O'er the Ramparts

You know it, you love it, at least insomuch as it does not conflict with your moral, social, or patriotic conscience. It is the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and it guarantees that you can say pretty much anything you want. However, there is a growing public movement that seems to want to limit this. I am directing this at you, the person who is angry about those treading upon or burning the Stars and Stripes, or flying the Confederate flag. 

I've tried not to throw the full weight of my opinion onto the fire that's erupted in the past several months over flags because, lets be realistic, my opinion will fall on a bunch of deaf ears. Regardless, I'm sick to death of seeing person after person that I respect tread so freely upon the very document that the Stars and Stripes represents. 

The first argument to develop came from Facebook posts showing videos of people walking on Old Glory. The outrage was instant. People like you screamed in anguish over having the colors a) intentionally laid on the ground and b) then being walked upon. You posted (and continue to post) memes and angry comments that stopped short of being actual threats against the people in the videos. Some tangentially, and very incorrectly, justify violence against them by virtue of their political speech. 

Images such as Figure. 1 began to creep up, trying to establish that a lawful code of conduct respecting flags (though inferentially limited to the U.S. flag) existed. 

It does not. 

Figure. 1

Figure. 1 is in fact an excerpt from a now-repealed Arkansas State law, which was modeled after the Flag Protection Act of 1989, which failed to become law due to its unconstitutional nature. The actions prohibited by the Act were deemed lawful and protected political speech, so long as they didn't violate other state, local, or federal laws (such as destruction of property, theft, or ordinances banning the setting fires in public). The Supreme Court of the United states has ruled twice on this issue, and with the same result (Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989); United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990)). Desecration of a flag for the purposes of political speech is completely lawful.

Accept that. 

The next argument to arise came over the Confederate flag not being lowered to half-mast following the murder of nine black church members by a teenage white supremacist. The debate that followed, and continues now, has evolved from whether it represents racism into who should be allowed to fly it, or who should not be allowed to fly it. It has even raised questions over whether Confederate War Memorials should be defaced to remove important political and military figures from their representation. I cannot even fathom the absurdity of this argument, much less convey its depth. 

Again, the unpopular nature of the Confederate flag has blinded people like you to the principle concept of their argument. In effect, 'The views of people who support and cherish the Confederate flag are invalid and may not be spoken of publicly'. That is the core of all calls to remove the flag from public places. That very efficiently ignores the fact that it is neither your right nor responsibility to declare how a person may express their political views. 

The people who do not share your opinion don't have a responsibility to do so. No amount of rabble-rousing will ever impose such a duty. Their political speech is theirs to spread or display, so long as they do not violate state, local, or federal law like the ones mentioned above. 

Time and again, the Supreme Court has affirmed that if you disagree with a situation, you have the right to publicly voice your position. You absolutely have the right to disagree with people who do not share your values. You absolutely have the right to persuade others to share you viewpoint. So do the people with whom you disagree. 

What you don't have the right to do is incite, suggest, or commit violence against them. Yet, repeated incidences of violence are occurring. You also don't have the right to demand that they cease their speech simply because it's offensive to you. Yet, that's what the violence I just mentioned is aiming to do. The only way that you, my friend, can have what you want is to give up all rights to political speech. The only way to silence people you dislike is to accept silence yourself. 

Recognize that the freedom to express ourselves is the greatest single freedom we have. It is first among our Amendments because it is so powerful at affecting change and ensuring liberty. When you demand that people be silenced for their views, you demand that the very document the American flag represents be suppressed. Yes, in protecting the flag against desecration or demanding that it have no competition for loyalty, you pervert the spirit of its greatest authority. The People.

Accept that.

Love, the Verb

I recently had a talk with a colleague about the cost of doing business. However trite it may be to say, you can be screwed out of your investment. Capitalism has sidestepped this unfortunate truth by finding ways to recover that cost on the next go-round, which usually results in a greater cost to the end user.

The cost of microchips go up when a factory in Japan gets flooded. Gasoline ticks up a few cents a gallon because a refinery blows an o-ring. Ice cream becomes worth its weight in calories because of a listeria outbreak. These are the things that we, as consumers, understand about free market economy. Someone experiences a loss and everyone else who is interested in that product gets stuck with the fallout.

Funny how that tends to be true of emotions as well...

I know. Comparing emotions to a commodity... How bourgeois of me.

Think on that for a minute though, and you may start to see some truth in it. Happiness, sadness, even love, are all degrees of responsiveness subject to market saturation, demand, and costs of doing business. I'm sure I've lost you...

Think about someone who is keen on being in love. They get hurt, perhaps several times. They've lost their investment. To reinvest takes [emotional] capital that they may not have, so they have to borrow in the hopes that the next investment will pay off. If it doesn't, they have an account to settle and have lost yet another investment. Their cost of doing business goes up with each failure.

On the other side of that, because of their cost of doing business, loving someone who has been hurt requires a greater investment in the hopes of seeing a return on the same. Had this been a first try, or the other person had not been badly hurt, the emotional capital is more likely there and takes less commitment from a second party to free up the proverbial purse strings.

These are the costs of doing business.

Then there's the investment that one just keeps pouring capital into. The asset has devalued, no one else is interested in it, except that one faithful little soul that keeps it going with everything they can muster.

On paper, this looks like a terrible investment, but that's because it is. At least at the individual level. But there's something to be said for keeping the market strong. Love is occasionally a positive, purposeful action that we carry out in spite of the dividends it does not pay. And sometimes, it simply comes to pass that no amount of active love will bring it back to life.

But was it worth it?  In the me-centric society we've cultivated since the 1980's, most people will stand back and declare it a loss. When measured by what it yielded, they're right. Love though, isn't measured by what we get out of it.

No one watched The Notebook and called James Garner a loser. That's because the capacity and endurance of love is judged by how much of it we're willing to give. The strength and power of love is given substance by the shit we'll endure when we know that there is nothing coming back to us.

In that instance, love is beautiful for what it was. There is nothing that says a thing must endure to be memorable, or never fade to have been beautiful. We all have to accept that we're going to lose the things we love. It may go the way of the Dodo because of personal growth, personal mistakes, or even death. What is inescapable is that an end will come for everything we hold dear.

The question that you're asking yourself, "is the pain of loss worth the opportunity to experience the love", isn't really a question. It's a selfish attempt to categorize love as an enduring object. Love, in my humble view is much more accurately realized as a verb than a noun. Ultimately, loving is something you do, not something you own. And when it ends, hurting is something you will do, too. And then you'll eventually stop hurting.

All the King's Men

I had a teacher that once said he wouldn't be surprised if I ended up in the state legislature. He said it to the entire class, in fact. It wasn't a private comment to me, or to my parents. It was a public statement of belief. I sometimes wonder about that.

Egotism is a proper and fitting character flaw for most politicians. You could, in most cases, call it a prerequisite. Narcissism fits the paradigm well. So does being a panderer, in general. Taken together, I never thought that politics was a career path with which I wanted to be identified if it involved these characteristics. Then I turned thirty-five.

The realization hit me last year that the President of the United States is an office that's open to citizens who are of that age.

Do I want to be President? No. Certainly not. So why consider it?

For the very reasons that I mention not wanting to be identified as a politician. Anyone who actually wants the job is an asshole of some kind. A friend asked me about which side I'd take if I were to make a legitimate bid. Would I be for Big Government, or for Big Business. In his view, those are the only two sides to take. Historically, he as precedence. Republican or Democratic seem to be the only two viable parties in American politics.

But why are those our only choices?

Right wingers also tend to be capitalists, and I support free market economies and capitalism. They work. But as part of that identity, I'd have to rub shoulders with Conservative Christians who think you can "counsel" the gay out of someone, or in some way believe that legislative authority can be imposed on a vagina. Impossibly large conglomerates of international wealth are the backbone of our economy and must be coddled indefinitely, and equally ridiculous notions of magnanimous oligarchy are the brand they pimp.

Yeah. I'm definitely not one of those.

On the flip side of that, the Left has a driving need to save you from yourself. You can't be trusted to make your own decisions, buy your own health insurance, or even determine whether or not you need it. The retirement and stability of each generation is built upon the earnings and labor of their progeny. As a citizen, you are entitled to a share of the proceeds from those in the community, and must surrender a portion of your earnings to support others. Your liberties are inconvenient and dangerous to you, and it's really better for all involved if you leave those decisions to the government.

Molon labe, bitches. Molon labe.

The problem with two-party politics (because let's face it, Libertarians, Greens, and Independents have no real shot) is that to get what you want, you have to stomach what you can tolerate. At what point did this become a good idea?

For the next seventeen months we will be inundated with advertisements, smear campaigns, promises, rhetoric, debates, lies, and scandals until the polls finally open and we cast votes for the Crap Sandwich or the Douche Bag. We know it will be one of them. May as well throw in with the one you find to be the lesser evil.

Back to my original question of why consider running for President. I did agree, after all, that I don't want the job. But more than that, I don't want the people I describe above to have it either. No one who actually thinks that they are the best candidate has the humility, moral fortitude, or capacity for critical thought to do it.

Can I do the job? I bet you five dollars that I can't. At least not any better than the last guy. What I do believe that I can do is show the American people that their government can be returned to them. I can show them that they are not beholden to rich people backed by big companies or rich people who hate big companies (you have to admit that the only candidates you're going see are wealthy ones with exploratory committees, both Republican and Democrat).

I'm just a working class guy, with a moderate credit score, a lot of questions about God, and a working respect for people not like me. I can't make any promises except one: I will question everything and ask honestly, 'Is this the best we can do?'

St. Ann - My Home and what is left of it...

I had an opportunity to fly back to my hometown of St. Louis this past April after a six-year stint in Phoenix, AZ. I was only going to be in town for a full day, at best, since I'd be helping my sister-in-law make the move back to my adopted Arizona. I'll be honest, it's hard to put into words what I saw and felt in a 24-hour snapshot of the 'Lou'.

I've tried to keep my finger on the pulse of home since I've been gone, with varying degrees of success. Social media has afforded me access to groups that are populated by current residents of my municipality, St. Ann. Within those groups, I've been able to keep abreast of developments at the old Northwest Plaza site, some local politics, and the social clamor the followed Ferguson. But one really has to see a thing to understand it.

I flew in to Lambert with an unusual sense of trepidation, which I admit was predicated on recent revelations about Cold Water Creek. Disembarking in what I will always call the East Terminal, even the airport struck me as visibly outdated and poorly kept compared to some of the places I've visited in the past year. This turned out to be the first in a long list of observations that pervaded my time at home, and contributed to an overwhelming and undeniable theme.

Vacancy.

It's an unfortunate reality of economic depression. Businesses close, jobs dry up, and the people who are left behind often stop having the sense of pride that goes along with the bright, shiny, and profitable. Tax revenues go down and city budgets become the next victim of creative budgeting. The roads fall into disrepair, common areas become overgrown, and even power lines look cobbled together and questionably safe. The entire face of the community starts to show signs of neglect. It's the pallor that falls over a town when the money has gone away. Businesses are empty. Homes are empty. Churches are empty. Lots where memories were forged are empty.


My dad once took me to an hardware store, and as we walked out, he told me that the business was going under. I asked how he knew. "The life has gone out of it," he said. "The shelves are half-empty, the store is in disarray, and there are hardly any customers."

He was right. Within six months, that store was shuttered. I felt similarly about St. Ann.

Later, on the night of my arrival from Phoenix, I sat in a restaurant with my wife and friends, pensively eating my toasted ravs. I didn't have much to say, not that much of it would have been good. Up until this point, I'd been to the East Terminal, a moving truck rental facility in Earth City, and my childhood home. In every single place, there was just more vacancy.

The news in St. Ann hasn't been good lately. I mentioned Cold Water Creek earlier. That was particularly hard to swallow. I had friends that grew up down on that end of town, and from the reports I've read, they are friends I likely won't see at future High School Reunions. I was luckier to have grown up a few miles farther south, but I still wonder what I will face in the years to come.

St. Ann municipal courts are also under fire for laws that disfavor the poor. Well, given the economic state of the city, there are more of those to go around. One local resident pragmatically suggested that people 'stop breaking the law'. It's hard to deny the causality of that, but it's also realistic to say that law enforcement reaches a tipping point where fines become a hole from which the declining median income provides no escape.

There was also a pipeline for removing toxic leachate from the Bridgeton landfill that was supposedly going in with little public disclosure. That story seems to have died with very little reporting being done. And what can be done? Two dozen people showed up to a public meeting in which company representatives were questioned. Two dozen, out of nearly thirteen-thousand, that showed up to ask what could be done.

Still more vacancy. Vacancy of public involvement. Vacancy of legislative disclosure. Vacancy of legislative action. Vacancy of vested interest.

All I can really do from Phoenix is to cry 'shenanigans' and watch as my home town is slowly swallowed by apathy and band-aid solutions. But maybe that's the legacy of St. Louis county. The frog is slowly being brought to a boil. There really is no denying it.

So I challenge you to see St. Ann through the eyes of a returning son. Go stand on any street corner of the Rock Road corridor between Wismer Road and Lindbergh Boulevard. Ask yourself honestly how much time you want to spend there. Ask yourself how long you'd expect any visitor to stay. What would they stay for? Empty businesses, potholed streets, litter and weeds?

Me either.

There are some who may criticize my treatment of this issue as unnecessarily harsh. There are a number who still have pride in the city and think it's a great place to live. They are the ones who show up at city council meetings, write to their Aldermen, and organize interest groups. But more like them are needed if there is any chance of rescuing St. Ann from the black hole of vacancy.