As a teen, I frequently expressed my opinion without reservation, often throwing caution to the wind. That mighty mouth cost me when it came time for silly little things like induction into the National Honor Society. My high school’s power structure made sure I was “punished” for daring to speak my mind. Humiliating an “overachiever” academically was apparently a good way to force compliance. Or so they thought. All it did was harden my belief that “authority” should never be afforded blind obedience and trusted only sparingly.
Decades have passed and while I am far more publicly circumspect than I was as a teen, my opinions about “authority” haven’t changed one bit. I am deeply suspicious of those who yield power. A velvet glove quickly turns into an iron fist, and tyranny is always lurking right around the corner. Today’s hero easily becomes tomorrow’s hegemon, and that is why I will never “put (my) trust in princes”1 no matter how dashing they might seem. I don’t do politics and have no formal political affiliation. Even though I have voted across both sides of the political spectrum, it’s only ever been grudgingly. My go-to motto has always been “a plague o’ both your houses.”2 Moreover, like Ferris:
You’re never going to catch me being all “go team” for a political party. Hell, I barely get excited for professional sports teams, except for maybe the Miami Heat and that’s mostly because their games are a lot of fun. Plus, Bacardi cocktails. Many Bacardi cocktails.
But I recognize that many people are extremely “gung-ho” about political candidates. That just doesn’t resonate with me. And you know what else doesn’t resonate with me? Those who are so determined to “win” at the political game that they forget about or are dismissive of average people.
And that brings me to the real reason for this post—seeing someone I once knew and maybe even loved casually prop up “authority” in the face of the overwhelming tragedy which has befallen the citizens of Appalachia in the wake of Hurricane Helene. A few days back, I saw a post on X (Twitter) written by a former boyfriend. I will not out him out of respect for his privacy. It was a short and simple post. It said nothing really. It just linked to an “official” website from a governmental agency. That was it. Nothing more. And, yet, this simple little post has troubled me deeply.
To understand why, I’m going to reveal a little bit more about my personal background and how I came to think as I do about authority, government, and politics. For the most part, this blog has been about my relationship to and love for music. It’s also touched a little on being a member of Generation X, the oft maligned forgotten generation smashed between Boomers and Millennials—we now seem to be hitting our stride a bit judging from all the social media reels I see, and hey, the kids really like our music these days, but those are topics for another day . . . .
I was born on an army base in Virginia (Fort Lee) because my father had served in the Quartermaster Corps of the United States Army. My father, like his father before him, had graduated from The University of Pennsylvania. He studied economics at Wharton, later becoming a C.P.A. and serving as C.F.O. of several companies. He was a Republican. My father’s ethnic heritage was Pennsylvania German on his paternal side and Scottish and English on his maternal side. His mother’s family came from Lenoir, North Carolina, having moved to the Philadelphia area for work. His ancestors, on both sides, have been here since the eighteenth century. One relative, my great-grandfather, Ulysses, opened a meat stall at Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market after having been sent away from his home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He was successful enough that he sent both of his sons to the University of Pennsylvania. That set my grandfather and later my father up to be what could be called “comfortable.”
My mother only had a high school education, not atypical for most women of her generation. She was a Democrat. Her ethnic heritage was German on her maternal side and Irish on her paternal side. Her grandparents were all immigrants (from the Banat region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Newfoundland, Canada). She and her siblings worked union jobs at the supermarket chain, Pathmark. In her youth, my maternal grandmother had once worked in a factory. My maternal grandfather had built bridges and electrified rail lines. My mother’s second husband had also worked a union job, delivering newspapers for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Working Middle Class is what I would call them.
Growing up, I heard tales of the struggles between “the bosses” and the workers and lived through a few strikes too, getting to know the joys of those large blocks of government cheese very well (it does make good macaroni and cheese, even my snotty-ass former culinary-school-self would acknowledge that). I also heard plenty of stories about John Fitzgerald Kennedy too. My mother had worked on his election campaign and was significantly distressed by his assassination. Until the very end of her life, she was committed to the Democrat party. We even argued about it on one of the very last conversations we had before her death in 2016. She was blathering on about Hillary Clinton, and I just didn’t want to talk about Clinton, Trump, or politics. She pissed me off so much that I let loose a string of profanity. I regret that I didn’t hold my temper that day, but I don’t regret standing my ground about my disdain for politics and politicians.
Conversely, whenever my father and I spoke about politics, it was always very business-like. He voted for his pocketbook. Whichever candidate would tax him less or be better for business overall always got his vote. He was never really passionate about politics the way my mother was. History, especially Civil War history, interested him much more. I always appreciated that, and I’m sorry that I didn’t get to learn more from him. When you’re a child of divorce, you don’t always get equal time with both parents, and that was certainly true in my case.
Two other figures helped my form the basis of my political understanding—my first boss, the manager of the B. Dalton bookstore where I worked and one of my co-workers, a man who worked as a field agent for the Department of Labor, investigating migrant labor working conditions (the bookstore gig was a side hustle). Based upon our conversations, the manager thought my beliefs aligned with the Libertarian party while the co-worker thought I leaned Democrat, maybe even Socialist. For my high school graduation, they gave me copies of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, respectively, complete with beautiful, heartfelt inscriptions. I cherished both.
Moreover, at various times, I was seriously committed to ending Apartheid, providing famine relief for those starving in Africa, writing Amnesty letters to free dissidents, and supporting Greenpeace, and PETA—all “left-leaning” causes. However, I always remained suspicious of authority, especially governmental authority, and refused to give my allegiance to any political party. The wasteful spending detailed in The Congressional Pig Book and the shameless raiding of Social Security funds coupled with the despicable censorship of music promoted by the PMRC proved that government was no savior and that trusting it to be one was foolish. But what forever cemented my beliefs was a movie called The Falcon and the Snowman.
The movie explored the life of Christopher Boyce,3 who had sold classified information to the Soviets during the Cold War. Boyce had worked in a facility which processed classified documents. One day, Boyce, saw a missive which detailed how the U.S. intelligence community rigged an Australian election. He was horrified to learn that the U.S. had done this to an ally. This prompted him to divulge information to the Soviets. What struck me then and what still strikes me now is that an agency of the government did this.
Of course, since then, we’ve all learned even more about just how far governmental agencies, departments, and politicians will go. Whether it’s selling secrets or access, waterboarding, carelessly sharing classified information on private servers, ordering drone strikes against American citizens, starting needless and senseless wars for spurious reason, colluding with corporations to censor and blackball citizens, spying on the public, or crafting “acts” which strip away civil liberties and constitutional rights, there’s a lot to be deeply suspicious and distrustful of.
Which brings me to the current situation in Appalachia. Hurricane Helene slammed into that region on September 27, bringing winds, and aggressive rainfall to an area already waterlogged by excessive rainfall in the days preceding the hurricane. Rivers and creeks overflowed, bridges and roads collapsed, and rushing water created mudslides. The damage is catastrophic. Most reports say that it looks like a war zone or that a bomb went off in the area. And it’s not just the city of Asheville, North Carolina either—one video I saw suggested that the area impacted is at least the size of Belgium!
Like all mountainous regions, the area is filled with winding roads, and homes are scattered everywhere at various elevations. I’ve had the privilege of visiting and driving through that region many times. It’s beautiful.
The people are likeable and friendly, and not deserving of the pejorative remarks often made about them by people who live in large metropolitan areas. Moreover, these people are strong and resilient. These are the people whose ancestors (including some of my own relatives, the Fraziers, yes, like in the series Outlander—same clan, different spelling) came from places like Scotland and Ireland long ago and forged a new life for themselves in the mountains far away from any real urban center. These are also the people who were there long before the Europeans arrived and managed to avoid being forcibly resettled by the Indian Removal Act. These are the people to whom the WPA sent folklorists in the 1930s and recorded songs and tales which had preserved much older English dialects. These are the people of “Jolene,” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” and so many other classic songs. And these are the people who right at this very moment deserve all the help they can get.
We Americans have always been known for our generosity, for our willingness to help, and to give, and when major tragedies strike, we roll up our sleeves and help each other out. In those moments, we don’t fuss over religion or politics, race or gender, or anything else really. Someone is hungry or hurting, and we will help them. We also expect our government to help. What we don’t expect is for our government to stonewall, drag its feet, or even, worse, hinder the rescue, recovery, and relief efforts. But that is exactly what has been happening and it’s beyond disgraceful. What’s even sadder still is that our politically atomized culture has developed such strongly drawn lines in recent years that we steadfastly cling to our chosen biases, refusing even to “see,” let alone “acknowledge” information which conflicts with those biases.
For example, there are numerous videos circulating on social media about the conditions in the affected area. You can find tearful expositions from deeply shocked and traumatized people, outbursts of frustration, anger, and despair, and exclamations of utter and total disbelief that help is slow to arrive or actively hindered by one or more governmental authorities. Obviously, as someone with a lifelong suspicion and distrust of authority, these claims resonate loudly with me.
As the videos keep coming out, I can feel a deep well of anger rising in my core. It’s the same type of righteous anger I’ve felt before, the same type which prompted me to write Amnesty letters, mail razors back to Gilette, boycott corporations who refused to divest from South Africa, and more. This situation is profoundly unjust, and I seriously don’t give a shit if your politics says, “fuck them because they vote for the party I don’t support.” These are your fellow citizens, your fellow human beings and they need help, not to be left to starve to death or die from lack of proper medical care. And don’t get me started on the companion, farm, and wild animals who may also be suffering.
And this is why I’m so perturbed by my former boyfriend’s seemingly insignificant little post. You see this man is a professional political operative. When I dated him in college, he was deeply involved in party politics, helping with both the election campaign of a U.S. representative for New Jersey as well as the governorship of New Jersey. He went door-to-door getting out the vote, was often at the local party offices doing whatever they needed him to do, and so much more. At the time, he was even hoping to become a politician himself. He was warm and kind and treated me well. It just didn’t work out because New Jersey politics was his priority at that time, and I knew I wanted to leave the greater Philadelphia area. We parted as friends and even met up a few years back when he came to South Carolina during the run-up to the 2016 election.
I know that he’s a party loyalist. I also know that he and I differ sharply in that I distrust politicians and the government and that he believes that the best approach is to change the system from within. I can accept that, but what I’ve had trouble accepting is situations like this where the enormity and the scope of the problem demands that we put aside party loyalty in favor of our fellow citizens who are suffering. I really, really want to go full GOT on him and shame him like the people did to Cersei. Because it is shameful. It’s despicable, and it’s so far beneath him.
So this is what I would say to him, what I am saying to him here—I know you’re a decent and loving man. A faithful man. Your father is an ordained deacon, for Christ’s sake. Literally. Don’t you dare rubber stamp a governmental agency who is doing fuck-all right now for the people of Appalachia, and don’t you dare act as if all those videos from average people detailing exactly how the government is failing them are all lies, rumors, or misinformation. At the end of the day, your political team’s victory IS NOT worth more than a single one of those people who’ve lost everything—their homes, their friends and family members, and even their lives. Not fucking one. The government is hindering those relief efforts for whatever the fucking reason and it’s wrong, so, so wrong!! Do better dude. I know you can.
- Psalm 145 (Douay-Rheims), 146 (King James Version)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_plague_o%27_both_your_houses!
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_John_Boyce
Gen X Calling 