For the latter half of the oughties, my activist tendencies led me into a handful of political party roles, culminating in a three-year stint as Chair of the Platform and Resolutions Committee of the Democratic Party of Oregon (DPO). Last year, I felt gratified to learn—from my OTGC writing partner Joel—that a small handful of process improvements I helped navigate into place, back in the day, still guide aspects of that state party’s bi-annual platform convention.

Along the way to those, though, I learned how visibility is the only political currency in a democracy, and that small-stake contests are as bloody as any other. Many party animals will stab backs as needed, to rise into the lights.

Ask me how I know.

Which is why I know that people occupying a political spotlight for more than a hot minute tend to be deeply compromised, and to avoid making changes that would matter to average voters. Average voters do not own spotlights, much less have enough money to pay the power bills needed to keep those spotlights lit.

I do not feel particularly bad about any of this. Human beings preen. Preening is baked into our biology. We preen to get laid, and scream to dominate. Parties are full of ambitious people, acting out on their ambitions.

It would be naive and utopian of me to expect any different.

But, this also means I often have better places to spend my time and money than helping party activists play their party games, inside a broken process.

Thirteen years ago, the Christian aspects of my spirituality settled into the Anglican tradition, for it being a welcoming and gently held approach to my childhood catholicism. Some ritual, some mysticism, and easy on the dogma. It works, for me.

The American expression of Anglican tradition is The Episcopal Church. This church operates as a democracy, not an empire. A democracy that has, at points, told both Popes and Kings to go take a walk; a fact that nurtures my middling anti-authoritarianism. Leadership, yes, but also decentralization, please.

Anglicans walk a willfully middle way between the ancient, imperial Christian tradition, with its pope and patriarchs, and the younger traditions, which have been protesting against Christendom for the past 500 years, to the point of giving any dude with a Bible the right to thump it at others for money.

The middle way takes some of each and leaves the cultishness behind. The only promises one makes as a member of this middle way are listed in a Baptismal Covenant, the most often cited line of which is:

Episcopalians are offered an opportunity to speak and re-commit to this line, publicly, as a group, on Easter every year, if one chooses to do so. No one will likely notice if you keep quiet, much less ask you to leave. It’s a personal thing.

Regardless, every human being is a very big group. We need to work together.

I dropped out of party politics after the 2010 election.

In doing so, I joined the apparently incomprehensible (to party leadership) 45% of voters, averaged by age, who do not identify as Republican or Democrat2 and so are without an organized political home, due to the laws of American politics.

So, does this mean that (a) I support baby-murder, per much of the party with 28% average voter loyalty3? Or, does it mean (b) that I want Trans people to die, per much of the other, which likewise commands about 28% voter loyalty4?

Yes, #notalldemocrats and #notallrepublicans adhere to these hyper-partisan litmus tests. But, they are very real, and many do. These and similar trigger points (e.g., guns, racism) ignite enough passion to get ambitious party animals elected, by the dwindling ranks of party loyalists who show up for screaming.

(N.B.: the root problem is in the laws governing state by state election processes, which give unfair structural primacy to the two historic parties; but, the toxic impact of closed primaries, invested interests, and resulting stranglehold on genuine political diversity and discourse, is beyond scope this week.)

But, to simplify, if screaming led to positive change, wouldn’t we know by now?

A Vice Chair of the Democratic Party of Oregon once advised me, “process rarely works, Leo. You only win with popularity.” He was right. Our process has delivered President Trump, twice. He is very popular. His people love him.

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Myself, I choose none of the above.

Instead, I consider every candidate. I look for one, single, over-arching theme in the noises any candidate makes: do they see every person, who would be subject to the laws they want to make, judge, or enforce, as deserving equal justice, peace, and dignity? Or, do they think some folks are, for any reason whatsoever, “more equal than” others?

I read candidate’s websites. It does not take long. They tend to be short these days, composed of little more than partisan catch-phrases. But, I try to read between whatever lines they provide, and assess their pool of concerns.

For example:

• Everyone needs roads, otherwise we smash our axles and drive through yards. So, will they take care of the roads?

• Everybody needs water and a place to poop, otherwise we all get cholera. So, does this candidate care about water, sewers, and public infrastructure?

• Everybody needs food and a safe place to sleep, else we get criminals crawling through our windows. Does this candidate seem ready to manage the fact that starving and/or addicted people will kill to get what they need?

• Everybody needs access to digital communication, to participate in the economy. Will this candidate work to ensure everyone does, and securely?

• Everybody needs a planet to live on. Will this candidate waste our planet, or protect it? It is the one and only livable planet we have.

• Every person needs the feel the dignity of their labor is respected. So, will this candidate help ensure there is dignified work available for everyone?

• Every adult needs to live among voters who can read, write, do basic math, and understand civics well enough to vote. So, will this candidate ensure good public schools and teaching are available for everyone?

• Does this candidate seem mature enough to grasp simple principles, like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?

• Is this candidate mature enough to grasp things most of us know from shopping at Costco, like buying in bulk saves money?

I could go on. So could you.

The point is: none of these ideas are hard. None are extreme. All of them leave room for diversity. All of them are boring, and agreeably middle of the road.

Too boring to get the screamers, who want to dominate others, enough attention to get elected. And that is the problem: good public administration is boring, but Americans love excitement. Americans love screaming, and horror movies.

Can systemic political polarization be fixed by an unorganized 45% of the electorate, sitting in the middle of the road, looking for some quiet? I do not know. Still, that is where my deepest beliefs put me: in a middle ground where every person has the right to expect equal justice, equal peace, and common dignity, and otherwise be left to follow their personal weird.

This goes especially for any weirdoes I do not like.

Any candidate who can place this “baptismal” truth at the center of their politics will get serious consideration for my vote.

I could not care less what color they wear while doing it.

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Today is getting above 60 degrees Fahrenheit, so I shouldered a backpack sprayer and headed out to the strip the cheatgrass is growing. Sixty degrees is the temperature that the weed killer does its business.

I have been passing that row every few days, looking for what I think a baby cheatgrass would look like. I know that this blanket of spring green that I see, the short-lived photosynthesis of desert grasses, includes the invader.

I know that what I should have done is put a pre-emergent spray on the weeds in the fall to kill the seeds as they embed in the soil. Two autumns ago I didn’t do it because spraying is bad. After a year watching the cheatgrass spread, I didn’t do it last fall because I just didn’t have the money.

This spring I am spraying with a vinegar solution, to kill the young plants. With vinegar, don’t have to worry about the dogs getting in to it nor feel guilty about contributing to the collapse of plant pollinators.

But there is Roundup in my garage and I will be using it this year.

This is my fourth summer here. Every year the cheatgrass has gotten worse. For certain, the routes my dogs have dug in the soil crust has encouraged it. Also, my attempts of a couple years of a rookie chemical-free management has allowed the vile weed to expand its range.

In my post two years ago, I talked of using the heat of the sun to kill the cheatgrass seeds. An expert resident of my neighborhood, 80 years old and running a tractor at the limb dump, patiently explained that this internet theory is nonsense.

“I tried that. At the bottom of my pile was a nice scattering of fertile cheatgrass seeds. Its fire or nothing for these bastards.” I will be bagging and taking all my cheatgrass to the limb dump, where they all get burnt up in midwinter.

I will still be pulling up cheatgrass this year, but I hope to kill off some before it gets to that. It is a lot of hours of somewhat useless work; you pull up the plant, the seeds fall into the loosened soil where the roots once were, and next year you are back in the same place cursing at the same damn plant.

I am learning. I have learned to think about the cheatgrass earlier. I learned the phone number of a local guy who will spray this thing called a pre-emergent on your land in autumn. I am learning from my neighbors that the previous owner of this land, although she hated to use cling wrap because of the environmental impact, put a lot of chemicals down to keep the place free of the noxious and invasive. She is a thoughtful person and I expect it was with some consideration.

So this year, I am a little better. I know how much time the cheat grass is going to take from me. I seek to shrink its population for 2027. I am spraying to do so, because in our lives we are always balancing opposing goods.

My neighbors may judge me for the cheatgrass this year, but I appreciate their patience. We all need patience as we wrestle with hard decisions.

On Sunday’s Old Truck Good Coffee, our guest writer Pat Kruis shared her thoughts on how to consider the regret of some Trump voters.

Perhaps you are as a neighbor considering the weeds in my garden, expecting that I will come around and get better for caring for my land and our community.

It is May, and I am already thinking about cheatgrass. I hope that in September, I have the wherewithal to spray the pre-emergent like my more experienced neighbors do. I will feel sad about the chemicals, but realize that it is a better option than losing all of my land to cheatgrass and pulling their seeds from my dogs’ ears.

When I learned how to drive, my instructor warned us about ‘target fixation’, the tendency to steer toward what you’re looking at. Rubberneckers get into accidents because they look at the obstacle, so they steer toward the hazard and *BAM* things only get worse.

My driving instructor, thank you Mr. Snapper, told us to focus on our intended path, 15-20 seconds ahead, not on the spectacle.

Right now I see people, including myself, expending a lot of venom criticizing the current administration. Instead of tallying all the wrongs, can we get a clear vision of what we do want in leadership? Let’s focus on an intended path.

What if we don’t fixate on Trump, or waste our energy hating people who voted for him? If we want more balance in Congress, some of those Trump voters will have to change their minds. The “you’re so stupid” rhetoric repels the very people we need to help turn the country in a positive direction.

(If you’re a Trump voter, thank you for reading this far. I really want to hear your opinion.)

Listen to what Allyson Reynolds says about creating a soft landing for people stepping away from MAGA. She has an Instagram series called “Things I didn’t know when I was a Republican.” She says shaming and blaming will not change minds.

Reynold’s video is about three minutes long, but many of you may not have time to listen to it, so here is a key paragraph:

“As more people come out of the MAGA fever dream I think it’s important to keep encouraging people who are opposed to Trump and MAGA to create a soft landing for people who are leaving.

“And I hope to do that by explaining just how easy it is for many Americans, especially privileged White Americans and poor uneducated White Americans to not know the things that you think everybody already knows or ‘should know.’”

Newsweek reports on a Navigator poll that shows one in five Trump voters regret their decision. The poll indicates these dissatisfied voters are younger, most younger than 45, and describe themselves as moderate. Most of them, two-thirds, don’t like Democrats either.

Research shows the top two reasons people voted for Trump: the economy and immigration. Guess the two top reasons for Trump voter dissatisfaction: the economy and the violent tactics in immigration arrests and detention. Add to that the Iran war started by a president who promised no more wars.

Intelligent people voted for Trump. That may be hard to admit when you’re stuck in Trump disgust mode. We need to face the fact Trump won the presidency because Trump opponents didn’t offer a better alternative.

I’d rather concentrate on hope than hate, but don’t mistake this for some milquetoast plea to “just get along,” or civil discord. This requires something far more strategic. It’s not enough to vote against something, we need something to vote for. What is that? What’s that platform? Who is that?

I have not heard this articulated. Maybe you have. Show me where to look. What do YOU want in leadership? What causes can our nation successfully rally around?

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Here’s some information I found valuable:

—A recent (April 17-20, 2026) Echelon Insights poll of 1,012 voters, showed 42% of Democrats think their party should move more toward the center to win the next elections, compared to 22% who think the party should move left, and 18 percent who think the party should stay the same.

—Check out the Third Way and its Moderate Power Project. This is the MPP mission statement:

We amplify center-left views and voices to challenge the far left, push back against the MAGA right movement, and govern effectively from the middle.

MPP takes polls, does research and supports moderate candidates. It’s latest Data Dispatch highlighted Blue Rose Research that showed successful messaging about the economy. Interesting. Helpful.

I don’t pretend my little Substack has superhuman power, but I believe in engaging constructively, joining the positive voices.

More than ever, I hope you comment on this post. I want to hear what you’re thinking. I want to hear about candidates you think can bring hope to our country. Together let’s break our fixation on what’s wrong and focus on the path forward.

Along the way, at my request, we stopped at the gravesite of an old friend of mine. His headstone is set in the cemetery of the tiny Kansas town where his parents adopted him from a mother he never found, despite great efforts. Efforts that ended with a government letter telling him to stop looking; or, so his brother reminded me at graveside.

Looking over the headstones resting quietly under a fluffy Kansas sky, I recalled this story myself, from a long-locked trunk in my head. This trunk also let me recall how William S. Burroughs had become a friend of my friend in college, over coffee Darren would serve him, in the college-town café where he worked while earning his degree. Burroughs was a flirt.

My friend and lover’s adoptive brother—now the local fire chief—and I had first met many years ago, briefly, once. It had become my role to pour Darren’s ashes into the ocean at Oswald West State Park, a beachfront for connoiseurs of the Oregon Coast. It was my duty, as a friend and former lover, to do so over family objections, if any. This was Darren’s will, and a good one, under circumstances particular to his family, and to the age of untreatable HIV/AIDS. At his brother’s request, though, I had allowed a small portion of the ashes to travel back to Kansas. No, his family could not have it all. It was much too late for that.

Those spoonfuls of ash were now mingled in the soil below a headstone I was viewing for my first and only time. Which was sitting next to the headstone of “a loving father and friend” of whom I had heard unspeakable tales.

Despite those tales, and my own, Darren’s brother had still listed me in the local obituary, nearly thirty years ago, as an honorary pall-bearer to his brother. To return his respect, I now offered him some photos that no longer bring me tears.

We will never see each other again.

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This hour of memento mori, in a remote graveyard, was not off-point for what came next. Less than two hours further south we arrived at one of the largest Masonic buildings ever built; a temple for remembering death and resurrection.

The next three early mornings were spent in an elaborate, copal-scented room, engaging in contemplative practices before moving into the big, old, leather-seated auditorium, to witness the day’s degrees. No one was permitted in the third and highest balcony. The 1,500 or so available seats have likely not seen a full house for many decades, though there are photos of the glory days, dating to before the First World War.

Still, on each of our three days, hundreds of men were scattered around inside this century-plus old edifice, setting stages, running lights, rehearsing lines, adjusting wireless mics, making food, smoking cigars, talking with brothers, and reading quietly in the rippled glass and carved wood library, or one of several exotically-themed lounges.

At one point we were told 493 men had volunteered to make this weekend happen. The entire event—including months of labor leading up to it, and a week of tear-down following—was an outpouring of old school volunteerism, undertaken in service to moral, chivalric, and philosophical enlightenment. An educational experience dating from an era before highly specialized (and expensive) college degrees became so common as today.

This all happened in a town of 12,000 people, in northern Oklahoma, not far from where tornados hit this past Friday. It felt … inspiring … to learn how a college of mystical interreligious studies, expressing itself through dramatically staged, highly literate rituals, has been dotted across the United States, and woven into the now-fraying American cultural fabric, since 1801.

It takes very little research to learn that philosophical lessons, framed around death and resurrection, have never been limited to the Christian church. The Way is not exactly hidden.

Three days later, my fraternal brother and I drove 1,400 miles back home, including 17 hours in one very long day, crossing stretches of Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana. We largely kept to state highways and local byways. We drove past lots of small town cemeteries and museums.

There was a time when we humans had to meet face to face, if we wanted to dramatically communicate vast philosophies, in ways that touch the heart and punch the gut. Now we have YouTube and a cereal bowl.

The first called upon armies of volunteers equipped with scripts, props, and mythologies. The second requires data centers, sucking up aquifers once used for growing food.

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When I look at this history, and then I look at the culture war, I see cause and effect. I see a war being fought over the spoils and the ruins of Progress by people who live in those ruins and are mourning the loss of something they don’t even quite understand. That sense of mourning is common on both the ‘left’ and the ‘right’. Whether they are mourning the end of the arc of history or the end of a country they miss without maybe having known it, the sense of loss is profound, even if unspoken. For many people, everything is broken.

The first half of Against the Machine is bleak. Thus far Kingsnorth has been laying out all that is wrong in our world, the hyper-real commercial experience we live in that obscures and destroys our more natural origins.2 This chapter of the book is starting to gain what I hope is momentum to some kind of path forward for us in response to the mire he has so vividly described.

The idea that we are two camps,3 in opposition and mourning, hits. I take his reference to the “end of the arc of history” to be the progressive left’s general idea, expressed by Martin Luther King, jr days before he died, that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”4 I take the “end of a country they miss without maybe having known it” as the suggestion in “Make America Great Again” that we once were great but are not now.

I am reading Against the Machine with a book club. When we discussed this chapter, one person was able to describe his own mourning in a very detailed way. It inspired further discussion of the things he feels a loss of and a desire for. However, he could not express a belief or understanding of the mourning of those he saw in opposition to what he was mourning.

And it is hard for us to expect otherwise. Everyone mourns in their own way — some violently, some quietly — but little can be done about the direction of ones mourning from the outside. All manner of relations tried to redirect Hamlet’s mourning to something more convenient. They could not change his mood or trajectory.

Forgive me for not doing extensive research on clinical approaches to mourning, but in a quick search I came across The Center for Loss & Life Transition, started by Alan D. Wolfelt. In his article The Six Needs of Mourning he lists

1. Acknowledge the reality of death.

2. Embrace the pain of loss

3. Remember the person who died

4. Develop a new self-identity

5. Search for meaning

6. Receive ongoing support from others.

I wonder about whether we are fostering our own process of mourning or simply striking out to avoid the pain of loss and the reality we are facing.

Right now, there are both numbers and words showing that people are abandoning Donald Trump. In numbers, polls of his approval are dropping. In words, prominent supporters have publicly distanced themselves from the administration.

If you are in opposition to Donald Trump, you have to consider what to do next. To one extent or another, these people have some responsibility for what you view as great ills. You will tell me that “great ills” is doing a whole lot of work there, holding death, cruelty, destruction.

These are things to mourn.

I ask a hard thing, in the midst of the rubble;

Without addressing anything external to these individuals, can you consider the feeling of abandoning something you believed in? Of abandoning hope that would resurrect what you have lost?.

In my social media these days the machines that are designed to feed me rage dressed up like news regularly show me people who I don’t know saying that they will not forgive any Trump voter, that they will not welcome them back. Some are Russian bots, but some are actual Americans, also in mourning.

In the past, I have said that this is stupid strategy unless your goal is authoritarianism of a left-leaning brand built on demonizing large swaths of the popultion.

It still is stupid, but now I consider the mourning, the grieving, the churning processes we are all experiencing. The tragedy that we can not give each other anything useful to our mourning as we have not the strength just now to reach that far.

That we have worsened our communities because our own mourning kept us from comforting our neighbor’s mourning.

Two varieties of deviled eggs were on display, next to a similar count of relish trays, with radish rosettes and pickles pulled from cool basement jars. We also enjoyed homemade pickled beets, a clove-scented delicacy I learned to love from my dad. Cousin Candy brought a big selection of chocolates, nougats, and multi-colored sugar-wafers from Helena’s 104 year old Parrot Confectionary, because, as amazing as her cooking was, back in the day, and it was, Candy gets a pass, now, thanks to her double-tank oxygen supply.

By the time my single-tank mother-in-law, Jeanette, brought out Elvis Presley’s Favorite Poundcake for dessert—complete with your choice of homemade Huckleberry and/or Strawberry compote ladled off-side or over the top—my appetite was nearly in rebellion. Once Elvis was finished with me, I could not eat one … more … bite.

So, I went for a walk. It had been months since I had chatted with Ross, a dear friend, who long helped anchor Portland’s fringe theater scene, as well as stock its weirdest vintage shops, using his eye for worn-classic beauty.

Ross has always nurtured my creative pursuits. This time, he invited me to write about limits. He waxed a bit about “having enough,” in a culture of excess. I avoided thinking about his age, which not quite recently drove past 80. He pondered what it means to pay attention to your belt, or any belt, for that matter, well enough to notice the moment when it goes uncomfortably tight. The irony of which was not lost on me, given I had just pressed pause on the Easter brunch above.

I expect anyone reading this has their own take on what too much can mean. Just having a screen on which to read a Substack article means having access to endless scrolling feeds of whatever we have told the algorithms we like most.

Which is a well-known trope.

What feels less known, to me, is how to navigate based on a sensation of sufficiency. How to say no, without gimmicks or convincing. Not the no of a GLP-1 drug, nor the no of software locking me out of my phone for a while each day. But, the no found on a paint-palette, where an artist has said yes to a chosen set of hues, and what may be done with them.

This notion of limited palettes has floated through conversations with another dear friend, Derek. He works in the software gaming industry. He tells me that when new games are designed, there is a known tension as to how many options to provide. Too many choices, offered too quickly, and many players will be too overwhelmed to bother. They will switch away or keep scrolling. Too few choices, though, and they get bored, and move on. Repetitive flows of simple choices seem to be the baseline drug of choice, as in Candy Crush (or Instagram). Different players also have different appetites, tastes, and capacities, making digital game design a complex process.

And, centuries later, chess remains pretty much the world’s most popular game, with its six types of game piece, arrayed on an 8 by 8 checkerboard.

Early in my software career, I came across “CatB,” which is shorthand for one of the most famous essays in the history of tech: The Cathedral and the Bazaar, by Eric S. Raymond.1 This essay-turned-book teaches many things. I have long held onto one specific takeaway: there are tools, and there are solutions.

A tool is a device to perform a well-defined task. A tool does what it does, and no more. A human can learn a set of tools, and apply them in repetition or sequence, as needed, to solve an endless array of problems.

On the other hand, a set of tools can be pre-selected, sequenced, packaged, and automated to define one approach to an overall process, which is then sold as a (“the”) comprehensive solution to a set of interrelated problems. A set which the makers have defined for you in advance, generally without asking.

Tools keep humans in the middle of a process, requiring us to struggle a bit, at first, as we build our skills, and find our own efficiencies. Solutions, on the other hand, set humans and our struggles off to the side, by selecting a set of problems and defining a problem-solving process. A process which does what its makers designed it to do with their “problem space,” and no more, yet with speed and efficiency. The human is just there to feed it problems.

AI is now poised to become the final solution, for processing humans, by choosing which inefficiencies it finds to be a problem.

I wasn’t sure which compote I wanted on my pound cake. Huckleberry is the Montana classic. Strawberry, though, takes me back to Sunday after-church breakfasts when I was a kid, which were often the best meal of the week.

Michael solved this problem by artfully dropping a spoonful of each on either side of a yellow slice standing in the center of his plate. Myself, I tipped my slice flat and chose my childhood, ladeling on two silky spoonfuls of strawberry, and watching them slide down my own golden wedge.

Two problems, two tools, two solutions, both uniquely delicious.

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It is so hard to practice that I can not believe that a whole culture could assume it.

Grace is an individual’s practice, built on the understanding that you will not receive grace for giving it. Grace is not a currency that returns interest on investment. Give grace to another, you may have pain and loss in return.

Grace goes against how we teach each other to be. Our legal system does not have systems for grace, for we are certain that they would be exploited. Bad people would get away because of the grace loophole.

Grace is fine with that. She is defiant and won’t be built in to a system. She does not scale. To offer grace is to join her in defiance and risk.

Grace is defiant to your supporters, who want you to win. She sneers defiance to those who want a story to follow, a model of a path to a happy life. Walking with grace is dangerous to absolutely everything you desire, including justice and safety.

In the town nearest to my house, on the day of the nationwide ant-Trump protest No Kings Three, a small group of people attended wearing shirts from reading People’s Rights. People’s Rights is a right wing organization that has been present in Central Oregon for several years. Their focus seems to be on personal liberty. They are not normally on the side of Democrats and Indivisible.

I do not know their motivation for showing up and being counted with the anti-Trump rally. Perhaps a foreign war crossed their belief in America First. Perhaps masked, unidentified police performing arrests in defiance of our constitution signaled forces they must stand against. Perhaps they joined us after seeing that powerful people were protecting other powerful people who systematically injured and traumatized young women.

I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I do know that they were offered snacks and hugs. I understand that they declined both.

At about the same moment, in the larger town just a bit farther down the road, a man stood up in the midst of the thousands of people at that particular No Kings protest. He produced a flag and started to make a speech about his intent to burn it.

I need to be careful about how I talk about this incident. I was not there, either. The details are very important to how people want it explained, and I don’t have certainty of the details today. I do not expect anyone to be merciful or understanding if I get them wrong, so I am going to try to only say the most general truths about it.

Other protesters did not want him to burn the flag. De-escalators became involved. There was physical violence.

Eventually, the flag was burned. People continue to be angry that it was burned. Other people are angry that the flag burner was physically assaulted.

I have anger about it. There are systems for me to express that anger, including this internet that you are using to read this message. It is good at transmitting anger.

But should I transmit grace — grace for anyone involved — this big machine would almost certainly transmit back to me lessons on justice, lectures on history, and judgement upon me.

I am exhausted, realizing that for the world to be the world I dream of, I need to practice grace more than I believe that I can. I do it in silence from a distance today, because that is what I can manage.

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I have already been graceless, yelling and gesticulating my useless judgements and insults. I hope that poison dissipates quickly, damaging few.

These people, trying to make their world better through action; I know not what they do.

I am told that while dying, Jesus said of those who ground him down:

Happy Easter.

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Then a foot of snow dropped last week in a single day. The roads were bad enough to delay my planned four-hour drive to Billings, to visit an old friend whose mother was dying in our hometown. The next day, a Chinook hit.

Within a couple of days, warm winds had left the roads bone dry. I drove to see my friend. His mother had died. We re-told childhood stories of our parents at the Pictograph caves1. He related his mom’s death to me, in minimal detail, and in keeping with his family’s traditional stoicism. I told him things of my own Mom which he had never heard before.

Now, one week later, spring is back. The buds are growing fat. We will have enough water this summer, at least here in Helena, but many people in many places will be left wanting.

Nature does not spread her resources equally. “God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt. 5:45).

In-class disruptions were rare enough in my 1979 Catholic grade school that I vividly remember when P.J. showed up a few weeks into seventh grade. I had been going to school with pretty much my same twenty-five student cohort since first grade. New kids always got attention. In our little school there was nowhere to hide.

P.J. would not be ignored. He could not stay put or be quiet. In 2026, I imagine he would have be diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed with Adderall. In 1979, he was labeled “hyperactive,” and decamped from public to parochial school as a last resort. He would walk laps around the classroom, grab books, throw things.

I remember the day our seventh grade teacher, Mr. Stevens—who was a ringer for the movie and television character Grizzly Adams—finally snapped. He had apparently done some rodeo. He grabbed, wrestled, hog-tied, and then roped P.J. into his student desk. Private school teachers can get away with such stunts. Or, they could in 1979.

Less than half an hour later, P.J. noisily toppled his desk and wriggled free of his ropes. Mr. Stevens chased, caught, and body-hauled him away.

He never came back. After a month of waiting every school day for P.J. to begin singing, talking to the ceiling, walking laps, or otherwise domineering the classroom, it returned to being basically quiet and orderly (bullying—of which there was plenty—mostly happened in the alley, a location which Grizzly Adams and The Nuns largely ignored.)

I have no idea whatever happened to P.J.. Frankly, I have not wondered about him in the decades since, until writing this.

During my 16 years in Catholic schools, I was never exposed to the widespead American cultural assumption that free, public education should be universally available. In my family, my sisters and I knew we were different.

Yes, we could be in a public school. The nearest one was less than a block away. My oldest sister had gone there for first grade. Now, we were fortunate to be with the (theoretical) “good kids,” across the street in Catholic school, instead.

Our parents made a choice, and they paid for it. The local Catholic school system was considered the best in town, at the time. Nearly half of its students were not Catholic, just college-bound.

Every tax season, our stay-at-home mom would complain about having to pay “extra” for her kids to go to Catholic school, when “we already pay school taxes.” Mom wanted her dollars spent on her kids, only.

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I follow a writer here on Substack, named . He recently wrote a piece title “When People Say They Want to Send Their Kid to a Good School, They Usually Mean Schools Without ‘Bad Kids’.”2 I had never thought about how selective admissions and expulsions drive school reputation.

Public schools are required by law to teach every student. Americans have a constitutional right to public education. To expel a kid from public school essentially requires a court order.

On the other hand, private schools, including taxpayer-funded charter schools, can craft and shape their student bodies. They can select for “engaged” parents, typically meaning those wealthy enough to have time to spend on their kids. And, charter schools can expel “disengaged” students, the ones whose parent(s) struggle to make rent, despite multiple jobs plus side-hustles. Parents who often end up passing some of these struggles on to their kids.

In the new world of charter schools, the strugglers in general are the public school kids. The ones who are left to what the ongoing privatization of public funds and functions is leaving behind. We have a K-12 education system that expects its faculty to serve as I.T. technicians, mental health counselors, nutritionists, disciplinarians, role models, coaches, medication managers, standardized test proctors, huggers, tear-wipers, drug and alcohol treatment specialists, entertainers, record-keepers, and, oh, that’s right … Teachers.

These same public employees also need to be skilled professional educators, who can effectively teach English, History, Biology, Chemistry, Art, Math, and all the related topics. The topics which turn a child into a literate adult. One capable of casting an informed vote.

Worse, teachers are expected to do all of this as cheaply as humanly possible. Since the Reagan era, taxes on businesses and the wealthy have been slashed by nearly two-thirds. Leaving public school teachers doing all the things kids need, but struggling parents no longer have the time to do. Because Reaganomics requires parents to work the most hours possible, at the lowest pay their employers can get away with, while risking termination if they whisper the word “union.”

In other words, school segregation still exists. It just happens based on poverty instead of race. At least on the surface.

Minority parents are often the strongest charter school supporters.

Our dad never complained about paying private school tuition on top of public school taxes. He had no expectation that his neighbor’s dollars should be spent to send his kids to First Friday Mass, nor to take classes in Catholic doctrine. Even if these were delivered alongside English, History, Math, and the rest.

Dad knew universal literacy is essential to a healthy society.

He had grown up on a dustbowl-era, dryland farm. He was as proud of working hard enough to afford his own kids private school tuition, as he was of paying for our stay-at-home mom to put store-bought beef on the dinner table.

That said, Dad could still afford to hold these opinions, back in the 1970s, even as a small business owner. The pre-Reagan economy allowed for single-income, small business owner families. The post-Reagan economy does not. At least not if you want to sit down to dinner with your family every evening at 5:30pm, like he did.

His small business was of a type later largely eliminated by the internet. He grew that business in a local, small business economy, that would later be devastated by Amazon, Wal-Mart and the rest of the national chain-stores. He “ran the shop” well enough to take his family out for the occasional sit-down dinner, in local restaurants that would later be shuttered by more national chains. Mom would send us to see “PTA movies” in theaters later be driven out of business by cable TV and online streaming. And, we would go to church every Sunday, in a Catholic parish that later collapsed and consolidated with three others, because folks began staring at screens, instead of gathering as human beings.

Everyone wants what is best for their kids. Right?

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“When People Say They Want to Send Their Kid to a Good School, They Usually Mean Schools Without ‘Bad Kids’,” Freddie deBoer.

Freddie deBoer

When People Say They Want to Send Their Kid to a Good School, They Usually Mean Schools Without "Bad Kids"

It’s always useful to be reminded that conversations in the policy world are often very different from those in other contexts, and this is particularly acute when it comes to education. Lots of people who have zero exposure to the world of 10,000-feet educational policy analysis have opinions …

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2 months ago · 63 likes · 28 comments · Freddie deBoer

They are writing about how good they are at predicting things, and then they are predicting things.

They are mapping now onto the past for the sake of worry.

They are writing about how the things they are being told about a technology affects their sense of self.

They are writing about God collapsing and rising in them.

They are trying to tell you not to worry, you don’t have to worry if you will not worry you can help make the world not so worrisome.

It is pre-dawn. I have a candle lit because that candle is the signal I use to myself to keep writing for a while.

This is what I do with my time, I write.

It is the spring of 2026. We are filling up Substack. If volume is a metric of someone’s success (perhaps the success of Hamish Mackenzie) then this is going amazing. But what is it for each of us? None of us writing are skyrocketing to metrics of amazement to ourselves. Of profitable metrics. Of metrics that even justify the effort.

Many are pretending. It is the same as Tik Tok and Instagram and all the other platforms profiting on hope without offering more than token stories of making it. They pretend to not pick winners, that the metrics reveal how winners would get picked, but there are no winners. There are two ways people get a large readership here: by being pre-famous or by pandering with metric-driven topics.

You are not a metric, my dear. Nor am I.

Measures and the Internet

We wrote and read before there were metrics for it. The internet gave us refined, instant measurement. We draw ourselves up and ask what we can do to have a number that proves we have readers, that our writing is read.

I want my writing to be read. I have considered what topics would be more read. But in the pre-dawn times, with the candle lit, I can’t bring myself to write on those topics. I write what others tell me to enough for work.1 I don’t want to pander to the metrics here.

When a measure becomes a goal

I am a lover of quasi-natural laws.2 The most famous of a prior era is Murphy’s Law. The most important quasi-natural law of our time is Goodhart’s law.3

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

We need to hear Goodhart today; we are short circuiting staring at metrics imprecise, roughly connected to us, and dominating our goals far out of sane or healthy proportions.

A person in power can spontaneously create a metric and it can take hold, regardless if it reflects what we want to measure. What I create does not correlate to like buttons. I don’t get a lot of metric reinforcement. I am not sure why. I don’t believe it is that I am stupid or a bad writer. Instead of likes and shares I get phone calls and texts from people saying I got them thinking.

My theory, trying to construct an explanation for this, is that people view their social media button as a vote YES I AGREE and I write things that are not so easy as yes. Perhaps if there was an “interesting. maybe” button I might get metric love. Perhaps if a share was not an expectation of mutual confirmation bias, my articles would be shared.

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Its me, not you. People show me what they are reading on social media like Substack. It is not the same reason I am, so I get confused trying to reach you.

Many do not like to leave a trace that they are on these platforms. That is beautiful when I consider it. They do not want to be measured by the metric (though regardless they probably are). But as the producer of that content, I wish they would acknowledge me. The metrics are how I am supposed to find that acknowledgement.

These social media metrics are born from business problems. They are inspired by what we as humans know matter, but that is not the story they end up telling. They don’t hold up to testing and, once they fall under Goodhart’s law, they measure nothing useful except someone else’s profits.

When the metric goes up, we can say that the business goal is being achieved.

It moves money, so it is easy to forget that it is not true. It is now a goal not a measure.

Immeasurable experiences.

The light is getting to my part of the globe. I see some blue in the sky. I feel good putting this down on the page. I would like to write all day with no concern for audience.

But I am concerned for you.

Yesterday I talked with a guy who is reading my novel. We dug deep into the characters. He sees things in them that I did not. I was able to tell him what others said about Cardio and Reginald and Cherry. It was the high point of my week, and I am having a week of tremendous experiences.

We talked about my book over a video chat, which can be done through a highly leveraged corporate server or a secure, privacy-focused non-profit.4

I have a website5 running on open source software. You can read what I write there. The Internet does not just bring harmful noises; It can be a platform to reach each others, regardless of these oligarch mechanisms. I will keep writing for you. I will keep reading you.

Old Truck Good Coffee observes and improves our interchanges. We connect who you are with who someone else is. We doubt that the bargain Substack offers will be worthwhile much longer, but we appreciate the fact we have found people like us here.

I am going to blow out the candle now and turn to the next chore. I have an RSVP list to check. I want a count of how many people are coming I hope it is large. I will check my book sales. And my bank account. I will be awash in metrics for a while.

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But then I will drive into town, the spring desert and ranch land passing by. I will have lunch with my niece. We will talk about books and family. There will be no measure for it.

Thanks for reading. Please like, subscribe, and share.

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He also refused to conform to the simplified desire for data and metrics of his day.

As a refugee from Nazi Germany, he was invited to New York to join a Rockefeller-funded study of radio in 1939. The key researcher, Frank Stanton, was director of research (and later president) of CBS. While Adorno was curious about context and aesthetics, Stanton wanted to sell soap during soap operas.

Stanton and his associate Paul Lazarsfeld invented possibly the first like button. They ushered subjects into a room, gave them a like button and told them to click it when they liked what they heard. They also got a dislike button, something that is controversial to this day in social media platform design.

Then the researchers played the radio. On an old fashioned tape, they recorded the likes and dislikes.

This was not an environment that Adorno could work in. He felt that this process was a totally a misleading gauge of an audience.

Adorno tends to, in even my secondary reading of him, use pretty sophisticated ways of saying things. Or perhaps he was being polite to his hosts. I take it to mean

Adorno left the project shortly after. Lazarfeld co-wrote a paper a few years later contradicting the project, saying that analysis of content and in-depth interviews were needed to understand audiences. Simplistic metrics don’t cut it.

But Stanton got what he needed out of the study. Strategies for soap selling have been refined with these numbers ever since.

I learned about this story first from a revealing article from Carina Albrecht, Discerning Audiences Through Like Buttons.2 It also reminded me that many of the creators of our addictive apps (including the Facebook Like Button) have regrets and don’t use them.3

Triangulating their concerns with Adorno’s observation of radio, it seems that we are not treating these powerful forces with the obvious understanding of what they do to our ability to reason. Adorno said (in his still roundabout way)

I translate this as

Or

The new hyper-tuned platforms (depending on your generation Facebook or Tik Tok but also this here Substack is using the same principles for disseminating fascim) use features built and refined from massive amounts of data just to keep you hooked. Then, their owners pretend that their motivation is community building.

We consumers try to maintain our sense of power and agency by saying that we are not affected by them.

• Pull down to refresh, a slot machine handle.

• Infinite scroll, a never ending quest.

• Notifications, hope tapping you on the shoulder.

Pick metrics or narrative; neither the numbers or the stories support our theory that our agency is more powerful than these features. You would not be able to discern if you are subject to this, so I don’t trust you if you claim you are the exception.

More than a few people feel that our digital media consumption is one reason for our political climate and social divides. I agree.

After the inauguration where the operators of all of our platforms sat behind Donald Trump then doled out massive checks to spoil him, I polled a group of activists that I communicate with on a Facebook group. Would they be willing to migrate to another platform?

One person spoke for them. I paraphrase:

Let’s use their platform. I am not influenced by their ads.

I don’t believe that person. But, we still use Facebook. I am constantly compromised into using these ad-revenue-creating monstrosities.

And now here I am creating for one, Substack. And wishing that you were addicted to me. It does not feel great.

My understanding of the tech world is better than most. So is my understanding of the business models. I am confident that the technology to have a social media experience or a writing-publishing experience could be separated from addictive platforms.We could all spontaneously move to Mastodon4 and our attention would not be funding people trying to make money from our attention.

We could log in to a platform in which our friends are more than 7% of the content we see.

But, we are captured by the value of our friends and we can not collectively sell all of our friends and family on the change. And some of us feel that more than entertainment is here. That our future of communicating outward to you is here. I want to believe it is worth it because I have not come up with a better alternative.

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After aging out of the cry room—which happened quickly for me, thanks to her—we returned to Mom’s preferred seats, nearly in front, on the left-hand side. The seats were stage right from the altar, in front of Mary, the Mother of God, whose statue stood on a plinth mounted on pale, pine-wood wall paneling, over some flowers. We never sat on the right side, stage left, where Jesus’ step-dad, Saint Joseph—orYusuf, in Aramaic (IYKYK)—stood on a plinth of his own.

Around age 4, I recall furtively licking the wood railing on back of the pew in front of me, while kneeling and leaning against it, shoving my sister and pretending to pray. I was bored. It tasted sour.

The better sensory hit, from a thousand or so masses2 I sat through in this church before leaving for college, was from the candles. Their warm odor flowed off the altar and flooded the nave, particularly after they were snuffed at the end of each service. Lighting and snuffing the candles was one of the best parts of being an altar boy, which I was, for a while. That, and learning to whisper every word of the Eucharistic prayer along with the priest; a rebellious act (only priests are supposed to speak that prayer), which felt important to me, at the time.

My parents were devout, old school Catholics, raised on the Latin Mass. Our family might well have missed a meal before missing Sunday mass. Neither ever happened. We just kept showing up, saying the prayers, sitting, standing, kneeling, and walking up the aisle to the altar for communion, or Good Friday “veneration of the cross.” Which meant kneeling to kiss Jesus’ feet, on one of two crucifixes laid in front of the altar by Father Heretick for this purpose. Even on family vacations, Dad would try to find a local church for us to attend.

The importance placed on regular participation, and ritual observance, built a momentum over time. It built a predictability that led, over time, to a sense of assurance about the nature of things greater than me. Assurance that was a pretty convincing sell, for a lonely kid trying to dodge bullies on his way to adolescence. There were times when I felt like I belonged to a global society, collectively protecting me, and guiding me back to the source of all reality. Yeah, I felt that. Sometimes. For a while.

It can be hard to wonder who we are, where we fit, and why. Everyone stares at the ceiling, sometimes. Which can lead to questions that religions are happy to answer, with authoritative claims. Some of which make more sense than others.

I came out as gay in 1984. And, I stopped going to church. Having finished 12 of my 16 eventual years of Catholic school, I knew very well by then that the way God made me to express love and affection was, to put it gently, fundamentally incompatible with the doctrines of Rome and my Catholic school cohorts.3

I came out anyhow. A nun once told me “God does not make junk,” and I believed her. She probably saved my life.

I missed the smells and bells, though.

American pop culture has an obsession with lone wolves. Radical individualism, whether wrapped in cowboy or soldier drag—but always toting some weapon or tool—is a trope we fear in our crime statistics, but glorify on video.

What we hear of less is how we are all social creatures, with a deep drive to work together, with more than just one buddy, and for more than just running a ball down some grassy field.

Lone wolves are sexy. You can also take them out with a single shot.

Quitting church was not difficult, on the surface. Lazy Sundays are seductive, and productive for more creative pursuits. The much more involved story, for me, is why I have ever gone back. Because I have.

Not to the Roman Catholics, of course. My self-respect could not take the humiliation that returning to the church of Rome would demand of me. To subject myself to such an authority, one which continues, to this day, to deem people like me “intrinsically disordered” by God, would require me to believe in a sadistic Creator. Which I refuse to do.

To return to the Roman faith, I would have to believe in a God who creates “His” homosexual children specifically to live without love and affection. I would also have to believe that the only legitimate function of human love and affection is to make more babies on an overpopulated planet.

Both of these notions are simplistic, to the point of silliness. Dangerously silly, in fact, for the grave way some piously intone these points, while raising their whips to deliver another beating upon the flock.

Love stories taught me to respect myself, instead, and to laugh when it helps.

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I still want to feel like I belong, though, to some flock or herd or tribe. I have always wanted to feel part of something bigger than myself. No doubt because I felt cast out of exactly that feeling, at a young age, by the Roman Catholic church, the biggest organization in history, religious or otherwise.

I have always wanted some greater frame of reference, some deeper teaching, some … club membership … to which I could refer, when I lose track of who I am. I have wanted … something. Something that can feel like it is missing, when you are born, and expected to serve, as one of humanity’s most ancient scapegoats.

I never wanted to feel small, “queer,” and alone, having to figure it all out for myself, by myself. I wanted to belong, too. Which is a childlike desire, and one I learned at a very young age, by being shown who does not belong.4

So, I wandered, seeking answers. I have spent quality time chanting and dancing with Sufis. I have repaired my Christian damage by walking with Episcopalians. I am a Past Master of two Masonic lodges. And, I still spend hours each week on a cushion, practicing buddhadharma, a tradition first introduced to me by a bookseller in Billings, Montana, when I was still an altar boy.5

None of these define me. I am not sure I “belong” to any of them. I am not certain I belong to anything, at this point, other than to anyone willing to hold my hand, for so long as I am willing and able to lift it.

Even while holding hands, my identity is not fixed. I no longer believe any of us are so fixed as we might believe. Because as soon as I say who I think I am, my heart beats, and there I sit, one moment older again, still wondering at it all.

They tell me this may keep happening.

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Those of us who like sport love to have the games summon feelings. We have feelings when people put huge effort forth to overcome an opponent.We have feelings when something unjust happens. We have feelings in victory and in loss.

Sport is most compelling when it is as a team, where our striving is powered by a group identity. When we see individuals unite and become more powerful by agreeing to work together.

And when that collective identity is an identity that we also have — school, city, nation — it is even more compelling.

So, a national team’s group sports are really compelling to watch.

The US Women’s hockey team won gold at the Olympics. It was quite a triumph.

Then, shortly after, the US Men’s hockey team won gold. Also a great triumph, and a great moment of unity.

Unity, for humans is such a source of power but not the easiest thing to pull off. As team players understand, we are best when we each bring our skills and wills to the collective plan.

The unity itself has to be a priority for individuals. Experienced team sport athletes trust in the value of that unity.

Most of the US hockey players are on other teams, competing in the same professional league. They compete against each other. For the Olympics they develop a new team unity. After the Olympics, they go back to their other teams and compete against each other, returning to the other team’s unity.

Opposition also recognizes the value of unity. The team opposite you would much rather that you and your teammates singly attempt to score rather than considering your fellow players. They want you separate.

If they saw you fighting among yourselves on the other sideline, they would consider that an advantage. If they see you supporting each other, encouraging each other, and helping each other, that would have them worried.

There is a man who has been successful over the past few years by working against unity. He feels his own success when people are angry at each other.

The divider does have a team, and one of his team members appeared in the locker room upon the US Men’s Hockey victory. His team member then called this divider and put him on speaker phone.

Speaking into a room that felt unity around team play and national pride, this experienced divider spoke words that drew a line to separate the value of the US Women’s Hockey team and the US Men’s Hockey team.

Whether it was conscious or an instinct, it is his manner. In his words, there is always separation. It makes me sad to think how lonely it might be in a mind that thinks like that.

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His dividing words can be effective. In this case, on the speakerphone in the locker room, they churn up bad memories and shared knowledge women hold. Now is a time in history when those feelings are extremely raw. Those are emotions, experience, and knowledge that we want to honor.

In these conditions, those locker room speakerphone words could undermine unity, suggesting that women are less worthy than men. Men who were in an emotional time of celebration after a huge effort are now having to choose the wisest response in a complex situation of power and integrity.

Some of the US Men’s Hockey team yelled out “Two for two” recognizing the twin victories for the US Women’s and Men’s Hockey teams.

Does calling that out, evoking that power of unity, erase the questions of sexism that the dividing language called up?

Not for me, but I can’t speak for the women who were put down in that moment.

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What it says is that we are going to keep expanding the team and we are going to keep supporting our teammates. It says that despite the dividing language on the speakerphone in the locker room, along with the mess of the world, we know that loving our teammates makes not just the team better, but us better.

Two for two!

Talk of “tradition” has grown in recent years. The writer (who visits Leo’s childhood haunts) has offered significant food for thought on this, in his recent work, Against The Machine. Inspired by René Guénon, Kingnorth argues for tradition as a much-needed weaving within civilization.

Is it, though? Does tradition actually have utility? Or, is the fact that it does have utility a part of the larger problem? Does tradition tend to exclude its own weavers? And, does technology become a tradition, if it serves our needs?

In this hour-long discussion, Joel and Leo dig into what tradition may mean, and how it impacts society for better, and worse.

As always, we want to learn your own thoughts on anything we write or say. Please take a moment, and get back to us.

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John W. Peace II is a fifth-generation farmer from Big Stone Gap, Virginia, where he grew up on his family’s dairy, Clinch Haven Farms, and still lives today. A Virginia Tech graduate with graduate studies at Penn State, he served as the youngest Chair of the Wise County Board of Supervisors (2004–2008). John co-owns urTOPIX LLC, a Democratic campaign training firm focused on reaching rural voters that is sponsored by Rural America Rising PAC. He’s also a two-time Amazon bestselling author. Learn more here and contact him here.

The first time I remember hearing the phrase ‘Bridge Generation’ was from my occasional cohost on The Rural Route Review podcast, Sara-June from The Neighborly News Magazine. She said it and I had finally found the right phrase for a feeling. I don’t feel odd or unique, just a feeling I was raised in a different time period than the calendar on my birth certificate would suggest. I told her I had been called Generation X my whole life, which sounded fine until I thought about who actually did most of my raisin’.

For me, that would be my grandfather, a WWII, B-17 Bomber pilot in the United States Army Air Forces, part of what folks call the Greatest Generation. The man could fix anything with a motor and most things without one on our family dairy farm. Then there was my great grandmother Julie Galloway, born in 1897 and lived til 1995, part of the Lost Generation. She came into a world similar to the tv series ‘Little House on the Prairie’, lit by kerosene and left one where you could order a book from Amazon.

People like to debate generational labels, but here is the plainspoken version. The Lost Generation grew up around World War I and into the early 1900s, watching the world industrialize at a pace that made yesterday look ancient. Their average life expectancy at birth hovered around the mid to high forties. About forty seven years old counted as a full run for many folks, mostly because so many babies and children never made it to adulthood. The Greatest Generation survived the Great Depression, then went off to fight World War II and came home to build roads, factories, and the American middle class. Generation X grew up with Baby-Boomer parents, with color television, Cold War worries, and a house key on a shoestring because both parents were working.

But if you were raised by people two to three generations older, you did not grow up fully in your own era. You grew up in theirs too. That is the bridge.

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My great grandmother was born when rural Southwest Virginia still ran on muscle. Horse muscle, mule muscle, human muscle. She remembered when a wagon was transportation and a trip to town took planning. She lived long enough to see electricity come to the hollers, blacktop cover dirt roads, men walk on the moon, and brown trucks drop off packages like the future had finally figured out her address.

She told stories about life before modern medicine, when a fever could turn deadly and a simple cut could go bad in a hurry. When she was young, people did not talk about living to be eighty. They hoped to make it past fifty. If you reached old age, folks treated you like you had beaten the odds and maybe borrowed a little extra time.

She was a widow before I was born. My great grandfather had been a small farmer, a coal miner, and a weekend Free Will Baptist preacher. Coal paid the bills and likely paid him back with cancer. That was a trade many mountain families made. Years off the end in exchange for food on the table right now.

She knew old men who had fought in the Civil War. Not read about it in a book. Knew them. Sat on porches with them. Heard them talk about marching, mud, and friends who never came home. That kind of memory will change how you think about the word ‘history’.

I remember one afternoon as a small child, she was listening to the country music singer Charley Pride (favorite singer) on her kitchen radio. She smiled and said she would marry that man just to hear him sing around the house. I laughed and told her she could not do that because it was illegal to marry him.

And it was, literally. In Virginia interracial marriage was banned until the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia struck those laws down in 1967. She had lived most of her life in a world where the government told grown adults who they could love and marry. When the law finally changed, she just shook her head like the rest of the country was late figuring it out.

She never learned to drive a car. She could have. She just did not see the need. But I do remember riding with my grandfather in 1974 to take her to the bank so she could open her own checking account. Her United Mine Workers pension was coming in and she wanted it in her name. Before the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, banks would require women to have a male cosigner, which was her son, my grandfather after my great grandfather had passed. Imagine living nearly eighty years before the law decided you might be capable of handling your own money. She walked out of that bank grinning like she had just bought the place. Her very own checking account!

Now my kids are Generation Z. They carry more computing power in their pockets than NASA had when we went to the moon. Sometimes they roll their eyes when I start a sentence with a story from their great great grandmother. To them World War I and the Great Depression might as well be ancient Rome.

But when they talk about protests, politics, and a country that feels divided today. I hear echoes of stories from the Civil War, WWII, Red Scare of the 50s, segregation, the fight for civil rights of the 1960s and 1970s that I heard at my great grandmother’s kitchen table. Turmoil is not new. Change is not new. The speed of 24 hour news and the internet is different, that’s all.

So yes, I get the eye rolls. I probably earned them. But I also carry voices from people who were born before airplanes and lived to see space shuttles. I remember hands that milked cows by lantern light and later held a television remote like it was science fiction.

That is the Bridge Generation. We are walking footnotes. The human links between folks who rode mules to town and kids who get groceries delivered with an app.

Somebody has to remember both worlds and tell the stories. That might as well be me.

Be curious, not judgmental.

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An un-comprehensive contribution to the recent SubStack back and forth on those wild and pointless sentences of some folks, seemingly largely French, who resided in philosophy departments and went about infecting literature departments and also arguably our culture with some ideas that whether they are salient or not is hard to discern as they are largely incomprehensible.

This article was important enough for me to write, after enjoying the discourse between the writer’s mentioned below. It diverges a bit from the style and topics we typically put into Old Truck Good Coffee. If you are a regular reader, please enjoy some variety. If you are a new reader, thanks for taking the time. Our hearts are in finding how to bump along interchanges and this topic is definitely one. If you don’t like long sentence philosophy jabber, wait a week and it ought to have passed out of here like the smell of burnt coffee or the sight of a Honda truck.

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Discussed

• Why It Is (Maybe) Safe To Conclude Some Legendary Thinkers Are Charlatans Without Reading Much Of Their Work by

• On Bigotry, Bullying, and Tribal Enforcement by

• How Continental Philosophers “Argue” by

• My Problem with Clear Writing by

• Resisting the Epistemic Argument for Compatibilism By Patrick Todd and Brian Rabern

A Bulldog in The New Old Academy

I appreciate Bentham’s Bulldog for raising the question of the group known as Critical Theory, deconstructionists, post structuralists, and Those Damn French Quote Unquote Philosophers. I also appreciate Jesse Singal and Ted Gioia weighing in and James Meacham’s points about the political impact of it. If you also wrote on this issue and I did not get a chance to read it, please comment or message me. I want to hear!

I love to wake into the hard topic of meaning. It is never ending. We are without conclusions. For me, it is like talking theology; I am going to trust you more if you start by throwing up your hands. This stuff is hard to talk about.

In my mind, the contorted language of Kristeva, Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida are that gesticulation. The text is expressing that writing about how writing works is going to result in some short circuits and some dark spaces.

This worked well for me when I first learned of them. It continues to, with some personal modifications. I don’t read these folks as some insult to myself or a challenge to my ability to read. When I delve in, I see them as putting the writer and the reader side by side, looking out at the difficulty before us.

I need to confess that the chosen victim of Bulldog’s attacks and ChatGPT mimicry, Judith Butler, is not someone I seek out. I have not read a complete piece of hers for quite a few years. I need to keep this apologia to a broad scale, not the defense of a particular writer. That seems fair in that Bulldog and Singal broadly impugn their entire camp. I would expect no one responds to me with particulars outside of either our broad scopes to prove or disprove a generality.

I will say: These writers have a significant place for making me who I am. I hope that others are not too turned off by the feelings of Singal and Bulldog and Meacham. These philosophers’ works are, if you allow them to be, multi-dimensional structures for more deeply exploring how meaning actually works.

For instance, political language. Deeply considering the exercise of Derrida’s Différenceis pivotal to my understanding that the imperative phrase “make America great again” functions differently for you based on what is meaning-adjacent to the word “America” for you. Understanding that the meaning is not inside the word but inside each individual audience member, I know that the phrase decodes differently for different people. The speaker self-selects listeners who have a particular set of images associated with the idea of America.

Similarly, odd grammar, unnecessary capitalizations, and all caps writing looks dumb to some but sounds familiar and builds affinity to others.

Thanks, Jacques and Michel.

The intellectual journey alongside Jacques, Michel, Julia, and the lot leads outside the familiar humanist tradition of Greek and Roman inquiry. They are far from Aristotle, for which I am grateful. But as I am not pitting the two (two-ish) camps against each other, I can celebrate, enjoy, and utilize BOTH! Each is inevitably flawed and critiqueable but folks like myself find value in them BOTH. The parsing philosophy that Bulldog points back to does some good lifting, but an iteration was called for.

These thinkers function after some precipice in the rear view mirror back there where (in my view) Enlightenment thinking has shown the frailty of a world confidently chopping itself up into smaller and smaller units in search of Ultimate Comprehension.

The idea that we must come to a strict definition of something has a rational basis, so in Resisting the Epistemic Argument for Compatibilism, the authors start out with some parameters…

In this paper, we focus on what certainly seems to be the most prominent such argument: what we propose to call the epistemic argument for compatibilism. Epistemic arguments of the relevant kind proceed from epistemic premises – premises about our knowledge or evidence – to substantial metaphysical conclusions.

… and reference previous definitions of words to develop consistent dialog. This is super great.

Derrida & company can hunt backward and reduce those definitions to contortions that threaten to be meaningless. I don’t want to do that today. I want to read about the positions of the authors on whether, using their prodigious knowledge, they see any merit in the idea that free will and a predetermined fate can co-exist.I hope I got that right. I am not an exceedingly well trained reader of philosophy.

I see these approaches as Enlightenment-inspired. The Enlightenment got some stuff right, but some of the pronouncements don’t work. It is still the orthodoxy around us, not just in these ivory tower papers but in how we understand our grocery store, our relationships, and our politics.

In my life, I keep finding problems with the Enlightenment thinking. Critical Theory helps congeal that.

I encountered Critical Theory in college, as most do. A small cohort of mine smoked cigarettes (it was the 90s, forgive us our sins) while trying to restate and apply Derrida’s Différance. It changed perception like a drug. And like a drug sometimes we wished it would wear off.

I have always been very interested in language, particularly how very rough-hewn a tool it is. From a teenager writing in journals I bought at Waldenbooks, I recall noting that word meaning does not consistently transmit from me to you. Readers are constantly, independently rebuilding language as they read. That the poetic acts of writing are nodding at the frustrating near-uselessness of the very tools at hand.

So, what Derrida was doing made sense to me — after I folded and unfolded it enough times to get that useful joke (“I am trying to use language to make meaning about how hard it is to use language to make meaning”) out of him. Summing up these folks is risky business and excises the useful experiential aspect of reading, but one germ of language virus that I get is a chorus of people stating:

Language won’t do the job of describing language (and the power it transmits), but let’s try anyway.

A bit more defeatist than the Enlightenment chop chop approach, but the goal was for the patient to survive the procedure in one piece.

I would say she survives whole, but with the application of “applied theory” Meacham notes, the patient is sometimes badly bruised.

Turning from theory to application, particularly in culture and politics, the joke part got cleaved off. The joyful struggle of it was left behind for a certainty about power and meaning. The joke part just becomes the alienating “you wouldn’t understand, you are not indoctrinated.” Oh, the irony.

Re-reading Différance in my 20s in a cloud of American Spirit smoke, I realized that I couldn’t live a good life just swirling around the mad satisfaction that I am able to tear the heart out of meaning whenever I want. I had to negotiate my relationship with Critical Theory.

Meacham seems to say that culture as a whole failed to do that negotiation. We are stepping through the traps, where you can tear up a word like “justice” instead of organize around it. You can see everything, even serving dinner to someone you love, as impositions of power.

I see that “deep absence of meaning” he indicates in my political circles. It is a transmitted virus. I like truth and inquiry well enough, but it is fair to ask what the utility of these big pointed jokes are if you see them weakening society and individuals.

The glove metaphor. It’s sucky but it works for me.

I realized after swimming in these models of power and sense that it becomes challenging to constitute a meaningful life when you believe understanding is impossible. Tapping the ash from my Spirit, I adopted the glove metaphor. I still use it to this day. It is imperfect. Feel free to critique it:

My hands can’t touch or manipulate the world directly. I am always wearing some kind of glove. Strive to wear fine leather riding gloves rather than Arctic explorer mittens.

This is working pretty well for me, a few years on. Like Gioia, I make a living using words in commercial spaces. Most of the people in that world view language as equivalent to programming code. They are forgetting lots of facts to assume that. To be successful as a commercial writer, I need to not contradict them. That would create long pointless conversations in a space where billable rates and return on investment are top of mind. I skip the platitudes and go about the work constructing texts that are clear and culturally consistent.

Clients don’t know that there are poetic acts and deconstructive backflips happening in the construction process of a white paper that introduces a new technique of data storage. We are using metaphors that rely on cultural commonality. We are presuming shared narratives to transmit information and in the process signaling belonging or outsider status. We are imposing our value priorities in order to show that this product is the choicest product.

They don’t see that deeply into the writing. That’s OK, they pay me to make it look easy.

I still write for my own joy; here on Substack as Old Truck Good Coffee, in my recently published novel, and all sorts of other material. Poetry in particular — a topic for another time.

All my work with words is built on the knowledge that language is a beautiful failure at meaning. Is this an idea that Singal (and Chomsky in his account) reject?

Among the more resonant thinkers I have come across in recent years is Iain McGilchrist. His book The Master and His Emissaryis polymathic to the nth degree but is more readable than Butler or Bulldog’s AI prompt simulacra. It might contribute to this conversation.

One point McGilchrist makes is a wide view that we have (I am going to label it for my convenience) a reason system and a rationality system in our brain. This is an iteration on that old left brain/right brain research.1

McGilchrist theorizes that we evolved to have the broad-thinking, context-aware reasoning system in control. That reasoning master sends out rationalized thinking as an emissary to parse narrow problems. The rational emissary is to then bring that information back to the reasoning master for decision making.

Building on this, McGilchrist posits that culture will sometimes invert these two and the rational mind will get control. These rational cultures over-index on dissection and definition. They denigrate poetry and religion (or adopt highly rational editions of each in which the work is transactional. Poetry and worship created to achieve a quantitative value).

I am thankful to have found compatriots like Ted Gioia at this time to read and lean into reasoning. I love this phrase in Bulldog’s essay “exceeds the bounds of legibility,” though at the point he coins it I am not sure if he is talking about Butler or the imitation ChatGPT generated to his prompt (sidenote: I would loooove to know exactly what prompt he used to create that. There is an essay for him in that, for sure!). At times, I am called upon to exceed the bounds of legibility to state what is true to reason.

I also appreciate the more rational constructed philosophy that the Bulldog suggests is the one true philosophy. Stuff like Resisting the Epistemic Argument for Compatibilism(Todd and Rabern) is great reading and helps us move forward. I am happy to read them.

If I were enough of an illegible Critical Theorist, I would write the locked-in run-on sentence to run around whatever Bulldog did there. I would read it here by the fire with verve and giggles, and perhaps someone else out there would fold and unfold it, chortle themselves, and know that I also see how these texts of power, authority, and meaning do work, play, and a very serious throwing-up-of-hands all at the same time.

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A quick postscript on an important resource: Grievance Studies

Both Bulldog and Meacham reference a group that is familiar to me. I was surprised that Pluckrose and the Grievance Studies group had entered canon enough to be referenced so obliquely as if they were an authority. The tale of their project is of use and significance, but I would not take it as something that gets the honorific of Meacham’s reference (merely “Pluckrose, 2022”) or Bulldog’s simple statement that “Sokal and his followers gave strong evidence for that when they submitted nonsense papers with fake citations and got published.”

It has been pointed out that at the right volume one could get false papers published in any discipline. In fact, AI is enabling that to this day. A recent conference was riddled with fake references.2 Bad research practices are being uncovered in business schools.3 The Replication Crisis continues to erode studies that were building blocks for knowledge and many people’s confirmation-bias world building.4

These Grievance Studies folks were not scientific themselves. Their process was designed for a very particular outcome. Had it failed, we would not have heard of it. That is not science.

The arrangement — send all the papers you can to all the publications you can — will almost inevitably result in one or two that get published. Academics know that the work process is imperfect. It relies on goodwill and ethics. Pluckrose and company took advantage of those assumptions. It relies on hard effort and open critique. Pluckrose and company undermined the system.

They failed to get their pieces published more than they succeeded. They were caught out rather quickly, at which point they had to hurriedly claim victory and retreat to the uncritical victory lap on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

The name grievance studies is markedly ironic. While they seem to be claiming that these papers were neither scientific or academic, the project abandons science and academia for the participants’ own grievance.

Issues remain with these disciplines and the nature of these publications. But, the fiery attempt at takedown was unethical, needlessly destructive, and proved nothing but the participant’s ability to make a life on podcasts.

The ones where you predict the future.

Where you let the dark bricks drop in place

—that are not dropping in place—

because you have seen the truly terrible ones that truly have become the present and the past.

Careful with that.

You are good at making scary stories, stories that disable you, stories custom-built to freeze the child within you.

But you are as bad at predicting the future as I am.

We rhyme with the dramatic sweeps of world history in ghastly childish patterns. We don’t predict commonplace time. We don’t model the whole arc of human thriving and drudgery. We won’t predict beige. We will predict blood red.

We will predict Julius Caesar, John Kennedy, Adolf Hitler. We won’t predict a boring, safe outcome. You won’t remake all the obscure stories of unknown people.

Your stories of the future are breaking you. You dream into existence the biggest tale you can know.

You accrue evidence, picking select bits from the litter around your feet.

You are somewhat right.

Your imagination is making terrible stories and you can’t help but move your body in time with them, mimicking your own imprisonment until you are truly imprisoned.

You are preparing a fiery I Told You So for me. I rueful grin from your prison cell for those whose stories, maybe just as false as yours, are not as potent.

Joel Barker is the author of Clear and Sane: The Craft of the Green Paintbrush. He has time to chat with you.

Choosing whether to see the beast as beautiful or ugly was a worthy topic, as we nursed Margaritas a bit further on. Sunlight had drawn strong yellows from the nubbly green armor. His sub-tympanic scales were like jewels dangling from his lobes. Spikes up his back flopped like some sweaty punk’s post-mosh mohawk. I would not want him to bite me, or move too quickly my direction.

Pretty? Ugly? Maybe just beautiful. Nature can be hard to categorize, for being outside human design. Still, iguanas do not mystify me. A childhood friend’s older brother kept one in a large glass tank in their basement. My friend fed it live white mice. We would bike to the pet shop together, to acquire them. For the record, I went along to look at tropical fish. Back home, he would patiently wait to watch the iguana take his meal. Watching these meals be taken taught me something about life.

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Back in Vallarta, and forward 45 years to last Tuesday, while riding in a snorkeling boat we were shown one exposed corner of “the mansion where Richard Burton’s ‘The Night of the Iguana’ was filmed,” on a hillside over Mismaloya. The rest of it was grown over with jungle. An aerial map checked later showed graffitti-covered structural remains on the site, which the internet now lists to be a park.

An art museum guide said this film roots the local tourist industry in its own history. This movie launched Vallarta as a vacation destination. He has never seen it. It will be shown at his employer’s upcoming fundraising gala. He may not watch it.

It occurred to me that The Night of the Iguana is to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, as The Sound of Music is to Salzburg, Austria. Not much loved by locals.

The museum guide spoke to his boss in rapid-fire Spanish, Latin America’s other colonial language. Like the movie, the posters for this gala are in English.

Damage to the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor statues on the Isla Cuale added nuance to wandering around Vallarta as a middle-aged white guy. Covid-era escapism flooded this city with even more condos, construction workers, rising rents, displacement, expatriate retirees, and other reasons to drink.

People seemed mostly to be enjoying themselves. Tourist-zone prices for food, drinks, and housing were nearly as high as similar items would cost back home, but not quite. A vague nod remains to Mexico being a vacation bargain. Popular demand apparently bears the rising prices, so far, and local folks need all the money they can get. Stroll away from “the zone” and poverty shows up quick.

It felt useful to explore my expectations, and reactions to this poverty, as a gay man. Gays and Lesbians have long known how to escape to the margins and carefully reveal our beauties there. Until very recent years, we often had no other choice.

Vallarta was a sleepy port town before Iguana came along. Gay historic choices to escape here en masse have directly or indirectly driven much of this tourist economy. Puerto Vallarta has been known among the gays as a vacation mecca for many decades. Real estate agents have long known to follow the gays. Our annual events flood the streets with color and art. Our bars are anchor-tenants of the Zona Romántica party scene. One of the largest is the last surviving outpost of C.C. Slaughters, a once multi-city gay bar chain, which began its storied life on Portland’s Southeast Stark street in the 1970s. Ask me how I know. We could hear the place throbbing along with its neighbors every night, from our sixth-floor balcony, four blocks away.

The sound was oddly comforting.

Over a dozen new condo buildings, in various states of completion, and varying degrees of daily attention by workers, were visible from the rooftop pool where we spent our late afternoons. Floating in our privilege. Across the street, a very old walled-court building and garden had been recently reduced to rubble; its grove chopped to stumpy remains, awaiting removal.

A local friend said this garden had been the longtime site of a much-loved Italian restauarant, Tré Piatti, until just a few weeks before. “The best Italian restaurant in Puerto Vallarta” still exists, but now splits a ground floor retail box, in a big new nearby condo, with an exceedingly straight-looking sports bar.

It takes a long hot drive to reach the Vallarta Botanical Garden. By the time you arrive, you are ready to be stunned by something cool.

Its riverfront slopes are covered in climbing vanilla, and a seeming hundred more orchid varietals. One of the garden’s showpieces is a small chapel in its International Peace Garden1. Inside this chapel, typical religious objects are surrounded by vividly modern frescoes of the local flora and fauna. Just outside the chapel is a “garden of memories” full of memorial tiles. These tiles include a noticeably high number of same-sex couples, for those who notice such things.

The chapel frescoes are an art project titled Fallen Fruit, made from hundreds of garden photos taken by its creators, David Allen Burns and Austin Young.

All the painted tiles and memorial headstones were no doubt placed in accompaniment with donations, long volunteer hours, and extensive love and devotion to this beautiful cause. A garden like this does not make or maintain itself. It takes years of ongoing community building, dedicated fundraising, and steady local engagement to create and pay for a destination such as this.

Our Lady of the Garden is the gayest chapel I have ever seen.

In my family, whomever wakes up first makes the coffee, even on vacation. I take mine black, my husband takes his with cream. I tend to wake early.

When I pour the cream in his cup, there is a brief moment, really just a flash, as the white drops into the black and displays itself in stark relief. The rippled edges of a lactic mushroom cloud billow through the dark. Then edges soften, spread, blend, and a tan color appears, of some shade or another. If too dark, I add more cream, and if too light, more coffee. Stir. We all know this drill.

I recognize the tone he prefers. Myself, one long black pour, and the cup is ready.

There is a beauty in this Brownian motion2, as the cream takes up the coffee, and the coffee takes on the cream. Both distinct, but destined to become something different, together, even preferable. Still, it’s pleasant to be there for those first moments, while the contrast remains. To appreciate the now of it.

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I pulled out onto the highway and the oncoming care was too close. Not emergency braking put your arm across your passenger close. Too close to be polite.

The truck decelerated and changed lanes. I was sorry to have made the mistake. My vehicle is too short for me to have seen into and across the cab as it passed. I did note the Cummins nameplate, the mark of that triumphant diesel engine. Great trucks.

I was not too surprised by what happened next; the truck swung in front of me and the driver pressed his $500 button, rolling coal onto my windshield.

If you are not a diesel truck aficionado or an anti-Trump protestor, you may not know what rolling coal is. Rolling coal is an intentional misuse of a diesel engine to create a giant cloud of smoke. With older engines that have compression problems, you can pump the gas and make a pretty good cloud. If you foresee needing to express yourself to people behind you on the road, you can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to install modifications to fuel-air mix that will make a good blinding, cough-inducing diesel universe for whoever you don’t like that follows you.

These exhaust pipes blurted a moderate cloud of grey-black smoke. I was through it in a second. He accelerated away.

Direct hit, wronged driver. You are avenged.

Thanks for listening to my little tale. What an asshole, right? That cloud obscured any feeling of guilt I had for my traffic misdeed. I spent the next few miles armoring my mind for conflict. What if that driver is not done expressing dislike for my decision making? Is he armed and having a bad day?

What would you say happened if you were my friend and I told you that story?

And also…

What would you say happened if you were that driver’s friend and they told you that story?

There’s an asshole in either version, I expect.

The most readily available stories we have to explain what happens on the roads make for very thin simple versions of people. Usually that they are stupid, mean, and lacking in basic skills.

This is what we do to people outside of our group. Strangely, all other drivers are perceived to be outside our group. To some degree or another, we dehumanize them.

I don’t think it is the drivers. I can’t believe that the majority of drivers are dumb, clumsy, and evil at all times. What I can believe is that everyone makes bad decisions sometimes, and sometimes I witness them. Its not the driver, it is our cars that make this situation. It is the system we find ouselves in. In a car, it is not easy to have grace for an unseen threat. In studies, humans are likely to attribute complex emotions to those closely related but only attribute “animalistic” responses to those more distant.

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The Upstream Neighbor

The people are not different, we encounter them differently.

A friend of mine has some farmland. Suddenly one year the shared irrigation ditch was regularly clogged and problematic. He and his neighbors could not at first figure out what changed. Its like a tree had somehow moved, dumping more duff and cones in the works.

It turns out that the change was that a neighbor upstream had died. A Trump-voting farmer, had been regularly tending to the works that fed his downstream neighbors. He had never told anyone what he did or asked for compensation. Upon his death the works clogged up and he was not around to thank for all the years of help.

Come at me with your information about online communities, but some things that create better treatment is sharing time and space physically near to each other.1 We can believe the falsified Stanford Prison Experiment2 or we can believe what we see on our own neighborhood streets.

To me, the work of society is fostering systems in which we can be our most human self, because our human self is motivated to have good relationships with other humans. Waiting for the human race to evolve has no scientific or philosophical foundation that I know of,3 but we can see in our own lives that the spaces we encounter each other influence how we treat each other.

Postscript: Digital Spaces

The article below was sent to me by as I was writing this week’s Old Truck Good Coffee. It is a deeply researched and convincing take on how a system’s design determines how it fits in society, and that our people are then affected by those systems. If you want to expand this conversation to the digital realm, this is where to go!

Cosmos Institute

Same Radio, Different Citizens

This post is co-authored by Brendan McCord (Cosmos Institute) and Philipp Koralus (University of Oxford…

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4 months ago · 22 likes · 1 comment · Brendan McCord and Philipp Koralus

While waiting in a long, chaotic line for Customs, I said to my husband that “it feels embarrassing to be from the USA this week.” Because it does, and it did, particularly while standing in a Mexican airport, five days after president Trump ordered eighty Latin Americans to be killed in Caracas. He threatened Mexico this past week, too. And, Colombia, Denmark, Greenland, and Iran, and ... who did I miss?

Oh, right, Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon.

It is all humiliating. Grotesquely so, and fully contrary to my WW2 Era parents’ “Eisenhower Republican” values. My Reagan-loving Irish Catholic mother would have despised Donald Trump, and not just for the Epstein files.

She would despise his moral weakness.

A sixty’ish white guy, walking directly in front of us, half-turned to me, as if he had heard my embarrassment and wanted to comment on my words. He looked like a gun-owning American, not easily embarrassed. He was wearing sweaty, grey tech-fabric vacation wear, fresh off the airplane, looking like a guy I might see in the Gun Room at Capitol Sports, back in Montana. He scoped me with a side eye, then turned back into the line.

I felt a bit tense. Would he have agreed? Not? Did he mean something by his side eye? I would gladly have talked with him, had he had the nerve to converse with me, one to one. Whatever he thought stayed inside his head, though. He was afraid to speak whatever he might have spoken. Or, to hear what he might have heard from me.

We all kept walking towards the scanners.

During Covid, I made a friend, online, whom I have now, this week, met face to face, and voice to voice, for the very first time.

Jonathan Mack calls himself the “expat gringo boyfriend slash pastor’s wife” of the second-in-charge leader of a local indigenous Mexican spiritual community. They sweat their prayers.

I know Jonathan as a writer.

His work is inspired by modernist authors (Clarice Lispector, Gertrude Stein, and more), Chinese Classical poetry, and homosexual life as an unprofessed literary monk in recovery from Indian ashrams, New Hampshire apple farms, and an elitist Tokyo finishing school for girls. Read him to know more. Jonathan has theorized the standard paragraph into a specific literary form. You can find him on Patreon. Do. Do not be timid. He is not. You will learn things.

He calls his home “Vallarta,” as I have learned other locals do, too. The industrial “Puerto” prefix seems long gone from the discussion.

Jonathan tells me that, as recently as ten years ago, Vallarta remained affordable for aging gringos with little more than a social security check to spend. No longer. Now, the shoreline is coated in freshly white-plastered condo towers and real estate offices.

The water floats little fishing boats, which supply the beach chairs and seafood restaurants with shrimp-skewers and local catch. The water also carries waterborne castles, each named for a european city or fantasy princess. When docked, it is hard to tell cruise ships from the buildings crowding the central city skyline up the coast.

Having lived through two gentrification waves in Portland, plus a statewide wave underway in Montana, the signs are clear. Virtually all real estate markets have gone speculative. The gambling (“investor”) class may as well drive up prices on stacks of formerly funky ocean-view, too.

I wonder how condo stacks will look in Greenland.

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There is still flavor, though, in the local urban crust. Jonathan spoke of the oldest known male hustler in Vallarta, who is sixty or so, and an apparently quite physically gifted exemplar of the eldest profession.

My friend likened him to a ghost ship.

I am a hypocrite, of course.

I am writing this while gazing from a sixth floor balcony condo view. There is an infinity pool thirty foot over my head, next to a rooftop bar. It is a particularly American pastime to fret over recycling while tearing open the plastic on our next box of individually wrapped snack cookies. I arrived by jet, and by jet-fuel will I return, because America.

Were I at home, I would show up for the latest protests at the capitol building. Not because I think the American political class cares about protests, particularly in politically-colonized Montana. But, because I meet people at protests who share my desire to swim as best I can in a more generous and positive way.

As best I can.

I cannot personally stop the national humiliation emerging from Washington, DC. But, I can weave relationships with others who, like me, hold the tiny little piece of enormous political power called “the right to vote to elect officers of the most powerful government in human history.” A power held by just 4% of the people on our planet. A power not held by (most of) those targeted by ICE.

A power abdicated by any American citizen’s failure to vote.

I can swear to use this power at every opportunity. This I can do. There will be more elections. Bolsonaro is in jail.