It's about the black diamond slope

I've discovered that I'm not the biggest fan of driving through Pennsylvania. There are too many unexpected mountains, too few exits, too few truck stops, and it's been raining every time I've been there.

Because the universe (or at least our load dispatcher) has a cruel sense of humor, we've had four routes through PA over the last ten days. Alas.

On this last one, though, we were sent to pick up a load of mousetraps (bizarre, I know) at a company called Woodstream in a town named Lititz. I guessed that the town was probably founded by Germans, and it turns out that I was right.

Lititz could have been the filming location for "Gilmore Girls." The houses were pretty, well-kempt, and looked old in a good way, as if they were all vying for a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. The streets were so small, however, that it was obvious the houses had given them an inferiority complex. As such, driving on them in the truck was a bit like white-water rafting!

Woodstream, when we found it, was filled with very nice people, who directed us to park in one of their doors and wait for the mousetraps to get aboard.

Now. You'd think - indeed, you'd hope - that the street in front of the delivery door would be large enough to accommodate a 73 foot vehicle that needed to back up. In this case, you'd be disappointed. The key to ease in backing a semi is having space to pull forward, so you can make large corrections without having to worry about knocking down a wall that snuck into your blindspot. In this case, when you pulled forward, you were put nose to nose with a fire hydrant and a brick wall. Not to mention that the street was fairly busy, so you had cars lining up to get past, adding to the tension.

The backing bunny slope had been left far behind. I was about to take on the black diamond of all alley backing.

It would have been nearly impossible without having a second pair of eyes behind me. My trainer planted himself in the dock and gamely gave direction; I maneuvered and counter-maneuvered, playing chess with myself, and tried not to think about hitting anything.

It took us over half an hour, but eventually, we accomplished the deed! So maybe, in the end, Pennsylvania wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

It's about catching up, and Truman Capote

I was reading through a few of my previous posts about the 2016 election a little while ago. I had to shake my head at how much I still had to go through, back in May of last year; there were still six months to go before the dust settled.

Settle, however, it did. And about 100 days into the Trump Era, I am a great deal less worried about our chief executive now than I was last spring. He so far seems to be pursuing a fairly centrist agenda that only seems extreme to progressive extremists. But then, anything a hair to the right of Hillary would count as extreme from such a point of view, so it's understandable that Trump would appear like the second coming of Hitler. I didn't vote for him, but I broadly support what he's done so far.

The biggest upshot of these first 100 days is that I realized I love the Senators from Kentucky. Rand Paul is both principled, fiery, and practical; he's that rare idealist who actually wants to get things done. Mitch McConnell is one of my favorite people: from start to finish he is a tactician of the highest order, and he managed to steer Neil Gorsuch squarely and smoothly onto the Supreme Court. What a time to live in KY!

In one of my earlier post attempts that didn't make it to the publish, I was talking about one of my favorite authors, Gene Wolfe. I may go back to that one at some point, but it made me want to talk about a new author and a new book that I just read- or rather, just listened to.

Truck driving provides an obvious opportunity to enjoy the invention of audiobooks. My trainer had a few before I joined up, and we bought a few more in the first two weeks. I purchased a book called "Indigo Slam" by Robert Crais which I really liked, but which, due to us finishing every other option, we listened to at least five times in seven days. So! Taking advantage of a mournfully short visit to my family, I packed in a dozen new books to listen to.

One of them, picked up at the library, was "In Cold Blood," by Truman Capote. I'd always heard that it was beautiful, but I wasn't prepared for how lyrical and haunting it proved to be. It tells the story of "a multiple murder, and what came of it." The Clutter family of four, upstanding citizens, is murdered by two men who don't know them for the sake of ten thousand dollars that don't actually exist. The book is excellent in that it fleshes out every character and explores every angle of the crime and the conflict that followed with truly beautiful language. The Clutters are detailed in their purity and goodness; the murderers are painted in all their folly, pain, loss, suffering, ruthlessness, and lack of love. The book shows, but refuses to "tell:" it never takes the seat of judgment, never condemns the murderers. It lets the events condemn. Nor does it try to exonerate the men; it simply provides the story of how they came to do what they did.

I reflected that "In Cold Blood" accomplished, with less madness and fewer pages, what "The Brothers Karamazov" ultimately failed to do. It presented a world in which the idea that "everything is permitted" is beginning to boil up into the lives of ordinary people, caused by the abuse, absence, or negligence of parents, and showed the effect of such a mentality on the lives of everyone concerned. Perry Smith and Dick Hickock unknowingly hold the same philosophy as Smerdyakov, but they, unlike him, are presented as victims who became predators. Capote, unlike Dostoyevsky, writes about human wickedness as it is, as both caused and uncaused; he is not employed in making caricatures, but in portraiture.

I'm sure this counts as literary heresy, but I firmly believe that Truman Capote is a better author than Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

It's about time!

Hello again to everyone reading! It's been almost a year since my last post. At this point, my blog title has become inaccurate or ironic, depending on your view, as I am now a professional truck driver. Go figure.

I'm parked at a rest station in East Texas right now, so this post is just going to be a notice of this blog's impending resuscitation... or Resurrection, given the season. I'll try to post some new thoughts as soon as I can, because I've learned that driving a truck is an almost sure-fire method of meditation, and I have a lot of things I'd like to say.

It's about the updates

It's been awhile! Over a month since I last posted here, and my, what things have happened: Donald Trump semi-officially clinched the GOP nomination for President, California entered a very mild spring, my brother completed his freshman year at college, I passed the "one month left until the end of school" mark, and Gary Johnson, the presumptive Libertarian nominee for President, crested 10% in a recent general election poll. It is of this last noteworthy occurrence that I intend to speak today.

After the Indiana primary, I felt a little disjointed. Up until that point, beginning in the fall of 2015, I had been intensely interested in even the smallest goings-on in the Republican primary. To follow something as closely as I did the primary races, and then to have the wind withdrawn from my sails by the reality of a Trump nomination... it was an odd experience, to say the least. I checked out of politics for a bit, just to give myself a rest.

Now, I don't think that surprises are over in this election cycle. For one thing, I think Democratic reports of the demise of emailgate are optimistic to a fault. The general sense I can gather is that the FBI, when it concludes its investigation, will recommend that the former Secretary of State be indicted for her behavior. Whether the Department of Justice, controlled by President Obama, will take the nod from the Bureau remains uncertain. I'd like to think that the DOJ would care enough about propriety and- well, justice- to act on the recommendation, but as I said, the outcome is anyone's guess. Regardless of whether or not Hillary actually gets indicted, the fact that it will have been recommended would speak volumes about her viability as a candidate. The Democratic Party may have to rethink its attachment to her. As such, there are still plenty of reasons not to throw up one's hands and say "Well, it'll either be the madman or the criminal!" The criminal may be on her way to jail by November- and even if she isn't, she may not be the nominee.

In light of all that, there's no sense making predictions about the general election until that last "yuuge" variable is settled. But whether Hillary survives her "security inquiry" or not, whether the Democrats throw Joe Biden into the game to stave off The Bern or not, there is still the specter of The Donald standing athwart the coming General Election. In fact, should Hillary be indicted, the chances of a Trump presidency increase mightily. The Democrats will either nominate Bernie, which I doubt, or they'll opt for some other establishment figure who is inoffensive enough to put up a good ol' Democratic showing in November. But if the Party rebuffs Sanders, for good and all, then bad feelings will so proliferate that I don't see how Democrats can hope to unite in time to stave off electoral defeat. President The Donald would seem assured, God help us all.

So. What is a Conservative to do? I recently heard an argument for Trump that, in all likelihood, many conservatives are making to themselves about now. "The chief enemy of freedom in this country is fast becoming political correctness; in its name, freedoms of speech and assembly are abrogated across the nation, especially in places of 'higher learning.' As such, Trump should be valued, because he fights against political correctness tooth and nail. Because he fights so violently against the PC Police, in defense of freedom of speech, he fits my bill as conservative enough. Plus, did you see that awesome short-list he put together for Supreme Court nominees?? I 'bout cried!"

I sympathize with this argument. Political correctness always serves progressives as a means of controlling the narrative of the country. Insofar as conservatives obey the unwritten laws of PC, they play into the hands of progessives. A straight-talker - someone who slams political correctness and damns the consequences - is, therefore, quite a find in a presidential nominee. However, I don't think this is the case with Donald Trump. He's all for freedom of speech for himself, and calls down the vengeance of heaven on anyone who tries to impugn him for his incorrectness, but he leaps like lightning to condemn, whine about, petulantly accuse, anyone who questions his narrative, who questions his credentials, who questions his authenticity or even his membership in the GOP. Those who use their freedom of speech to tear at The Donald are not allowed, in Trump's self-centric universe. Their freedom of speech is just vitriol, is offensive and hateful, and should never be allowed to happen again. He is not for freedom of speech, nor is he against political correctness per se; he is in favor of his pronouncements being unquestioned as public wisdom, but his belief in freedom of expression goes only so far. No, imaginary conservative whose argument I've recently heard: not even on that one count does The Donald deserve your support.

Not to mention certain other conservative desiderata:

1) Smaller government
2) Tax reform
3) Foreign policy that neither nation-builds nor lies to itself about the reality of its enemies
4) Principle of subsidiarity
5) Entitlement reform and budgetary concerns

Running Donald Trump through this list, we come up with... zero hits. No connection anywhere; he fits no bill and matches no descriptions that we desire. In all reality, The Donald is meant to be the petty tyrant-for-life of a failed government in sub-Saharan Africa or the lower Arabian peninsula, the kind of individual the U. S. Government props up because his needs are simple and usually answerable with cash or credit. Modern America may be many things, but it is not in such a parlous state that this kind of whiny strongman should be viewed as our salvation.

Again I say: what is a conservative to do? Call down "a plague on both their houses?" Sit out the race? Take some kind of opiate and shamble to the polls for The Donald, because the prospect of Hillary in the Oval is simply too repulsive? Sit out the election entirely?

I, in the view of many people who are accustomed to politics in America, am going to "waste my vote" in the fall.

Third-party runs for President in America are jokes to most people, which is a convenient situation for the poohbahs in both the RNC and the DNC- and one which they do their utmost to perpetuate. Both parties continue to drift towards their separate extremes, while membership dwindles and the ranks of the "political nones" swells in proportion. Like mainline Protestantism, the Two Party System is losing its children. The third-parties which currently exist in the U. S. have never before had much of a chance to distinguish themselves; they are generally lumped into one category, labeled "eminently ignorable." This is not very democratic or republican behavior, to be sure, but while the Two Parties both remained somewhat centrist, the situation was hardly dire. These days, however... well, neither Big Tent really covers a majority of the sovereign populace. Most people (I'm prepared to swear that it is 'most' people) either don't vote, or vote for the candidate that represents the "lesser of two evils." This is hardly a recipe to excite turnout. In 2012, I wanted to vote for Ron Paul, because I actually agreed with most things he said and did. Faced with my absentee ballot, I squirmed a bit, then shamefacedly filled in my bubble for Mr. Mitt, because I "didn't want to waste my vote" on a guy who was really a Libertarian.

Well, I was wrong to do that in 2012. In this election, I have even less reason to submit to the Party Line, because it was drawn in the sand by the Gucci loafers of Paul Manafort, abettor of tyrants. This fall, I am going to cast my vote for Gary Johnson, the presumptive nominee of the Libertarian Party.

Mr. Johnson is the erstwhile two-term governor of New Mexico. While in office, he aggressively pursued a fiscally conservative agenda, fighting government encroachment at every turn. He did this to such a degree that he earned the nickname "Governor Veto" for the bloodthirstiness of his executive pen. He cut taxes, turned deep government debt into an almost billion dollar surplus by the time he left office, and held the government in check for eight solid years. He supports the legalization of marijuana, which I've recently come to believe is a good idea; he favors immigration reforms that are friendly to illegal immigrants, including work permits and a straightforward path to citizenship for those immigrants already in this country illegally.

Mr. Johnson and I do not agree on everything. He is pro-choice and strongly favors gay marriage. These positions would usually be deal-breakers for me, and for most conservatives. However, Mr. Johnson's positions are such that I would not only be serene in my support for him: I would be enthusiastic. He thinks, for instance, that the Roe v. Wade decision was egregiously incorrect, and that it represents an unconstitutional incursion of the judiciary into the realm of the legislature. He supports the legal status of abortion, but would rather have it enshrined by the votes of the people, not the tenuous legal logic of Warren Burger. In the same way, he favors the legalization of gay marriage, but I can only assume he would take similar issue with Obergefell v. Hodges: that fundamental of a change to the social fabric of America must be made by the vote of the people. I agree with him wholeheartedly. He supports leaving abortion's legality to the individual states, and favors holding a vote on a Constitutional amendment to legalize gay marriage. I find this admirable. If the States were to hold individual votes on the legality of abortion, chances are that as many as half of them would reject the institution. That would be the net salvation of so many babies that I think it would be worth the danger. Johson, Libertarian that he is, has his opinions, and wishes them to be law, but recognizes that I want the same. We must engage in an electoral battle to decide who wins, not appeal to the Cheater's Court to put one over on the opposition.

I will be voting for Gary Johnson in November, and so should every principled conservative. William Kristol's attempts to get Mitt Romney or some other 'conservative' entity to run third-party notwithstanding, I truly believe that this year, the best place for the conservative vote is the Libertarian Party.

Which brings me to my last lap. After I re-engaged with the state of the Presidential Race sometime early last week, I cast a cold eye over the incredibly high unfavorable ratings for both Clinton and Trump. Both candidates are viewed negatively by more than half of respondents, and neither one is likely to recover much: they are such known quantities that one's good opinion of them, once lost, is lost forever. A whopping two thirds of respondents expressed a desire for a third option- someone not nearly as detested as the two almost-nominees. Two-thirds of people at least somewhat wanted a third face, a fresh face, up for the nomination.

If this is not the Libertarian Moment, then I do not know what is, or what possibly could be.

It's about my newly discovered ambition in life

By this point, everyone in America is familiar with the idea that one's twenties are the time to "discover" oneself, to figure out what one wants to "do" in life, to explore love and the beginnings of real responsibility. (Wiser people roll their eyes at this, thinking that the time to start all of that arrives about seven to ten years earlier than most people now assume.) Anyway, it's an integral part of living through your modern twenties that you begin to formulate some idea of what the crowning ambition of your life will be. And, at the risk of sounding jejune, I believe I have discovered mine!

Before I reveal my mortal goal in life, some groundwork is necessary.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every man (which is to say, a boy writ large) wishes to be a badass. As I have been educated in the Thomist and scholastic tradition, it is now incumbent upon me to offer a definition of the term "badass." This is easier said than done: ask any given man what his image of badassery is, and you are likely to get a thousand and one fragmented interpretations- most involving motorcycles. My belief is that there are general principles to be gleaned from this "heap of broken images;" varying as men's images of badassery are, they are fundamentally alike in several important ways. (Aside from the presence of Harley-Davidsons.)

The first aspect worth noticing about the badass is that he is able to function both on his own and in company with others. Every superhero worth his salt has, at one time or another, been a member of some all-star team. Again, the solitary rider of desert roads is so linked to the idea of the badass that it is inextricable from our current definition. The badass must be able to go after the enemy with no more company than his horse or trusty dog, while he must at the same time be able to coordinate with other members of a posse should the need arise. The ability to thrive alone and in company is, therefore, one of the first distinguishing aspects of the badass. (Think of Darryl Dixon, from "The Walking Dead." He begins as a character who keeps his own company exclusively, shunning association with The Group. Only after he begins to interweave his life with those of his neighbors does his true grandeur surface.)

The second and, in a way, most vital aspect of the badass, is his relation to violence. On one hand, the badass cannot be a member of the "sheeple," cannot be a farming villager who is cowed, or reduced to fist-clenching frustration, by the first passing villain with a gun. He must be familiar with the means of violence, as well as willing and able to use them. Again, however, the badass cannot himself be the man who lives by the sword to the exclusion of farming, herding, or another peacetime occupation. He cannot be the hard-faced man who sees the world only through the fearsome pupil of the gun-barrel. He is a man who understands the use of violence in every respect: he knows what it is and how to use it, but more importantly, he knows why, where, and when to employ his lethal artistry.

Thirdly: the badass has a particular relationship with the fairer sex. Again, this relationship encompasses two aspects: on the one hand, the badass must be eminently attractive to women, without appearing to try. Trying is the sign of the boy. The badass knows that he is worthy of female attention, and accepts it as fitting to his nature. However, the second aspect of this relationship is just as important: the badass understands that, in one sense, no man is worthy of a woman, and that it is inherent to women that they are ontologically more honorable than men. Thus, the badass knows that, because of what he is, women will seek him and love him, but that also due to what he is, every attention of the sort is an honor, and should be greeted as such. The badass is neither a libertine nor a tongue-tied farmhand, neither a wife-beater nor a "kept man." He is a chivalrous being who is worthy of the attentions he receives.

Fourth and lastly, the badass has a particular relationship to tools and the workings of society. He cannot be the "gadget guy," the nerdy fellow who lives in his lab and whose only contribution to the story is that he provides the latest inventions to the real hero. The nerd has a part to play, but it is inherently subordinate. Neither is the badass the man who disdains any and all assistance due to a sense of pride in his own abilities. He realizes that, for certain jobs and tasks, tools are necessary to enhance his own natural talents. He knows how to use them, without being owned by their use. The same relationship exists between the badass and society: he knows how to move in it, without being overtly concerned with its workings. He must know enough politics to choose the good men over the bad, but he cannot enter into the machinations of palace intrigue. 

In the final analysis, then, the key term in relation to the badass is "balance." 

Once, in our senior year at college, I joked with one of my Hispanic friends that he had become an "achieved Latino." I explained that, in my opinion, the Latino ideal of a great man was one who could, without hustle or bustle, walk into a ring and fight a bull on a whim. He retorted that he believed the Latino ideal for men was to lie on a beach, to drink tequila, and to be surrounded by beautiful women. "Sure," I said, "But wouldn't it be even more perfect if he did all that... while knowing he was a bullfighter?" He laughingly agreed.

So! In conclusion, the badass is a man who has achieved balance in all aspects of behavior that are thought of as being particularly masculine.

(Didn't think I could define a badass, did you? Ha!)

This, then, is the first part of my life's ambition: to be a badass. But of course, we all want that. How is this at all informative?

Now we have to focus more exclusively on the personal aspects of such an ambition.

Anyone who knows me at all knows that I'm a pretty dramatic guy. I tend towards the flamboyant and the full-of-flair. Don't know why, but so it is. I also know some men who do not have a dramatic bone in their bodies. Now, being a badass shouldn't require one kind of personality; if it's really an ideal, it should be possible for all men in their particular circumstances. So, dramatic me and strong-silent-type other guy should both be able to be badasses without compromising our personalities.

From this, I can say that I wish to be a dramatic badass- not exactly the kind of gunfighter who goes into battle with huge, waxed mustaches and a beautifully manicured suit, but something in the same ballpark: the kind of gunfighter who would do all of the above if the situation permitted it.

But we're still not quite there. While being a badass might be the fulfillment of a man's natural desires, the reality of Catholicism introduces him to a wholly different realm of fulfillment. The end goal of a Christian man is not just to be a balanced male, but to be an alter Christus in the manner to which he is called by God. He is called to be a saint.

Therefore: I wish to be a dramatic badass saint, in a way peculiar to my personality.

In a single image: one day, after I'm dead, I want kids to see a holy card with me on it, wearing both my earrings, next to my wife and kids, toting a samurai's katana, with my pet tiger reclining at my feet.

In a phrase: my life's ambition is to become the most selected Confirmation Saint the world has ever seen.

Watch out, Sts. Francis and Patrick. 

I'm gunning for you.

It's about nostalgia

I don't know at what age the remembered past begins to take on a rosy, golden hue, but I seem to have reached it. Early-onset nostalgia it might be, but it's still intermittent; I'm still living too much to focus on the past to the exclusion of other things. Besides, the past is a dangerous place, full of illusions and easy to get lost in.

Despite being too young for it, I recently had a bout of "looking back with longing." I went to San Jose for Easter with my brother and several friends. While there, vegetating in the peace of the Resurrection, we watched the three seasons of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" from start to finish in a two-day marathon stretch. I remember the first time I saw that show - some time after it aired in 2006 - and how delighted I was with the quality of the characters and the plotting. They took the story slowly, not rushing to great whiz-bang fight scenes (although there were plenty of those,) but taking time for smaller, slower episodes focused on developing the cast. Coupled with the fact that it was beautifully animated, "Avatar" routinely impressed me as a viewer. Besides, I liked the people in the story, and I really wanted them to succeed.

Going back over Easter, we skipped some of the "middle patches" to focus on the storyline; otherwise, we would never have been able to finish it in such a short amount of time. But even with the trimmed down version, I was reminded again how much I like the show. Only later, thinking about how crazy we were to finish the whole story in two days, did I begin to feel a little bittersweet. Seeing it for the second time made me think about how I had felt at the very beginning, when I didn't know how things ended or how the characters made it to the finish line. Everything was a surprise and mostly a delight on first viewing. It was still pleasant, but no longer surprising, and I found that I missed the first flush of joy that I experienced back then, maybe three years ago, when I made my little siblings (who were at a more proper age for "Avatar") wait for their college-sophomore brother to continue watching. Now I want to someday go back and watch the whole thing again, but slowly, savoring it the way I did back then, watching only one or two a day.

You can't go back, but you can remember, and make what you have already done into something new.

It's about tension

Two backstories explain what I'm thinking about today.

The first one is that, during Senior year at Thomas Aquinas College, we studied evolutionary biology in second semester natural science. We only had one semester devoted to the topic, so it served mostly as a means of becoming familiar with the terms and the big-picture understandings of evolution that... well, evolved... over the years. I loved it, because I do not have the mental landscape to support the edifice of mixed mathematics and chemistry needed to really dive into biology; the broad view, mostly theoretical, appealed to me. Anyway, one of the central works we read was "Chance and Necessity," by Jacques Monod. In it, he outlined the mechanism by which proteins are fashioned by DNA strands, using this in turn to argue that chance is the fundamental principle responsible for life. While I don't agree wholly with his assessment - if anything, I think his take represents a flirtation with dualism - I found his work fascinating. He focused on the fact that DNA is a replicative automaton; it reproduces itself exactly as it finds itself, without variation and without fail. However, random events can alter the state of DNA strands, so that from one moment to the next the strands may not be the same. Therefore, combining the effects of chance on DNA with the acid's own rigid reproduction, mutations are worked into living beings with something approaching regularity. If they are beneficial, they are preserved, because the beings to which the DNA belongs will thrive. The excellence of bios depends on a give-and-take waltz between chance and necessity. Only if one thing never alters will the effects of a good change be preserved.

That was backstory number one. Backstory number two has to do with something interesting that was brought up about the latest election cycle.

Donald Trump won Michigan by a pretty hefty margin. He is likewise predicted to thrive elsewhere in the Rust Belt. A good piece I read examined his success- specifically, the claims that Trump is winning because his electorate is fundamentally racist. The author, who was born and raised in Detroit, doesn't think that The Donald's appeal to working-class Reagan Democrats is based on racism. Instead, he points to the issue that The Donald talks about even more than his own polls: trade. If there is one enemy in The Donald's mind, it is the People's Republic of China. At first, when he kept going on and on about the evil antics of Beijing in debates, I edited them out; they didn't seem substantive, or linked to anything else that was being said. (They weren't linked, but The Donald is eminently post-modern in his speeches; they are exercises in verbal pastiche that would make David Foster Wallace proud.) After reading this piece, however, it dawned on me: Trump wasn't triumphing because of his racist/immigration views, appealing as they are to some swathes of his base, but because of his opposition to America's support for free trade.

I am not an economist. Just like in the case of biology, I lack the requisite intellectual gifts for the discipline. As such, I am not creditable enough to judge the pros and cons of free trade. However, based solely on theoretical considerations and big-picture thinking (a la senior natural science, circa 2015,) I can see why people would support it, and why they would oppose it. Free trade essentially expands the market - or rather, The Market - beyond the limits of a single polity, without tariffs or other penalties. It allows America to trade with Taiwan, Brazil, Chile, etc., without sanitizing imports through regulatory penalties. The Market, therefore, can encompass both developing and developed nations, mass consumers and those primed to be mass producers.

This, naturally, has the effect of internationalizing business, and business concerns. Where before, if the taxes in New York are prohibitive, businesses could move to fairer climes- in Texas, perhaps, or Arizona. If one member of The Market is unfriendly, there are always others willing to flash a little leg at business interests. Jobs move around The Market, and often, workers go with them. If The Market exists only within one nation, there isn't much to complain about; people can usually stomach a move in-country, if they have to. It's not beyond the pale to move to the Southwest for a job, if the Northeastern Corridor is not fruitful. One might lament the fall of Auto Country, or the fading dynamos of the Rust Belt, but it will remain an aesthetic complaint.

A crucial difference surfaces when The Market extends beyond a single nation, however: what do the workers do when taxes are so heavy in America, and the wild west atmosphere of Chinese business so unregulated, that businesses up and move out of the country? The people whose jobs are most often compromised by this situation are the least able to move in the first place; they certainly can't move to a new country. Moreover, China has its own work force, independent of America. There's no chance for erstwhile factory workers to move to fairer climes. The result is a loss for that particular class of American, even while an overall benefit accrues to The Market as a whole.

Because of his opposition to expanding The Market beyond the limits of America, Trump is winning over the class of people who depend the most on working-class jobs. They are left behind by the mechanisms of free trade, and as such, they are a bereaved population... on both sides of the political spectrum. Because of this, The Donald can boast of his appeal across party lines; he turns out voters in record numbers, because working-class people who previously had little interest in politics (or little faith in its results) finally see someone who is concerned with their deepest fears. Money talks, and The Donald's promises to address the legitimate anxiety of the white working-class is verbose cash indeed. Opposition to free trade, window-dressed with swatches of racism and pissed-off-itude, is the vital heart of Trump's message.

These two threads, twined together, have made me wonder what the right way forward might be.

One thing seems certain to me: an expanded Market has smudged the lines between nations in ways both deep and lasting. When America was younger, and the States were more economically distinct, there existed a fear that the economic powerhouses would swallow up the smaller, less populated, less productive members of the union. The equality of the States that found expression in the Senate was a political solution to a problem that was largely rooted in economics. The prospective members of the union wanted to ensure that there was a political mechanism to address the possibility of their domination by the more muscular economies of the large states. Economic union was finally possible through political union. There was something "one" that oversaw what went on between the States, and could step in with some sort of redress if it detected economic malfeasance.

When The Market is spread between two nations, however, who do not share any political union to speak of, the situation is different. There are no agreed upon means of preserving the rights of American workers in the face of Chinese availability. As a result, the American working class is now largely resident in the People's Republic. We are becoming a de facto economic union with our free trade partners, and that has political ramifications for our way of being. Citizens of America are becoming the world's upper-middle-class, and if you don't (or can't) fit that description, you will be edited out of America's citizenry. This is one reason that college education is becoming ubiquitous: everyone must have a diploma, because increasingly, the only jobs that allow you to match the accepted standard of American living require degrees.

Finally, then, this post is about the tension between chance and necessity, stability and flexibility. As the economy continues to refocus itself, those who can't change will cease. Those who can change, who can move between jobs with relative ease or who can adapt to altered circumstances, will thrive. It may eventually be a fact that Americans will all, or almost all, work in what were once considered white-collar environments, with an upper-middle-class standard of living throughout. In the span of time between now and that moment, however, flexibility will be required for survival.

The American working class is the least able to change of all classes in America. Due to its low income, the class does not enjoy much fluidity; it's based around centers of manufacturing. It is geographically limited in ways that most other classes are not. As a result, the working class has the most to lose in the Great Flux that the economy is undergoing. They are the fundamental proponents of stability, because their lives depend on it. The modern-day twenty-something-professional-hipster, who was raised in a "fluctuated" family and who seeks a job that is geographically unlimited, is the antithesis of working-class America. He is the archon of the flexible and the unrestrained.

America, therefore, is now embroiled in an economic struggle between the forces of stability and the forces of change. Trump is the expression of those who do not want an expanded Market, who do not want America to become a member of a meta-nation that entails the transformation of the U.S. into the world's upper class. Stability resists fluctuation.

I don't know what the answer to all this is. However, like any living being, we exist as a harmony of chance and necessity, of stability and fluidity. It may be that Trump will enact his regime of protectionism, and keep America back from taking its place in the world order that is mandated by an expanded Market. It may also be that we are evolving, and that America will become something new in spite of Trump's blandishments to the working class.

Either way, I now feel a lot more in the know as regards the motivations behind America's support of The Donald. That is something to prize, as far as I am concerned.