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 To follow something as closely as I did the primary races, and then to have the wind withdrawn from my sails by the reality of a Trump nomination...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. 

It's about schadenfreude

I have to keep finding reasons to be hopeful about the Republican Primary this year. At the moment, the race looks to be shaping up into a situation where two talented Cuban senators will cancel each other's bids and leave the nomination in the lap of a man who should be the dictator of a third world country.

Oh, and the other option in the General will be either a criminal or a socialist.

The man of the hour, in my opinion, is Jeb Bush. Accepting that he will not be the nominee, he has bowed out for the greater good. If his followers have any sense, they will uniformly flock to Marco Rubio.

I have to admit, I understand the stalemate that the anti-Trumpers out there are enduring. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are so similar that it's hard to decide between them. We don't want to decide between them; two such talented conservatives shouldn't be fighting each other. Ultimately, I want one of them to win the nomination and the other one to be veep. It would be a like a conservative version of Clinton/Gore: two young guns, both christened by a grassroots movement of the party, galloping off to Washington to bring their vision of a better America to birth. Why can't we just have them both, and conquer Trump in a matter of days?

The fact remains that if we continue to have them both, we will have neither. Unless something turns the tide against one of them, and the victor capitalizes on his strength, we will have a nominee who is essentially a natural slave.

I want to go on record as saying that, if it came down to a decision between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, I honestly think that I would vote for the criminal just to spite the bigot billionaire. I think that, by then, I would be so consumed by fury and disgust that I would do anything possible to keep the Donald from the White House, just out of hatred.

That's the bitterest irony of the whole cycle: I am the victim of two conflicting threads of schadenfreude. I pray that I will not be put to the test.

On the one hand, like I said, I would do almost anything to keep the Little Tyrant from power. I hate everything he represents almost as much as I hate his religious self-obsession, and I would probably leave the Republican Party before I accepted him as the nominee. In fact, I think I would "burn it all to the ground" rather than accept the fact that the American people want him as their leader.

On the other hand, I realized a few weeks ago that I would have to go to Confession if Hillary Clinton were indicted for her obvious criminality as Secretary of State. The thought of her entire candidacy going down in flames, of Hillary and Bill prideful and unapologetic to the last, even when she was first photographed in the orange jumpsuit that she has deserved for so long, of the Democratic Party in chaos, led by an unhinged Socialist orator who has never made a difference in the Senate... well, it was enough to make me dance with glee. Uncharitable glee, you know, which is why I'd have to try hard to feel contrite enough to get shrived.

I have to say, it's hard to choose between the two. If both can be accomplished - if somehow the Little Tyrant can be brought down, shattered on the rocks of his own colossal pomposity, AND Hillary can be shipped off to prison - then I will be one happy member of the electorate. I will vote for a Cuban in the General and hope we keep the Senate.

If neither of those things happen, then I will prepare for a political Lent that will probably stretch for another two electoral cycles.

Please Lord, let one of the Cubans let the other win.

It's about having (or not having) a trustworthy sense of beauty

Two weekends ago, I was sitting on a patio in the sunshine. I had just attended Mass and eaten brunch, and was contemplating what to do with the rest of my Sunday. My companion at table was a very small and very articulate Polish undergrad, who is known as much for her philosophy as for her ubiquitous cigarette. 

I forget the exact train of our conversation, but it touched on movies, books, and movies adapted from books. I remember there was some mention of "Hail, Caesar," by the Coen Brothers, although I don't think it could have played that much of a role in the discussion because it hadn't opened yet. Either way, I probably made some disparaging remark about the Coens, who consistently under-perform their obvious talents. This remark occasioned a comment on her part:

"Thomas, sometimes I wonder about your artistic taste. I'm not sure I trust your sense of beauty."

Broadsided. 

The comment itself was made somehow more incisive by the fact that it was delivered in such a delicate little voice. I had no idea what she was talking about, because I generally-ahem-pridefully think I have at least a basic grasp of what looks beautiful and what doesn't. I must have conveyed my bemusement, because she blushed and quickly tried to dilute what she had said: well, maybe I didn't mean exactly that, because, you know, you read a lot and we sometimes like the same things, but I don't know whether I understand why you don't find certain things beautiful when they so obviously are.

It just came to me! I remember what I said that warranted her polite condemnation: I said that I thought G. K. Chesterton wasn't that good of a writer. I think he was a brilliant columnist, but he's hardly deep. When he is, it feels more like he's possessed by a sudden inspiration from on high, not by the organic working of his own talent. He's enjoyable, occasionally delightful, and now and then conveys real insight. However, because Catholics like to lionize their successful laymen, especially authors/artists, I think the devout readers of his work paint him with far too adoring a brush. (They'd use it to laminate Lewis with more comfort, but there's the enduring irritation of his having remained an Anglican in spite of all.)

Comments in this vein spurred on my Polish friend to blast my taste in art and my sense of beauty. I was politely offended, of course, and did my best to degrade the conversation by poking fun at everything she said. This was probably ignoble, but given that I had just been confronted by so unexpected an enemy, it was my "fight" reaction. After I had pushed back a bit, we came to a compromise statement: She was unsure whether my appreciation for beauty had any rhyme or reason to it, because many things I said I liked jarred with things I said I didn't like.

That is a "j'accuse" worth thinking about, and in more ways than one. Is there a pattern to my tastes? And perhaps more importantly, should there be?

The obvious answer to the first question is yes, and the obvious answer to the second is that such a question doesn't make sense.

People are pattern-making beings. We're largely patterns ourselves, for heaven's sake. Biologically, we exist because of a consistency of behavior on the part of genes, cells, antibodies, gut flora (kom-bu-cha!), neurons, muscular reactants, etc. As far as choices are concerned, we thrive insofar as we are able to create and implement patterns of behavior that accord with our natures. Intellectually, we require patterns to understand even the simplest ideas: recognition is largely a function of repetition. 

The world of art/beauty is also subject to this law of pattern. Monet's "Water Lilies" are beautiful insofar as one is able to step back far enough to see the full shape of the painting; da Vinci's "Madonna of the Rocks," pleasurable enough on first viewing, takes on greater glory when one can spot and comprehend the intense geometry he worked into the composition. A negative example: critics who view Jackson Pollock's work may gush about its importance, its relevance, its audacity, its challenge to the onlooker, its defiance. Nobody looks at "Autumn" and says "beautiful" with a straight face.

So yeah, duh. Art is about patterns pleasingly done, so of course someone will have a pattern to the art he/she likes and dislikes. This also cuffs playfully at the second question: should we have a pattern to our likes and dislikes? Should gravity affect you when you jump off a cliff?

But! Just because there's a pattern to something, doesn't mean that it has to be simple. It doesn't even have to be generally comprehensible. So the second question really becomes: Should someone's taste in art be guided by a simple principle, easily understood by his cigarette friends?

I don't think so. I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way, and I think that if people are honest with themselves, they'd admit that trying to live by too simple a pattern stunts them in critical ways. Religious fundamentalists are a good example: just look at their adult children.

I think that the most important patterns in our lives are the ones we understand the least. Take the operations of cellular dynamics: we know an awful lot about how our bodies work, but we are only able to contemplate one particular thread of the tapestry at a time. Looking at the entire work of life in even a single cell, all at the same time, would break a veteran viewer. Can you imagine holding the pattern of all the activity in the human body in your mind at one moment in time?

Can you imagine holding the pattern of world economics in your mind all at one time?

Can you trace all the vagaries and loop-de-loops of a campaign race for city council, let alone for the Presidency?

Can you imagine contemplating the pattern of give and take in a romantic relationship, all the interplay of attraction, desire, guilt, fire, sorrow, and sacrifice that play out between even the most mundane lovers?

Can you imagine yourself looking squarely at the ins and outs of God's working on a soul through grace and the Sacraments?

This is what God says to Job when he speaks out of the tempest. You don't even understand yourself, boy. How can you possibly understand me?

...OK, so, descending from my poetic vein. Appreciating beauty is natural to us, and like every pattern that comes with the Model-T Human, it's not as explicable as we'd like it to be.

That's why I think I can hold views about art and beauty that sometimes seem to be at variance. Just to take an example: I dislike Lorde's "Magnets" and love Tove Lo's "Habits (Stay High)." Both are songs about complicated love, and both are sung by talented songbirds. But in the first case, the lyrics, which are pretty foul, are uninspiring and dull. There's nothing beautiful in them: it's art, "not of the heart, but of the glands." With "Habits," the lyrics are also pretty rancid, but what a difference there is! The sheer depth of loss they convey is illustrated and gilded by the overcompensation of dirt the singer packs into them. She's trying to shock us, and herself, away from realizing how horribly empty we are, now that the one we love is gone and won't come back. 

Just try this trick: imagine Tove Lo singing "Habits" while running from an image of the crucified Jesus. (But I am NOT advising you to watch the music video, whatever you do.)

At the same time that I love "Habits," I hate most everything else about pop music. I prefer singer/songwriter fare, as well as chant and plainsong. Polar opposites that these are, I still believe that there is a pattern to what I like and dislike. Music that speaks to authentic suffering, real love, true experience, is music I enjoy.

Bluntly, then: as far as I can tell, art is beautiful insofar as it accords with reality. And reality is bigger, messier, murkier, and more dangerous than we can understand.

So there, Polish-philosopher-smokerchick-friend. Do I have a pattern to my love of beauty? Sure. Is it simple? Nope. Should it be?

I don't know. Where were you when God created the heavens, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

It's about that wizened lady I once encountered in New Mexico

A few years ago, my older brother had graduated high school. He had been accepted into a college on the west coast, and the whole family was delighted by this: Dad had told us that we would all get to drive out to California to drop the first kid at college. This wound up, incidentally, becoming a tradition: whenever one of the kids went to a new college, one at which we hadn't previously had a graduate/student, it was into the Big Van with us. In this manner, the younger kids have gotten to see both coasts and a heaping helping of the heartland.

On this particular trip, our first college voyage, Dad had it all planned out: we would go to California via the south-western desert and return by the lunar landscape of Nevada. Our trip led us through Albuquerque, which many of us would later become familiar with in "Breaking Bad." That first time, all we noticed was that Duke City had only one central street - Yale - and only one interesting section of town. It was the Old Town, the one which had once been a Pueblo.

After we'd left, and entered the honest-to-God barrens that confront anyone who wants to one day see the ocean, we didn't often stop. We took things slowly, though: the Continental Divide, which raised us closer and closer to the arid severity of the desert sky, was not kind to the Big Van. At last, when we'd been kicking around together for a few hours and the Van was wheezing like a geriatric olympian, Dad brought us to a stop.

Anywhere around there, you were likely to be surrounded by canyons and arroyos. The highway in that particular place was no exception: you pulled off the road onto a ledge that overlooked a drop of at least a hundred feet. Perched on the edge of the cliff, there were several umbrellas. The shade they cast was precious, and was fraying at the edges from the brilliance of the sun. As we pulled to a stop, we looked out and could see people sitting in the shadows. There were a few other cars there, and every now and then people drift from one patch of darkness to another. They looked like raindrops sliding down a windshield.

We got out into a baking oven. The heat had already consumed every twist of moisture in the air, in its lust, and it met our exposed skins with passionate advances. Right away, I had the double feeling of revulsion and delight: I had never been to a place like this before... but then again, I had never been to a place like this before.

We dispersed from the car in tight groups, clinging to the shade when we reached it. The people under the umbrellas turned out to be vendors- Native Americans, mostly women, sitting in lawn chairs. They had blankets spread out before them, covered in trinkets. I went out to the edge of the cliff and looked into the desert; when I turned around, most of the family had moved on.

The lady under the umbrella wasn't looking at me. She wasn't looking at anything, actually. Her face was lowered, and her eyes were resting on her lap. Her clothes were nondescript and looked like the desert. Her hair was gray, where it might instead have been a shocking white. People approached her and looked at the flotsam she had on offer, which was mostly arrowheads and jewelry made of wire and turquoise stones. They were all probably hand-made. She didn't look up at them while they perused, and no one made any move to buy anything. For all she was concerned, the window-shoppers were not there. The lady was alone in the high paint of the barrens.

To my knowledge, she never saw me, and I never met her eyes. But while I was there, watching her, I was struck by the situation. This woman was old, not quite as the hills, but certainly old enough to be my grandmother. This was not what her dignity demanded of the world; she had deserved better than this. I looked at her blanket and her hand-made baubles. Now that I have the words to say it, I think back to her, and I say to myself: "If anyone wants to see what prostitution really looks like, here it is." What she was showing could easily have been the treasures of her people, something precious to her, history and myth and the sap of her ancestor's bones, distilled into blue stone and wrapped in copper wire to be hung amid the white folds of the white necks of those who never knew what it was they had done to this woman and her people.

As I said, she never saw me. I didn't have the words or the thoughts, then, to realize anything; I just looked at her, and she looked at nothing while she waited for the sun to go down around her, as it had already done around her world.

After a while, we judged that the Big Van was probably rested, and so we piled back in and made our laborious way up several hundred more miles of twisting desert back roads. We eventually made it to California, and my older brother and I got lost on the highway in the middle of a traffic jam. We went north from there, to a town at one remove from the arterial freeways of the golden state. North from there, into a mountain pass, we made our way at last to a shining emerald of a campus, a watered oasis in the middle of rolling hills silent in their shabby splendor, crisp and umber and drought-defiled. There we were, on a lawn of which a country club would have been proud, looking at the native land around, behind, and above us. Dry it was, dry indeed, and old.

Beneath the splendid grass, there had once been a burial ground for the Indians, which was only discovered when the college made overtures to the earth to shift out of its way. Meaning no disrespect to the bones, the administration had a medicine man come, in all his painted glory, to remove the remains. He said he thought he'd probably gotten them all.

Bones can be very small, though, and how can you detect them from the surface? It's possible that some, perhaps only some small ones, endure there, down where the dirt is one with the surrounding hills and forms a single, golden, patient, quiet whole.

What's with the title of this blog?

First and foremost, why am I "The Pedestrian?"

There is one answer to this question, with a few reasons behind it. First of all, I should say that I'm not a "purist" when it comes to my title. I benefit mightily from the presence of Uber and Enterprise in my area, which allow me not to own a car myself. I don't seek to remedy that situation, though, so I've judged myself worthy of my chosen name.

The answer to the question above is that I am "The Pedestrian" simply because I do not own a car. I have a few reasons for this state.

Firstly, I graduated college last May, and currently enjoy a fair amount of student debt. This debt is nowhere close to crippling, or even burdensome, but it still leaves me in the hole to the tune of fifteen thousand dollars. Since that's so tiny, compared to most collegiate post-mortems, I have a real chance of paying it off in the fairly foreseeable future... if, that is, I focus on it as an immediate goal. So my thought was, if I am already thousand of dollars in debt, is now the right time to take out a necessary auto loan to purchase an asset that could be totaled by someone else's lack of attention at any given moment on the road? I opted for "no."

Secondly: I'm not much of an environmentalist. I think that global warming is proving to be not quite what climate doomsayers were anticipating fifteen years ago - namely, much at all - but I thought pollution and waste were sins before Pope Francis made it cool. Does that make me a "climate hipster?" Hmm. Regardless, I live in Los Angeles, which has seen firsthand how ugly and damaging car pollution can make the world. Along with the realization, noted above, that I could in no way afford a car in the first place, I also realized that I could certainly not afford the kind of car that wouldn't pollute my surroundings. Buying a Prius might be for liberal secular Americans what joining the Third Order of St. Francis is for Catholics, but the thought behind hybrid cars is reasonable and sound. This is even more true for electric cars- but it is comparatively more expensive. Since, then, if I were to purchase a car I would like it to be a no-emissions or low-emissions model, and since all such treasures lie decidedly out of my price range, I was doubly encouraged to go without.

Thirdly... I think there's something to be said, philosophically, about the effect an automobilized lifestyle has on the mind. Lifestyle is a function of mobility. Without taking the idea too far, I think it's possible to say that people have less and less attachment to places, now that they can be in so many of them in such a short time. Think of this: back in the day, when people rode around on horses and in carriages, and twenty miles was a day's journey, the average soul was far more likely to have roots in a particular community and with a particular set of people. This sense of "rootedness," of belonging to a "place," is really the genesis of patriotism. If the scope of your life is bound by how far you can walk in a day, or how far the family horse can trot you, you are going to have, unavoidably, an intimate relationship with your land and neighbors. This intimacy leads to knowledge, which leads to love and honor. Only by knowing things can we love them, and only by being close to things can we know them. Walking the bounds of your land is how you fall in love with it. When you can drive hundreds of miles in a single day, however, that sense of rootedness vanishes fast. It's no longer possible to understand and appreciate the entirety of your surroundings, because your surroundings are no longer dictated by your natural reach; they are an effect of your dramatic mobility. Now, in itself, the ability to move ridiculous distances in a short time is no bad thing. It has facilitated modern American life as we know it. However, insofar as your are no longer able to gain intimacy with your environment, because your environment has expanded past all recognition, you will not have a sense of belonging, and that sense of belonging you lack will not give birth in your soul to all the delightful particularities of culture. Culture, insofar as it is possessed by highly mobile people, is usually fairly utilitarian and abstracted, structured around convenience as much as possible. Anyone who has driven along a major interstate in America can appreciate what I'm saying: the oases of fast food chains and gas stations that cluster around exits in the Mojave Desert are exactly the same as the fast food chains and gas stations that cozy up to the asphalt in rural Mississippi. Can you imagine two more different places in America, with two correspondingly dissimilar cultures? Yet, for all the traveler can tell, they are carbon copies of each other. Whatever was particular about them as places is no longer evident when jetting through in one's Ford Explorer.

I do not reject the automobile. It is a glorious invention of man. What I do reject is man's reordering of his entire life around the capacity of his car to cross the country in four days. Integrating the wise use of mobility with one's daily life is possible, but unless one wishes to sacrifice culture, rootedness, and the dignity of place, one should think hard before choosing a life that requires a car to function at all.

So, I have chosen to be a walker. I'll be the first to say it: sometimes, this way of life, intentionally limited, proves... well, limiting. Constricting, even. I'm accustomed to travel, and many of those I love the most are furthest from me. But I think the psychological value of seeking to really belong to the place where you live and work outweighs the cons that distance imposes.

What's this blog about?

Why am I writing this blog? Isn't it true that too many people publish too much already?

I think that this boils down to the old argument between quality and quantity. I don't think it's at all a bad thing that there are so many people writing online and making their views known; that sounds like an eminently democratic state of things. Quantity isn't the problem, necessarily. The problem surfaces when people spit out whatever comes into their heads, vitriolic or otherwise, and post at great length. The qualities of libel and cruelty are what make so much internet writing so wretched.

This is all to give some noble pretensions to the pages you're reading. As far as I'm able (which is pretty far,) I'll avoid libelous posts and cruel writing.

That's all very well, you say, but what will you be writing about in such a genteel manner? If it's noble but uninteresting - like so many characters who have gone unnoticed in history - what's the point of reading it?

Well, ideally, the point will be to try for nobility and interest. A few people have achieved that, lately and other-wheres, so there's hope. There's no specific subject for this blog, other than My Life Observed, so any number of topics could wind up on the table. This is an election year, so I'm likely to talk about politics, and I love Pope Francis and the Church, so I'll talk about them too. I enjoy reading, fiction and non-fiction, so books will feature here as well. I enjoy the saner philosophers, so they'll probably surface now and then. (To find out whom I believe the saner philosophers to be, stay tuned!) Unavoidably, I'll also provide you with heaps of introspection- none of it prurient, most of it digested.

If this sounds like an agreeable prospect to you, then forward let us go!