiet as a woman ought to, or seek their permission and their opinions about how and what to teach, Anne stared them in the eye and refused to blink.

Roger Williams, who had earlier been banished for his own heretical teachings, founded Providence Plantations in the name of religious freedom.  His experience in Massachusetts had convinced him that religion must be kept out of civil government, not for the sake of government but for the sake of religion.  Anne Hutchinson, on the other hand, chose to be banished not so much for her religious beliefs, but rather because she refused to be told what she could or could not teach by men whom she considered as at least equals, if not inferiors.

And by joining her settlement with Williams, Anne Hutchinson helped establish the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.  (She eventually moved to New Amsterdam after her husband died, where she was killed by an Iroquois raiding party near what became known as the Hutchinson River.)

From these examples, it becomes clear that from the beginning of this nation, women have been fighting to be held as equals to men in civil society.  They have faced banishment, ridicule, marginalization by a male-dominated society, and these are hardly the only examples to be found in our history.  But slowly (very, very slowly), our society has moved ever closer to the promise of equality made at our founding, and now we are poised at the edge of a momentous step forward: the election of our first female president.

Now, I’m not saying to vote for Hillary because she’s a woman.  No, you should vote for her because she’s the most qualified, most experienced, most honest, least corrupt of all the (roughly) 300 people who have run for president this election cycle.

But she is still subject to the same attacks faced by Mercy Otis Warren, Abigail Adams, and Anne Hutchinson, which, after hundreds of years of social progress, is disgusting and disturbing.

Hillary has been the subject of lies perpetuated by political rivals, implicated in non-existent scandals, and been vilified because she challenges the conservative status quo.  She's portrayed as dishonest, despite her statements being evaluated as more honest and truthful than any of the other presidential candidates, including during the primaries.

She is accused of murder, which is the kind of disgusting and outrageously false claim that is so ridiculous people have to keep shouting it or it’ll disappear.  Yet, the Republican political witchhunt over who to blame for the tragic events in Benghazi found her blameless, and pointed to a Republican-controlled Congress obsessed with cost-cutting reducing the State Department's security budget.

She is accused of being corrupt for giving speeches to Wall Street investment firms and working for the interests of banks.  Banks located largely in New York.  When she was a Senator from New York.  And yet, her voting records shows BOTH support for banks and increased financial regulation, which doesn’t sound like corruption to me.  That sounds like good economic judgement.

And her honesty is questioned because she had a private email server while Secretary of State.  The only scandal here seems to boil down to Hillary not asking for permission first.  She’s described as arrogant, or criticized for hubris, but I can’t help but wonder if she were a man doing the same thing, would he be described as a real leader, who cuts through the bureaucratic red tape and gets stuff done?  I kinda want a leader who gets stuff done and doesn’t always wait for permission.

If she displays arrogance or hubris, it seems to be no more, indeed far less, than most male politicians you could think of.  And any legitimate criticism of her pales before her Republican opponent, who appears to be a giant orange water balloon full of arrogance and hubris with a frowny face drawn on it.

Unretouched photo.

Hillary is attacked in ways that all of our founding mothers would have found familiar, and she perseveres just as they did.  Character attacks, smear campaigns, gender-based double standards, allegations that her husband will be the one making the decisions; Abigail Adams would have been quick to encourage new Sedition Acts, and Anne Hutchinson would have stared them down and dared them to banish her again.

But this is now, and Hillary’s not getting banished.  She not going anywhere, and my daughter will live in a world where she will know that there is nothing that she can’t accomplish, including becoming President of the United States. 

In case you haven't guessed by now, I'm with her.

Federalist Part 2: How to destroy a republic in 6 easy steps

As mentioned in my last post, I am still reading the Federalist Papers, and between the arguments regarding the Federal Government’s power to raise an army to maintain national defense, and its power to levy taxes, concurrent to the state powers, the constant danger of the usurpation of the Republic by internal or external influences continues to be a major theme.

I can't believe they wrote this is just six months.  It's taking me longer than that just to read it.

And at every turn, they pronounce Unity as the best defense of liberty in the face of dictatorship. But along the way, they point out that the structure of our government provides a helping hand. “A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions." (Federalist 51) 

On one level, the Federalist Papers can be read as a historical view of an important moment in American history, perhaps THE most important in American history, in that all other moments of history have followed this one.  And if not for this one moment, no other moments of American history would be possible, or even conceivable, including the moment in history we are living right now, one of the most incredible presidential elections that most of us have ever seen.

In fact, one could make an argument that we should be celebrating September 17^th  (the date of the signing of the Constitution) instead of July 4^th as the birthday of this country.

But, on the other hand, the Federalist Papers could (though probably shouldn’t) be read at least in part as a how-to manual for dismantling a republic.  It was certainly never meant to be such a thing, but it makes an interesting exercise to see if the dangers that Madison and Hamilton and the other original framers foresaw have indeed stuck their ugly heads up out of the sand.

Now, I’m not saying outright that anyone currently running for president of the United States is definitely trying to force himself into an elected position with the aim of seizing the power of the Federal government for his own purposes, but if someone was trying to do that, this is what it might look like, according to history, which knows a few things about megalomaniacs seizing power.

1)  Choose your moment:  

You’ll need to pick the right time to seize power.  Typically, military coupes have come at times of civil unrest and violence, demanding military intervention.  More “democratic” coupes, where the future dictator is elected by the voters often follow periods of economic strife, like the Great Depression.  Exploiting some kind of internal strife requires that a) you wait for something terrible to happen, or b) convince people that a previous crisis is still going on and you can blame it on your current opponent, creating in the process "those violent and oppressive factions which embitter the blessings of liberty." (Federalist 45)  For the framers, it was the poisonous, anti-Union political atmosphere following the successful revolution that posed the greatest danger. 

But I suppose that the recovery period following a great financial crisis, coupled with racial tensions and on-going threats from terrorists groups would work just as well.


2)  Find a scapegoat:  

You’ll need to focus the anger of people who are upset about the direction of the country, now that you and your surrogates have succeeded in convincing them that the country is heading in the wrong direction (despite all evidence to the contrary).  Historically, the best scapegoats are broadly defined minority groups that are perceived as somehow “different” from the majority of the country.  Foreigners and religious minorities work well for this.  Use every opportunity to use one or two examples as proof that everyone in these subcategories are threats either to our economy (the “They’re stealing our jobs” approach) or our security (the “They’re going to kill us all” approach).   If you have trouble coming up with examples, truth is a fluid concept.  Just lie.  Say your lies loud enough and long enough, and everyone who wants to believe them will believe them.

3)  Use propaganda effectively:  

Of course, you standing there by yourself lying your butt off will only get you so far.  You need an effectively propaganda machine.  Since we conveniently have a free and open press, it shouldn’t be too hard to pull one or two of those media outlets into your camp and get them working for you.  

Careful:  This way madness lies.

This, too, goes right back to the founding of our country, with newspapers openly taking sides between the Democratic Republicans of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and the Federalists of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, to the point that Adams passed the Alien and Sedition Acts with the intent to lock up members of the press.  In more recent times, the conservative press likewise played an important role in spreading administration misinformation in the lead up to the Iraq war.  

The really great part about how we use the media today is that your propaganda machine doesn’t really have to lie very hard.  According to studies about our online reading habits, we almost never go further than sensationalistic headlines.  We see a headline that matches with our predetermined way of thinking about the world (see above re: exploiting a sometimes-imaginative crisis and blaming it on foreigners) and quickly share it.  All you need to do is recycle

However you manage it, your public image is essential.  You have to make your image work for you, to appeal to the broadest base of your supporters.  And further, you need to make sure your opponent's image appears untrustworthy, or corrupt, or criminal, or incompetent, even in the face of facts that clearly demonstrate to the contrary.  "For it is a truth which the experience of all ages had attested, that the people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion." (Federalist 25)

4)  Get elected:  

Up to now, we’ve really only looked at practices that most politicians use in one form or another- appealing to special interests, blaming someone other than their supporters, distributing misinformation- but swaying a fickle public opinion and actually winning a majority of votes are two different animals.  And even then, the majority of votes isn’t what counts in this country, thanks to the electoral college, specifically designed (for better or worse) as a further safeguard from popular opinion interjecting itself above the public interest.  "This process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of the president, will seldom fall to the lot of any man, who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications." (Federalist 68)

Clearly, their not talking about you.  

In other words: you need to do something to guarantee that you win.  And that means you need to guarantee votes.  How?  Voter fraud is possible, but tricky.  Voter intimidation is way easier.  Just ask your own supporters to stay at the polling stations, ostensibly to prevent cheating.  But make sure they know that “cheating” means anyone who is not voting for you.  After all, everyone must be voting for you, since you’re so great, so anyone expressing a different opinion is obviously a liar and cheater working for the other side.  Poor logic?  Perhaps, but I assume you’ve been using poor logic all along, so it won’t be any more noticeable now.  This will help prevent anyone voting against you.  Violence should be (subtly) encouraged, as violence is a strong deterrent to voting.

5) Suppress the opposition:  

The beauty of our Constitutional system is how it provides a framework for bringing together different, often opposing ideas and allows for the possibility of compromise.  Our system of government recognizes that there is a plurality of opinions within the electorate of our country and we owe that plurality a decent hearing as we consider what course to chart.  As a result of this structure, the government will be full of people who disagree with you.  These voices must be silenced.  You like firing people, don't you?  Fire them.  Failing that, intimidate them until they are forced to resign.  Fill every opening with people who agree with everything you say.  

Your next challenge will be the fourth estate, the press, whose freedoms are designed to act as a counterbalance to any consolidation of power within the three branches of government.  Fortunately for you, the press, as we’ve already seen, is lazy and malleable.  But you can’t take the chance of some Woodward or Bernstein exposing your true intentions to the country and turning that ever-shifting public opinion against you.  Instead, you need a press that will be loyal to you at all times and always say positive things to reinforce your image.  So, if some journalist questions you too harshly, you must attack them back, criticize them and their work, punish whatever media outlet they work for by refusing to cooperate or allow them access, and whenever possible, try to solicit some surrogate to respond violently.  Soon, you’ll find journalists as easy to control as any other group of people.

6) Consolidate your power:
  
And here is the final, perhaps most difficult step.  The Constitution of the United States calls for specifically three separate but co-equal branches of government that are interrelated without the kind of crossover of power that allows easily for any one branch to become more powerful than the other two, or for any one person to gain too much influence over all three.  This was designed by founders who well understood the desire of men to seek power.  "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." (Federalist 51)  Being no angel yourself, this is the challenge you’ll need to overcome.  

As the Chief Executive, and as someone who has already purged his political enemies from the executive branch (see previous), you’ll enjoy all the power of the executive branch.  But legislative powers will continue to fall to Congress, as well as budgetary powers, and the judicial branch still has the authority to declare anything you do unconstitutional and therefore void.  These are serious threats to your newly acquired power.  

In the first place, as being President in our modern sense is fundamentally different than it was originally envisioned, at a time before political parties, you will have a solid voting block in the legislature to work for you there.  You’ll need to guard against those who choose not to follow your lead, but those can be handled with a combination of intimidation and monetary incentives.  And when the legislature fails to do as you wish, you yourself will be able to legislate from your office using executive orders.  While there are limits to the use of executive orders, just have a really good lawyer (I’ll assume you already have one) draft a memo explaining that whatever executive order you wish to make is legal under some vague language of the Constitution, and your order should go unchallenged.  If it is challenged in the courts, you’ll need to ensure that courts declare in your favor.  

For this, you’ll need to have influence over the Supreme Court, and that means appointing at least one justice (that lawyer I mentioned earlier would be a good first pick).  It is therefore advisable to time your election/rise to power such that it coincides with vacancy on the court. 

Once you have suitable influence over the courts, you will finally enjoy exactly the consolidation of power that the framers of the constitution feared and loathed.  You'll have taken their principles of republicanism and turned our nation into something far removed, and far worse, than it was ever intended to be.  And you managed to do it right under the nose of "the People." Well done!

And in the end, it won't be you that we have to blame for our predicament, but ourselves.  Because what the Federalist Papers should teach us, and what all the original founders have tried to tell us, is that there is no secret weakness in our government, some Achilles Heel hidden in the Constitution like a Dan Brown novel.

Our government's greatest weakness comes in the form of us, the People.  If we walk around blind to how special our government structure is, how great it can be in hands of dedicated public servants, working together, sometimes arguing, sometimes compromising, but always for the Public Interest, instead of their own personal interests, we won't deserve this government anymore.  Our Constitution is still there, with all its flaws and contradictions, trying to create the best nation that it can for us.

And if we give up on that, if we see exactly what you're doing as you subvert every principle of our founders, and we see it and do nothing about it, then you'll win and we will deserve everything we get.

And I think we're better than that.  I hope I'm not wrong.

Back to School: The Federalist Papers (Pt.1)

Summer is over!  Time for our first reading assignment!

This being an election year, and our government being reliant upon the voice of a well-informed electorate, I’ll be assigning the Federalist Papers.

The Federalist Papers, for everyone who fell asleep in history class (seriously you’re yawning right now, aren’t you? Please try to stay awake.  I have a point here, and it’s important), are a series of essays written in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison (when’s he getting a musical?), and John Jay in order to convince New York to ratify the new Constitution of the United States

"Seriously, no one has any idea who I am."

One of the major themes that is immediately evident running through the 85 essays that comprise the Federalist Papers is the call for Unity among the different states.  It may seem strange to us today that the union of the United States was not always a foregone conclusion.  Or, as Hamilton wrote, "It may perhaps be thought superfluous to offer arguments to prove the utility of the Union...But the fact is, that we already hear it whispered...that the Thirteen States are of too great extent for any general system, and that we must of necessity resort to separate confederacies of distinct portions of the whole."

But, you might be thinking, why?  Why not come together into a full Union?  After all, the states were free, they were already united under the Articles of Confederation, they’d already come together to defeat the world superpower of the time, and this nation was destined to become the new global superpower, to extend its reach all the way past the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean and extend its ideas of freedom from monarchy all over the world.  Why did they have to argue FOR uniting the states?  Weren’t they already the United States?

That's easy for us to say, after nearly 250 years of successful republican government, but no one at the time had any compelling reason to believe that this new government, founded not on principles of monarchy, nor entirely a democracy, but built on republican principles of a representative government several steps removed from the People, yet based on the sovereignty of the People, would succeed.  And they had good reason to be skeptical, in that no other republic since the days of Rome had ever succeeded for any length of time. This crazy new Constitution was doomed to failure.

Because republican democracies don’t last very long.  Absolute monarchies, despotic dictatorships, militaristic empires, those last. 

Now, I already mentioned that there’s an election coming up.  You might have noticed a lot of people on TV, or putting up signs in their front yards, declaring that they want to make America great again.  What they tend to avoid talking about is what made America “great” in the first place, when it was “great,” and what greatness actually means.

Does our greatness stem from our military dominance?  Our responsibility to act as the global police on all international matters in which some form of democracy might be at risk?  Or is American greatness the result of material innovations, technology, manufacturing, research into curing diseases?  Or, as some people seem to think, is it the racism?

I’m going to float here an actual definition for American Greatness, because this is a largely rhetorical essay, and I can do pretty much as I please.  If the greatness of a nation is to be measured by a unique military, social, or cultural yardstick, America’s is based on the simple accomplishment that it managed at its founding, that saved it when the Civil War ripped our country apart, and which we are still living with today:

Our government.

I confess, that’s not a totally original definition.

“Is not the glory of the people of America, that whilst they have paid a decent respect to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience?” (Federalist 14, by James Madison)

"I'm a lot less boring when you realize my nickname was Jemmy."

Our country wasn’t founded out of any shared history or common culture.  The people of the different states didn’t actually much like each other, even then.  It was founded instead on ideas.  Ideas of self-government, ideas that the power to govern isn’t bestowed by God on pre-ordained rulers, but rather is derived by the consent of the governed themselves.  Ideas like equality and liberty, which are contradictory ideas, but are unified in our founding documents, particularly the Declaration of Independence.  These ideas, as much as tea and taxes, were at the heart of the revolution.

And that revolution should have failed. Realistically, we never should have won our independence, but we did. And ever after, our new government should have failed.  And it did, leading to the Constitutional Convention.  But somehow, THAT convention, with its republican ideals, intrinsic contradictions, and far-reaching compromises, that convention came up with something that managed to beat the odds, something no other violent overthrow of repressive government has managed before or since.

What did the French Revolution lead to?  Napoleon.  And what about the Roman Republic our founders wanted to emulate?  That ended with Caesar crossing the Rubicon.  Or the Florentine Republic of the sixteenth century, which ended with the infamous Medici family and with Machiavelli in exile writing “The Prince.”  Forward in history, the Russian Revolution led to Lenin and Stalin, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union promised a democratic Russia and gave us Putin.

Revolutions nearly always lead to dictators.

Except for us.  (Well, so far.)

But, why?

Put another way, is there something intrinsic in democratic governments that make them more open to the advances of a dictatorship, and is there something within our own form of government that helps to guard against such a takeover of government, and is that fundamental safeguard or safeguards, still useful today?

According to the Federalist Papers, the major internal danger to the republic was the fighting among parties and factions that could lead to disunion.  But almost as dangerous was the rise of irrational majority movements that disenfranchised the minority parties and factions and thus secured their own power, leading to a kind of tyranny of the majority.  To Hamilton and Madison, the greatest thing we had going from us was our large size and diverse population (their definition of diverse being somewhat removed from our own, but I think the basic thinking remains the same) that would check any populist movements from becoming too powerful.  Having competing factions helped guard against any one man who might decry all others who opposed him and declare that he, alone, was the answer to all of the nation’s problems.  But too many factions, fracturing the nation and competing for power at the expense of each other, without a larger unifying identity, could also be dangerous. Public opinion is easily swayed, and a particularly strong, vocal faction took take power away from other factions by claiming any number of prejudiced and misguided notions.  So the power of the people need to be removed from the people by degrees. So that by having three coequal branches of government that checked each other plus a freedom of speech and press that guaranteed a fourth check, the nation could effectively prevent the popular power from being vested too much in any one man.

However, it is an open question if those same protections still exist in our modern political landscape.  When we sure as hell still need them.

Our political culture, which is designed to be deliberative, intentionally slow and bureaucratic, so as to avoid the whims of temporary inflammations of public opinion, but instead to work for the public good, which are often two different, sometimes opposite, objects, is competing with the internet and 24/7 news cycles, where we constantly demand instant satisfaction and put every public act under several microscopes at once, each seeing it from a different angle and reaching a different conclusion which must be THE truth of the moment.  And we all have all the mouthpieces for our own opinions and prejudices that we could want.  So that a minority of opinions can be disguised as a full-blown public movement.

And in this moment, moving toward our next election, we now have a deadlocked Congress, a deadlocked Supreme Court, and most interestingly, a major party candidate courting special interests in order to give the appearance of appealing to some kind of vocal majority, inciting people with rhetoric about how our government is the problem, how immigrants are a threat, and how he alone is the answer.

"Fun Fact:  Today, I'd be considered an illegal immigrant."

Everything about this scenario would have sounded alarming to Hamilton and Madison.

In fact, in a true democracy, tied directly to the voice of the majority, to the whims of public opinion, this would be a truly existential threat to freedom.  It is still a danger, though one our country has been built to withstand.  The real threat is if public opinion is mistaken for public interest, mistrust of others is allowed to be codified as law, and a small faction is allowed to disenfranchise other factions, giving rise to self-perpetuating loops of bigotry and prejudice.  Such is the case with Voter ID laws and voter registration requirements in which specific demographics are targeted and voting made more difficult, all in the name of reducing non-existed voter fraud, but is actually based on prevailing fears of people who are different, somehow, from those currently in power. And if we constantly think of each other as different from ourselves, instead of as part of the same society, the same People, little can stand in the way of such a threat.

Our Founding Fathers were absolutely clear that our fractured groups of Americans needed more than anything else to unite behind a single union of identity.  We had to move from These United States to THE United States.  From plural to singular.  Through Unity, not of party or opinion, but a unity that embraces a diversity of, and respect for, our sometimes contradictory opinions and perspectives.  At a time when all of politics seems to consist of shouting down any contrary opinion, a fuller consideration of ideas is freedom’s most potent defense.  

Or, in the words of George Washington, "The unity of government which constitutes you one people...is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your peace; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize."

If we remember that the people who disagree with us are also citizens of this country, worthy of its freedoms, and dedicated to its founding principles, that makes the whole country stronger.

We have defied our earliest critics.  We have defied even history itself, and have created, however unlikely, an example of representative government that can withstand both blatant incompetence and deceitful corruption to serve as a voice for the sovereign people, from whom our federal government derives its power.  And by holding ourselves to the core principles of Unity and Representative Government (or, in Lincoln’s words, “of the people, by the people, and for the people”), we will continue to endure.

And that, in short, is the starting point of American Exceptionalism.  The authors of the Federalist Papers understood this.  They predicted this; that if our country could survive, to hold itself together for long enough, we could, by our mere continued existence, serve as an example that yes, this kind of government can actually work.

In other words (and somewhat ironically), we can “Make America Great Again” by being “Stronger Together.”

It's Not Your Country

Hey guys, did you know there's a presidential election coming this year?

It's true.  And judging from my Facebook feed, which, as we all know, is the best news source out there these days, a lot of people have A LOT of opinions about who we should vote for.  And they all give really good reasons, citing articles from crazydavesnews.com, and definitelynotbullshit.org, and youcantotallytrustus.com.  And Fox News.  Clearly, people have opinions, and are expressing them.

Sidebar:  Why don't I own this website, yet?

Ok, all kidding aside, I'm gonna start by stating 3 things:

1) I'm about to express an opinion about this election.  If you find you'd rather not know my opinion, I respectfully point out you may be reading the wrong blog.

2) I will not be endorsing any candidate at this time.  Now, yes, I've been courted pretty hard by both the John Kasich and Deez Nuts campaigns, but I'm not ready to commit my endorsement at this time.  My judgement tells me now is the time for unity, not further division.

3) I will not defriend, block, delete, attack, or condemn any of my friends over the nonsense you choose to post and share during this election.  I hope that you will think twice before sharing something from shockingnewsheadline.com and citing it as a reason to love one candidate or openly spew hatred at another candidate, but I'm not gonna react to it.  Now, if you start in with anti-science, anti-intellectual, "vaccines cause autism," stuff, you and I will need to part ways, but I have faith that all of you, my friends, are above at least that sort of silly nonsense.

As I listen to a whole lot of people spouting even more opinions, like how Wall Street is ruining America (it's not), or how socialism is ruining America (wrong again), or ISIS is the biggest threat our country has ever seen (not even close), or we need to secure our border (no, actually, we don't), I'm struck by how many people feel very passionately about what is best for our country, and how those very passionate and strongly held beliefs are at complete loggerheads with someone else's equally strong, passionately held beliefs.  And I wonder how we're ever going to get past this.

And I'm reminded of the famous Ronald Reagan quote, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"  And I think that is the basic question that people ask themselves when considering who, or at least what kind of person, they want in the White House.

And it's the completely wrong question.  It's a question that boils down to, "This is my country, and I'm going to vote for what is best for me."

But it's not your country.  It's not my country.  This country, in fact this entire planet, doesn't belong to us.

We're just temporary inhabitants.

You see, our country belongs to our future.

Or rather, their future.

If we want to make the right choices, we need to change the way we think about this world that we live on.  We have a political system that rarely if ever looks any farther into the future than the next election, but our choices in these elections have real and powerful consequences for the generations that will come after us.  What if we decided to vote for them?

Now, certain things we're bound to have some honest disagreement on, like how to ensure a prosperous economy for the future.  I might believe in free market capitalism within a framework of government regulation, a minimum wage that equates to a living wage and adjusts according to inflation, and free trade agreements that acknowledge our place in a wider global economy.  You, on the other hand, hypothetical reader that disagrees with me, might be wrong.  That's fair, and we should have a chance to debate, to try things out, to adjust if we're wrong.

But in other areas, we don't have to the luxury of being wrong.

From this perspective, it is immoral to vote for any presidential candidate that dismisses climate change as a hoax, a natural phenomenon, or not that important compared to something else (the economy, national security, a good haircut, etc.).

Even my eight-year-old daughter has noticed that this is the warmest winter we've ever had.  There was a hurricane in January.  A relatively isolated equatorial mosquito-borne disease has exploded into regions that have never seen it before, including several cases in the United States.  The science is clear and the reality is terrifying.  I'm somewhat heartened by the Paris Climate Change Accord that was signed back in December, but there are still people running for the highest political office in our land who dismiss this, the single greatest threat to our existence that we currently face.

And considering that even the scientists tell us that in order to mitigate (that is, not even stop, just try to keep it from not being quite so bad) catastrophic climate change, we need to be completely carbon neutral in less than fifty years.  That's (hopefully) inside my own lifetime!

But there are elected officials in our country right now who decry science.  Who think the world's scientists are running some kind of scam.

We need to understand what science is telling us, and we need to do our best to change things.  And we Americans, when we are at our best, can do some pretty amazing stuff.  We need that amazing-ness, now.

You see, we've known about climate change for a long time.  I remember learning about the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide back in the '80s.  Computer models were designed, and predictions were made.  As temperatures continued to rise, they predicted an increase in unusual weather patterns, more intense storms, and a rise in infectious disease spread by tropical insects and other similar disease vectors.  We don't need to wait for science to make predictions about what will happen over the next decade and what to see if the predictions come true.  Because they did, and they did.  We have proof the humans are causing catastrophic climate change.

We need to do something about it.

If we stay on track with the Paris Accord, we can keep the worse-case scenario at bay, and maybe try our hand at terraforming our own planet.  But if the next president pulls the US out of the Paris Accord (as some candidates have said they would), the consequences will be catastrophic.  As in actual, literal catastrophes.  I love metaphors as much as the next guy, but this isn't a metaphor.  Actually catastrophic.

Now, for your convenience, a quick synopsis of where the current field of major party candidates stand on climate change:

Trump:  Global warming was invented by the Chinese.  (He later claimed he was kidding, but still refers to climate change as a "hoax."
Cruz: Climate change doesn't exist.  There has been "no significant warming whatsoever."
Kasich: Climate change is real, is important, but not as important as the economy, so let's not do anything about it.
Clinton: Believes in climate change is a real danger to our species and our planet, supports Obama's efforts to combat climate change and the Paris Accord.
Sanders: Believes climate change is the number one threat that we are currently facing.  He supports strengthening the Obama administrations effort, and supports the Paris Accord, but adds it isn't nearly enough.

And I don't want it to sound like climate chance the only important thing we need to think about (although a direct and immediate threat to the continued existence of the entire human race is kind of a big deal).  We need to think about gun control (we need some), government corruption (we need less), healthcare (need more, and more affordable, for everyone), and immigration (needs to be easier, not harder).

But, I'll be the first to admit, on all of these other issues, there is a chance that I could be wrong.  I don't think I am, because, you know, that's fundamentally what a belief is.  But when it comes to climate change, belief doesn't enter into it.  Science shows us the objective reality of our physical world.  Climate change is real, happening, and the result of human behavior, which we have the power to change.

So please, when you consider who you are going to vote for, don't vote just to lower your taxes.  Don't vote for walls (they never work, anyway).  Don't vote out of fear (people who come from other countries and speak other languages are really very nice).  Don't vote for someone because they are successful in business (successful businessmen have traditionally made lousy presidents).

And don't vote for people who talk about how much better our country used to be.  It's not true.  Our parents and grandparents helped make things better for all of us.  This nation has never been better than it is now.  We are always at our best when our eyes are on our future.  And our children and grandchildren deserve a better country than the one we live in.

We are caretakers of this country, and of this world.  We have something called democracy, because our forefathers rejected the notion that the power of government comes exclusively from God, but rather decided that is comes from the people.  But it's not just the current people, but also all the future people.

So please, whether you live in a state that hasn't yet had their primary, or you're deciding who to vote for in November, please remember this: you're voting for those who can't yet vote for themselves.  You're voting for our kids.

And not just our kids, but everyone's kids.  And it's not just about the physical environment they'll be born into, but the social one as well.  Kids born without opportunities, kids born into poverty, kids subjected to abuse, kids confronted with racism and sexism and ethnic or religious intolerance.  All of them deserve better.  That's what we need to vote for.

Vote for someone else's better tomorrow.

Because it's not really our country, or our world, at all.

Pass it on.

2015: A Year in Homebrewing

Is it safe to come out?  Have all the “Year in Review” articles and mini-Facebook movies and all the resolutions and dieting ideas and all that final run their course?  Seems like all we see this time of year is nostalgia for the past (12 months) and unbridled optimism for the future (12ish months).

Well, I guess it’s time to do my part, but in an effort to keep it interesting, I’ll punctuate mine with beer.  Because everything’s better with homebrew.

I had really big plan about a year ago: brew a different and new and interesting beer every month for twelve months.  It seemed like a great excuse to put off writing any blog entries for a good long while, which worked out great!  It also turned out to be a distraction, sometimes welcome, often not, from a year that felt a little like a roller coaster: sometimes you were up, sometimes you were down, and you almost always had a bad feeling in your tummy.

January: I started the year with a pretty neat idea (I thought).  Knowing it was a) cold and b) coming up on my favorite night of inviting friends over to watch funny commercials and a short concert (which for some reason is called the “Super Bowl”), I decided to brew a lager, or two.  First, I brewed a big, strong dobbelbock (9% abv), and bottled 4 out of the 5 gallons.  Then, I took the last gallon, added water, and kegged it to make a 3% abv pale lager.  Eight gallons for the work of five!  And the commercial and concert party we threw went over great.  A perfect start to the year.

February: In February, the snows came.  You probably remember.  Since it was still cold, I stuck with beers that would benefit from a chilly basement, and made an altbier (which is not, as it turns out, a beer created by people on Usenet groups, much to my disappointment).  Soon after that, as we got even more snow, our dog, Joe, went out to pee in the front yard, as he had day after day for the 10 years we’d been part of our family, and never came back.  I looked for him until nearly midnight in the bitter cold.  I called his name, even though he was deaf.  I followed tiny sets of footprints all over the neighborhood.  Friends came and helped us.  Even neighbors we barely knew came out to help look.  We never found him.

To understand the devastation of that moment, you have to know how much Joe meant to us.  How the sound of him licking himself on my pillow was the lullaby I fell asleep to every night.  How we rushed him to the animal hospital when he needed his gallbladder out, despite not having any way to pay for such an operation, and waited up until after 1am to hear that the surgery had been successful.  How he greeted us at the door when we came home, day after day, for ten years.  How he jumped up on the couch and put his paws on the bassinet when Ella came home from the hospital, curious about this new member of our family.  He was terribly abused, abandoned, and starving before we adopted him.  He was a sweet, loving little old man when he left us.  I have no idea why he disappeared like that when he did, though he perhaps he knew (as we did) that wouldn't live much longer.  I don't know.  But finally, February was over.  Though somehow, the world didn't feel any less cold or gray for it.

March:  By this time, obviously, the year was off to a crappy start, and my heart wasn’t in homebrewing.  I made a beer, a honey ale, but it was contaminated and I ended up dumping most of it.

[Best if I skip a bit here…]

Summer:  Spring eventually thawed the snow, but mostly what I remember is spending an awful lot of time in doctor offices and hospitals for various reasons involving various family members.  By Summer, we’d found a new family hobby, which I highly recommend to anyone looking for spend a fun Saturday afternoon: house hunting.  Not serious, “We need to buy a house!” house hunting.  Instead, find some houses (I recommend Zillow) and set up some viewings.  You get to see some really nice places, and some total holes.  The ones with the collapsing ceilings and black mold are always fun, but my favorite was the one house with a brand-new beautifully decorate bathroom in the middle of a bare, unfinished, asbestos-filled basement.  Because that’s a selling point!

I did make a beer to honor Leo’s first birthday.  Since he was born on Bastille Day, it was a French-style saison, and I kept a few bottled with his picture on it.

We also considered a few fairly crazy new diets over the summer, all of which touted the benefit of going gluten free.  Ever game for a good experiment, I found an enzyme that could be added to beer that would more fully convert the gluten in beer into sugar that would then be consumed by the yeast.  The result was a pretty tasty pale “gluten-less” ale.  But after about a month of that, we decided that was crazy and went back to eating gluten.  FYI, fruit and vegetable smoothies aren’t that bad, if you make them right.

September: As the summer made way for Fall, and the school year started up again, my grandmother passed away at the age of 96.  I wish I could write more to sum up my feelings about this loss, but my feelings aren’t done yet, and can’t really be summed it.  Leave it at this: after her funeral, we picked up a six pack of ‘Gannsett and toasted her, and missed her.

At the end of the month, my wife and I managed to sneak away for a couple days to celebrate our 11^th wedding anniversary.  Hanging out with hippies and enjoying bike rides and, yes, good beer, it was the highlight of an otherwise somber month.

October: In October, one of our close friends got married.  My daughter was a flower girl, my wife was a bridesmaid, and I was charged with making 15 gallons of beer for the reception.  It seemed straightforward enough: 3 batches, 3 five-gallon kegs.  What could go wrong?  As soon as I filled the first keg and went to charge it, and heard the CO2 hissing out, I knew exactly what could go wrong.  Suddenly, I was all panic: Was it defective?  Would there be time to get more?  How much CO2 was I wasting?  Would there be enough to serve the beer?  What if I couldn’t fix it?  Would I have to tell our friend that I couldn‘t make the beer?  Would I be responsible for ruining their wedding?  Fortunately, I found that increasing the air pressure and adjusting the seal was enough to fix the leak, and the next two kegs were filled and sealed without problem.  The wedding was a lot of fun, and a couple people might have liked the beer.  Or not.  Didn’t matter to me; I still drank it!

In November, I turned 40.  Shut up, that’s not that old!  Just because I was born during the Ford administration doesn’t mean I’m not still spry and full of youthful—oh , who am I kidding?

In December, our family suffered another loss.  A man very close to our family, whose family had always felt like an extension of my own family, passed away.  To tease out the exact familial bonds from our extended Irish family would take some time, but cousin is the closest term, though that doesn’t do his closeness to us justice.  Uncle is somewhat closer, but Eddie was…well, he was Eddie to us, will always be Eddie to us, and that’s enough.  I brewed an Irish stout for him, because that seemed fitting.  I decided at that I point that I’d had enough funerals for one year.

The Universe, of course, doesn’t care what I think.  Just before Christmas, my father-in-law suffered a major stroke.  We made immediate plans to go to Texas, to see him, to let him see a couple of his grandkids.  We’d almost made it on the plane when the phone rang.  We missed the flight, and rebooked, not for a visit, but for a funeral.  This was the man who I called one day, 13 or so years ago, to ask for his permission to marry his daughter.  And he’d told me, “I’ll tell you what my father-in-law told me.  You can ask her, but she won’t say yes!”  This was the man who coaxed my daughter into taking her very first steps.  We flew to Texas the day after Christmas, to say our goodbyes properly.

So much for 2015. 

Do I have resolutions for 2016?  You’ve got to be kidding me.

Well, I guess that’s not entirely fair.  I’d decided near the end of last year to try my hand at fiction writing again.  I still think I’ve got a couple novels in me that need to come out.  But now, suddenly, I’ve come to think that where my writing really needs to be is sitting right in front of me, or rather, isn’t sitting right in front of me because neither of them ever seem to sit still for very long.

I have two wonderful kids, and they’d both probably get a kick out of some of the stories I could write for them.  So this year, and as many years as I can keep it up, my writing will be dedicated to them.  If you don’t see another blog entry for a while, that’s probably what I’m doing.  So if you see my kids, ask them if they like my stories.  I’m hoping they’ll say yes.