Where We Are This Week

Marriage, Americans' new cult hero, and let's get physical at the capitol!

Well after the sun had set behind the Cumberland Plateau, I came around the corner to find my wife patiently following our daughter as she marched confidently through yet another venue.

The way my wife turns and smiles at me as our one-and-a-half-year-old struggles to climb up one of the white wedding chairs - belly first is how I’ll remember the last 18 months of our lives; perpetually in awe, amusement, and in love with with our little girl and each other.

It’s hard to believe that at 21, I was able to make a decision that would so profoundly shape the course of my life. I possessed neither the wisdom nor the maturity to be making those sorts of calls, yet, I owe a great debt to my younger self for putting the wheels in motion.

So, there we were at someone else’s wedding finding it impossible not to think of our own.

A friend of mine that I used to work with at the bicycle shop was getting married to his fiancée. I remember when they first started dating. I remember when his beard was short, and when she was jobless - and when we were all young enough that unemployment didn’t really matter. I remember when they moved into the house in which they’re currently living, and I remember when he bought a tandem mountain bike for the both of them. Now, I’ll remember when they tied the knot.

It’s a special thing to watch love develop and mature, and it’s truly a delight to watch a couple of friends take part in traditions like exchanging vows with each other and a first dance - both of which they executed flawlessly.

So, my family spent the evening catching up with a friend of ours and apologizing for the standoffish nature our toddler displays to every stranger she meets. On the way out of town, my wife remarked how differently we’d be anticipating the evening’s events if they were taking place only a few years earlier. There would be fewer children in attendance and the party would almost certainly take a few more prisoners.

While the guest list may have added a few new names and we’ve all learned to exhibit a little more restraint, the thing that we’re celebrating has always remained the same. Here’s to the young couple. I hope the couple of words you said to each other last weekend will bring you as much happiness and fulfillment as they’ve brought me over the last eight years.

Keep doing, keep living, keep loving.

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Let’s Get Ready to Rumble

I can hear it now. “Ladies and gentlemen, iiitttttt’s tiimmmeee for the main event! Fighting out of the red corner…”

Fighting for the middleweight championship of the United States Congress is Kevin McCarthy, the former belt-holder, and the unranked Tim Burchett of Tennessee. It wasn’t a match any of us had anticipated - much less wanted - but it’s the one we deserve. I expect it will only be a matter of weeks until the contract is signed, the card is set - I really hope the undercard has an Omar v. Boebert fight - and Bruce Buffer will be calling the names of our great leaders in the octagon.

That’s a pay-per-view for which I’d shell out the $70. I’m perpetually two weeks behind professional combat sports because I’d go broke paying for every main event. But I’m not complaining, the mere fact my wife watches the cards with me is a coup in itself.

Okay, if you don’t know what I’m referring to, I’ll catch you up. There was a massive brawl in the halls of Congress this week. I mean fisticuffs. No, I meant a dust-up. No, what I really meant was an aggressive game of schoolyard tag. While giving an interview to NPR’s Claudia Grisales, Tim Burchett lurched forward as if the amusement ride he was on suddenly stopped as one Kevin McCarthy slid behind him.

Burchett claims that McCarthy elbowed him as he passed by. McCarthy, disappointingly, says he did no such thing. The Tennessee Republican, who voted against the former speaker, then responded to this great act of violence by chasing McCarthy down the hall, demanding retribution.

Later, Burchett spoke to CNN saying that McCarthy’s attack was an unsanctioned move “because it was a clean shot to the kidneys." UFC ref Herb Dean won’t allow any funny business like this come next month’s title fight between these two, I guarantee it. "I raised my voice to him,” he continued. “I thought it was appropriate and you just don't expect a guy who was a one-time three steps away from the White House to hit you with a sucker punch in the hallway.”

So which one was it, Burchett? Did he elbow you or punch you? Megan Rapinoe might have her own thoughts about the existence of God, but, for me, the fact that there’s no video evidence of this altercation is proof that divine intervention is only reserved for the prophets.

Some of you may be dismayed that grown men are quarreling like schoolchildren on the playground. Put yourself in their shoes though. I once had my Zapdos hologram Pokémon card stolen from me at recess; I was fighting mad. I wonder which card Burchett stole from McCarthy.

Rumble in the Rotunda

I’m not upset with their behavior at all, in fact, I want more of it. Let’s finally dispense with the notion that these are serious people doing serious things. Our politicians used to fight over things like slavery. In 1858, a brawl broke out on the congressional floor that involved over thirty members of the legislative body; the skirmish was over whether or not Kansas would be admitted to the Union as a free or slave state.

Of course, there were similarly petty conflicts in our nation’s great and checkered past like the fatal duel between Alexander Hamilton - who was Vice President at the time - and Aaron Burr. Worst case scenario, the McCarthy-Burchett surprise attack inspires another Lin-Manuel Miranda musical, best case scenario violence breaks out writ large amongst our elected officials.

What used to be a noble and dignified service has been reduced to the backstage antics of a WWE program. Our fights used to have substance, now, our politicians hurl elbows and insults over bruised egos.

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Osama was right?

Alright, fellow Americans. This one is a real head-scratcher.

Over the past 48 hours or so, a new trend has gone viral on TikTok. Terminally online gen z’ers and millennials have discovered Osama Bin Laden’s 2002 Letter to America.

Most people would read this direct address to the American government from the man who perpetrated the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor - only later to be eclipsed by January 6th, obviously - and think to themselves, “all right, still evil.”

But no, not the TikTok generation. Not the generation who has no living memory of 9/11 yet has grown up in an era utterly defined by the events of that day. I was a child when the towers fell, but even then the oft-cited motivation of ‘they hate our freedom’ didn’t quite add up for me. As you grow up, you begin to understand these things don’t happen in a vacuum, but still, when I learned the broader context of Bin Laden’s motive, I never once thought that the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent civilians was justified.

The Guardian opted to remove Bin Laden’s letter from their website as it was fast becoming its highest-trending article on the site. Accompanying the widespread interest in a letter that’s been published for over 20 years - and available for everyone to read - was the shocking trend of TikTok influencers and viral videos with hundreds of thousands of likes expressing their sympathies for the Al-Qaeda frontman.

Users were reading his two-page explanation for why American citizens were culpable for their government’s actions in the Mideast and how ‘Jews have taken control’ of the economy and made Americans their servants, and came away agreeing with the mass murderer. Such is the state of an entirely too large swathe of the American public.

I’m the first to criticize the foreign policies of the American government and I find many of our actions and goals reprehensible. However, I’m not asinine enough to suggest that America has had a net negative impact on the world and that a few thousand New Yorkers had it coming. But, this is where we are.

It seems as if my generation and our successors are only able to live in the black-and-white binary of good guy or bad guy. So, when some grain of context finds its way onto their plate, they’re unable to integrate into the entree or the side, ruining the whole meal.

The reason why Bin Laden’s Letter to America has struck such a chord with people I think it’s safe to say he wouldn’t have found very agreeable is a simple one. In some strange Nostradamic vision, Bin Laden tapped into the post-modernist train of thought that would come to dominate the American and Western Left of our modern era.

In the letter, which you can still read here, Bin Laden criticized the American government as imperialists, polluters, occupiers, and oppressors. Does that language sound familiar at all? He also called for Americans to cease to tolerate the moral blight that is homosexuality. It’s funny how that line hasn’t been picked up on during his letter’s recent virality.

Bin Laden accused the Jews of being colonizers and that Muslims are the true inheritors of Moses - yeah, okay - and that America and its Jewish overlords are responsible for imprisoning the Palestinian people. Ah, yes, now, we’re back full circle.

That confusing morsel of context must have been reconciled the moment these imbeciles read the word Palestine. As we’ve seen with the ever-evolving 21st-century Left, they’re increasingly reluctant to call Hamas a terrorist organization - have you seen Piers Morgan’s exchange with the ex-leader of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn? - and uncomfortable with the notion that a ‘minority’ or ‘marginalized’ people can do any wrong.

So, when reading Bin Laden’s letter, they recognize him speaking to the archetypal climate activist, ‘resistance fighter’ and proto-woke millennial. The rhetoric is at once familiar and appeals to their incoherent world beliefs. Bin Laden’s rhetoric was anti-American and pro-Palestinian in the exact same way we’ve heard thousands of anti-Israel activists shout in the streets since October 7th. Ergo Bin Laden was right.

This, of course, isn’t the first time a mass murderer will have been made a cultural icon of the Left. Like Mao and Che Guevara before him, Osama Bin Laden’s face will soon come to grace the t-shirt of the American disaffected teenager; defiant, disillusioned, and righteous. To quote John Lennon, “But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.”

Looks like it’s time to update those lyrics.

To a better next week.

Cheers,

~FDA