TJ 2010 - Part 5 of 5

[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. 

This is a long, long piece written while I was in pretrial detention but is not actually notes about pretrial detention. I quite preposterously labeled it as autobiography. However, the first 36 pages are missing, and so are the years 1978–May 1982. 

This is continued from TJ 2010 - Part 4 of 5.

sch 5/4/2026] 

In the decade before incarceration, I came to believe that my ambition to prove myself to friends and family by getting to law school created the real harm to TJ and me. That if I had been more flexible with my career choices, we would have stayed together. Not much I can do with that insight at the time. However, that insight might date the beginning of a sincere disenchantment with the practice of law. That conflicted with my need for economic survival. That need meant pushing any resentments about practicing law as far back into my brain as possible,

Music stopped being so important to me as it had been with TJ. I divide my bands into pre-TJ and after TJ. I had my stereo system stolen in the autumn of 1983, and I never tried to replace what TJ helped create.

TJ was the benchmark against what I judged all other women. The cruel, the stupid, or the plain boring never got a bid. Those with kind hearts, a lively sense of humor, and an adventuresome personality were biddable. They were 5'6” or taller, and being in good shape only made them more likely. Exceptions existed on superficial things (a certain blonde comes to mind), but the substantive exceptions reinforced the rule. Even my ex-wife had comparisons to TJ.

I saw TJ three times after January of 1985. The first time was around Christmas of 1985. She was pregnant with Mike's child. (This one did not miscarry, and she should now be about twenty-four years old. Yes, time flies.) All I remember is me telling her that our lives were diverging and we would soon be strangers to one another. I made her cry one more time.

 The next time came in 1989, when TJ set me up with one of her neighbors in Florida. I flew down there. After all, who better to trust for selecting a blind date than an ex-girlfriend? I was a flop. The high point was hanging out with TJ and Mike and getting to see Pet Cemetery with the blind date. There was no sex. Nice girl, but the whole exercise degenerated from harum-scarum adventure to ponderously dull discomfort on both sides of the equation.

I last saw TJ in 1995. T2 had taken me along on vacation to Florida. I talked her into driving down to Orlando to meet with TJ and her family. We all went to eat out at a Chinese buffet. T2 was on edage. She could not understand how one could stay friends with a former lover. TJ remained her usual friendly, gracious, vivacious self. I could tell she was happy with Mike. That she was happy made me happy.

But all that came to an end. I represented Mike in a child support case that did not go the way TJ thought it should. She wrote me a letter complaining about the outcome. I read only the first page condemning me and never read any further. Like most clients, anything that went against them was the attorney's fault. Later, her oldest sister told me that TJ had told Mike not to pay child support until he got visitation, and so caused the problem. That was 1996. I never spoke with TJ again.

For all that happened, I never felt any anger towards her. Our failure was my failure. What I had with her was a respite from all the demands and responsibilities imposed by the family, or that I accepted from the family. When I let the family responsibilities intrude, there was a rift between us. Only then did peace escape me.

One memory kept recurring as I wrote this. I am walking south on the fourth floor of Ball State's old East Quad. TJ stands in the corner next to my classroom. I am in a bad mood. I had been wanting this copy of Bob Dylan's "Words and Drawings", and I had stopped by the bookstore on the way to class. TJ's brown eyes are downcast as she listens to my complaints. Then that smile that could swallow me whole lights up her face. Those big brown eyes glitter as she hands something to me. She had been the buyer of the last copy of the Dylan book. I still have that book. When my stepson tore the book's spine, I felt part of me was torn.

 [I still have the Dylan book. It is one of the few books surving my incarceration and divorce and various moves before all of that. TJ and I spoke a few times after I was released. She surprised me by knowing I had been arrested; I guess she did keep some tabs on me. I sent her an early version of my "Dead and Dying" stories, and have heard nothing further from her. Messages left on her voicemail were not returned. In the past year, or two, her phone number changed after 40 years. There is no indication she is dead, but I have no means of finding out why she went silent. It would take a personal visit to find out what happened, but I have neither time nor funds to do so. Then, too, if I did have time and money, I cannot find in myself the energy to do so; her disappearance bothers without being an obsession. Another friend gone. 

By the way, describing A- as my ex-wife makes me want to put the date of these notes to July or August of 2010.

 

 sch 5/4/2026.]

TJ 2010 - Part 4 of 5

[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. 

This is a long, long piece written while I was in pretrial detention but is not actually notes about pretrial detention. I quite preposterously labeled it as autobiography. However, the first 36 pages are missing, and so are the years 1978–May 1982. sch 5/4/2026] 

 About this time, TJ met Mike. Things were a bit tense with me being away from her for the first time in years and years. She thought I might be straying. I never had any suspicion of her until just before the start of law school. TJ and I had a date, and I came down to take her out. I stopped at Anderson to see a friend of mine, flirted a bit with this woman in his office named Michelle Moon, and then went to meet TJ. She was not there. She at Mike's. I got mad. I went back to Anderson. I wound up taking out Michelle and spending the night with her. I also spent the following night.

 I hope everyone recognizes this type of behavior does not help fragile relationships. It did not help me and my relationship with TJ.

 TJ helped me move to Valparaiso for law school. Her parents brought her up one weekend. (The last home game of the Chicago White Sox was that weekend; TJ's father was a fan.) That was the last time we were together. She was firmly unconvinced I was not chasing other females. Then I came home for Thanksgiving Break.

That Thanksgiving Break, I learned that Mom was dying and TJ no longer loved me. A good time was had by no one during that break. I was more than a bit out of my head and acted the ass.

 I gave TJ and me one more try on New Year's Eve. Mike was there when I arrived, and so I left with a promise to return. TJ was a mess. Obviously drunk and angry, TJ had taken a steak knife to her wrists. Her cousin Julie was also there. The cousin told her that her maternal grandmother had to pull me off her cousin. It did not matter to her whether this was true or not (and it was not). Julie had given TJ some pills to calm her down. Instead, TJ learned a serrated steak knife is no good for a suicide. The pills had no calming effect. By ourselves in her parents' living room. TJ started kicking at kick. For the first and only time in my life, I let someone try to hit me without hitting back. While attacking me, she accused me of sleeping with every woman I knew. I walked out at 1:30 AM on January 1, 1985, and told Mike she was all his.

 I drove all the way to Andersoncrying. I never cried that much in my life.

So that covers my life between nineteen and twenty-four. Nothing looms so large during those years as TJ. Her shadow still touches me. Those who think history does not matter need to think again.

My history to this point affected my relationship with TJ. I heard the tone of voice my Mom used when she talked about putting Dad through embalming school. When TJ offered to support me so I could write, I turned her down. I presumed that if I took her offer and the relationship soured, she would have the same resentment towards me as my Mom had towards my Dad. Hindsight tells me that it would probably have been less than the resentment I saw the morning of January 1, 1985. As it turned out, I never furnished another fiction project until almost ten years after our breakup. That project only was finished thanks to it being a collaboration. Only incarceration has allowed me to write, as TJ saw me writing.

Likewise, my relationship with TJ shaped my future relationships. Yes, Cat Stevens captured some truth in “The First Cut Is The Deepest.” (Yes, Cat Stevens did the song before Rod Stewart and Sheryl Crowe.) Cliches are truths. Live long enough, and we will endure all sorts of cliches and perhaps become one too.

After TJ, I did my best to avoid anyone seeing a husband. I made it clear that I was not looking for anything but fun. Translate fun as sex, and certainly nothing serious worked fairly well for most of the years between 1985 and 2010. That I did not always follow this rule may have been my ultimate downfall.

 Plesae do not think I did not become emotionally attached. I did all too often, but I kept my mouth shut more often than not about how deeply I became attached to anyone. Between 1985 and 2005, I proposed marriage to four different women. One rejected me out of hand (T1), and another turned me down as not being serious (LAH). Of the other two, one accepted only to change her mind after living with me (T2). After all, I did not think I was truly worth marrying. That everyone was better off after me rather than with me. TJ found greater happiness married to Mike than she did with me.

 [Continued in TJ 2010 - Part 5 of 5. sch 5/4/26.]   

 

TJ 2010 - Part 3 of 5

[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. 

This is a long, long piece written while I was in pretrial detention but is not actually notes about pretrial detention. I quite preposterously labeled it as autobiography. However, the first 36 pages are missing, and so are the years 1978–May 1982. sch 5/4/2026] 

Then I met Phyliss and did something stupid. For the longest time, I could not even mention her name for my shame, but leaving her out will render what follows inaccurate.  And it is not like my earlier embarrassments are not now wholly overwhelmed by my crimes.

Phyliss was the new and only waitress on my shift. Thing began with her when she sat in one of the bar stools and asked me for a neck rub. While I stood behind her massaging her neck, she slipped her hands towards me and began massaging my privates. Her reaction created a reaction she liked and I did not dislike. After the shit hit the fan, I said to a friend, “I was tossed a football. Was I supposed to do? Drop it?”  (The correct answer to the last question is "Yes”).

I think we were together no more than three times. It was purely about sex. Phyliss was getting a divorce or was recently divorced. (Too much time has gone by; all I have is a fleeting memory of a husband no longer on the scene.) She lacked TJ's body, being shorter, smaller, and a bit less firm. Her conversation was limited to the trivial and inane, contrasting harshly with TJ's intelligence. She thought my apartment would look so much better with a velvet painting of Elvis sums up her tastes. All she had going for her was her sexual aggressiveness, of which she had plenty. The last time we were together, she spent most of the night and left me incapable of sex with anyone for a few days. I never sought her out afterward. Never seeing her again seemed like a good thing. 

 TJ confronted me about Phyliss. Being mortified by the time we had spent together, thinking I had insulted TJ, I lied. Thereby, only postponing trouble.

We had now made it to the late summer of 1984. We were engaged again. I was bound for law school. The Islande became The Bull and Brew and then went out of business. TJ took a job at another Muncie bar. I had moved to Greentown at Dad's request, but I got down to Muncie as often as possible. It was understood we would marry the next year.

Phyliss came to work at the same bar as TJ.Phyliss let TJ know exactly what she and I had done. When confronted by TJ, I made an unwelcome confession.

[Continued in TJ 2010 - Part 4 of 5. sch 5/4/26.]  

TJ 2010 - Part 2 of 5

[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. 

This is a long, long piece written while I was in pretrial detention but is not actually notes about pretrial detention. I quite preposterously labeled it as autobiography. However, the first 36 pages are missing, and so are the years 1978–May 1982. sch 5/4/2026] 

By 1983, TJ and I had been dating for about four years. She had been with me at Grandma Downes' funeral and at Grandpa Hasler's funeral. We had gone to all of her friends' weddings but one. I had proposed to her three times. There came a day a few months afterward when we learned she was pregnant.

TJ told me her plan was for an abortion. Being brought up as I had been, I acquiesced and supported her decision. Then she told me that I was not to go along with her to the abortion clinic. She might as well have hit me with a sledgehammer. 

The night of the day TJ went to the abortion clinic, and I went to a friend's house with a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon. I also had a set of shot glasses inherited from my Grandfather Hasler. Someone had a bottle of Jagermeister liqueur. I started chasing bourbon with liqueur. Someone else showed up with beer. Wild Turkey chased by Jagermeister was chased with beer. One person suggested we go to a bar. When I expressed enthusiasm for this idea, everyone else decided it was not a good idea. They were afraid I would get into a fight. I was sure I was not in a fighting mood. My friend's wife said I broke her screen door, but I did not. I did break a glass by throwing it across the street just to hear it break.

 I had the worst hangover of my life the next morning. I left my friend's house for the next morning looking for a hangover cure and to TJ. (My best hangover cure consisted of a rare steak and an ice cold Coca-Cola; they had the effect of pushing out the poison.) I found TJ very unhappy with me. She thought I had told everyone what was going on with us. I never mentioned anything about why I was drinking so seriously. I did not tell anyone about her pregnancy and going to the abortion clinic until many, many years.

Things became ticklish between TJ and me. That I had not bought her the ring she wanted for an engagement ring caused her great annoyance. That I was saving money for the ring was unknown to her. When I bought a very cheap guitar, she broke off the engagement. She did this two weeks before I would have had the engagement ring paid off.

 We still dated. We still owrked together at the bar. I still loved her. What I did not know was that she remained pregnant.

I did not know she had not had the abortion until one afternoon in my apartment she began to miscarry. She fell to the floor, crying, and lay there in a fetal position. She was bleeding and bleeding. I made to take her to the hospital, but she yelled her insistence that her friend Kathy take her instead. So, Kathy came to take her to the hospital, leaving me to think how close I had come to killing her. She called me later to let me know that she was all right.

Sex with TJ became problematic for me. I looked upon sex with her as having injured her, of almost killing her.  The idea of me posing a danger to those I loved became firmly established in my mind.

We stopped talking about this time. No, we talked, but we did not say anything about what was important to us. I regressed at this point. TJ had broken down most of the wall I had erected around me. Now, I put them up again. Let me say here that self-knowledge does not always provide a corrective. I repeated this same foolishness with T1, T2, CC, and my wife. Let me also say that my family law experience showed me that at the bottom of almost every case was a failure of communication. All that knowledge does nothing to salve the injury caused.

 [Continued in TJ 2010 - Part 3 of 5. sch 5/4/26.] 

TJ 2010 - Part 1 of 5

[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. 

This is a long, long piece written while I was in pretrial detention but is not actually notes about pretrial detention. I quite preposterously labeled it as autobiography. However, the first 36 pages are missing, and so are the years 1978–May 1982. sch 5/4/2026] 

TJ's Mom graduated college with me. She had quit high school when she married. She graduated high school with TJ. Her mother was a sweet woman. That she will be disappointed by my recent misdeeds saddens me, even though I have not seen her in almost a decade.

I did not go to my college graduation. I have some regrets about that now, but that is probably just sentimentality considering how drunk I got the night before graduation. My graduation party was in Yorktown, with me being late. It was a tense thing, with me being late and Mom and Dad facing off. Baby sister lived with Dad by then, so did my oldest sister, who was married then, and me not living at home; the gloves were off between Mom and Dad. They were polite, of course, but that does not mean the air was not full of tension. Mom had not liked it one bit when Dad took me out the year before on my twenty-first birthday.

 I decided to take a year off before pursuing my plan for law school. The law became my goal during my first year at Ball State, but going year round since the Fall of 1979 had left me burned out on school. I took a job with one of TJ's brothers-in-law. I never got paid as much as I was told to expect. It would not be until 2009 that I missed a rent payment again. That job of working for a landscaping company ended effectively in August of 1982, and I found myself hip deep in Mr. Reagan's depression.

 A friend's mother found me a job at an Indianapolis Sizzler restaurant as a management trainee. The good thing was staying again with my Aunt Elsie, but I missed TJ and hated the job. The manager hated me. I got fired for the first time.

 TJ and I talked, and I went back to Ball State for a Masters in history. We talked about teaching at the college level, as I lacked any semblance of the patience needed for any other sort of teaching. I did not take my Masters seriously enough. If I had, I know my life would have been different. TJ, if you should ever read this, you were correct about what I should have done with my skills.

Sweet and kind, TJ had a temper and will of her own. We had our arguments. I did go out with a few other girls when I got mad at her. I spent a lot of 1981/1982 drinking Jack Daniel's with a redhead from Elkhart. Actually, we drank a lot of Jack Daniel's. What TJ never believed was the lack of sex - too much Jack and too much guilt. The redhead returned to Elkhart after telling me I was too much in love with TJ.

By the Fall of 1982, TJ had found me a job in Muncie working at a bar, The Island. I knew the place from my college years for its wet T-shirt contests. Mom pitched a fit at me working at a bar until I told her the wage was $4.00 per hour plus tips. Considering minimum wage was then a bit above $2 an hour, she muted her criticism.

I stayed with that job until July of 1984. While there, I learned a few things. I learned how much I liked dry martinis made with Absolut vodka and Rusty Nails and that I did not like being around drunks. I had my first experience with cocaine and cokeheads. (I walked into the tiny men's room to find one of the regulars standing there with a sheath knife in hand. I stopped wondering what the hell he was doing; he had cocaine on the knife blade, and he said, “Want to try some?” I decided best to do so. The bookkeeper extolled the virtues of cocaine to me with a voice sounding like she had found God. I was unimpressed, having been baptized at age seven. I was off to law school when I heard she could no longer control her nosebleeds.) I also learned how to evaluate and work with strangers in very different situations. (When I was hiring secretaries, I preferred those who had experience waiting tables because they really knew what it meant to work with the public.) I was happy to leave that job; the stress was horrible.

[Continued in TJ 2010 - Part 2 of 5. sch 5/4/26.] 

 

My Playlist (Part Three) 5/2010

 [I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. You can find everything from my pretrial detention journal that is published under the “Pretrial Detention” link under topics on the right hand of your screen.

Continued from My Playlist (Part Two) 5/2010 and My Playlist (Part One) 5/2010.

This particular journal entry has three problems: 1) I cannot find the last page, which is where I put the date it was written; 2) it is therefore incomplete, and 3) it is rather long. It reads as if I wrote it before I gave up the idea of suicide altogether; it is a sort of intellectual history written as an elegy. It follows a piece dated to 5/10/2010. So, sometime in early May 2010 seems right.

As for length, I am doing as I do with all my very long piece, breaking up over several posts.

The links are, of course, now. No internet access while in pretrial detention.

What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 11/13/2025.]

1. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
2. Reds (movie)
3. Move It On Over, George Thorogood
4. Exile on Main Street, The Rolling Stones (One of the three albums I kept playing the summer of 1982)
5. Gravest Hits, The Cramps (Second of the three for the Summer of 1982)
6. The Envoy, Warren Zevon (The third album)
7. The Glass Key, Hammett (probably read during high school)
8. Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
9. 16 Candles (movies)
10.  Streets of Fire (movie)
11. Synchronicity, The Police
12. Eat to the Beat, Blondie
13. Return of The Dark Knight (comic)
14. Howling Wolf - London Sessions 
15. Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner
16. Golden Decade II, Chuck Berry
17. Abbey Road, The Beatles
18. Glenn Miller
19. Handel's Messiah
20. Empire Burlesque, Bob Dylan
21. Sister Carrie, Dreiser 
22.  Back in the USA, MC5
23.  The films of Almodovar
24.  The Cat Who Walked Through The Walls, Robert Heinlein
25.  Cyberpunk
26. Heavy Metal (magazine) 
27. The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois 
28. The Art of War, Sun Tzu 
29. The Nation 
30. The Atlantic 
31. Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut 
32. Bruce Sterling 
33. Barrack Room Ballads, Kipling 
34. The Stray Cats [This is the only I edited; originally it was "Stray Cat Strut". I cannot countenance now that song, sch 11/13/2024.] 
35. Joe Ely (from college to now)
36. Essays, Gore Vidal
37. Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, Kurt Vonnegut (goes back to  college)
38. The Killer (John Woo movie) 
39. Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (read after my arrest)
40. Face to Face, The Kinks 

[And that is where the list ends in 2010. A paragraph was crossed out, the next page is missing, and having transcribed it from my messy handwriting to here, I am wondering why left off two items:

1.  Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker
2. William Gibson

Okay, I admit that I had gotten away from reading Robbins by 2010, but I had also gotten away from doing much reading of fiction. Then there is my putting Bruce Sterling on the list when I continued reading Gibson. Peculiar how my mind was working then (and now, and before then, but that is how minds work, right? If you look at the posts under "books" you will see what I added during my prison years. sch 11/13/2025.]

sch 11/13/2025.]

My Playlist (Part Two) 5/2010

 [I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. You can find everything from my pretrial detention journal that is published under the “Pretrial Detention” link under topics on the right hand of your screen.

Continued from My Playlist (Part One) 5/2010.

This particular journal entry has three problems: 1) I cannot find the last page, which is where I put the date it was written; 2) it is therefore incomplete, and 3) it is rather long. It reads as if I wrote it before I gave up the idea of suicide altogether; it is a sort of intellectual history written as an elegy. It follows a piece dated to 5/10/2010. So, sometime in early May 2010 seems right.

As for length, I am doing as I do with all my very long piece, breaking up over several posts.

The links are, of course, now. No internet access while in pretrial detention.

 What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 11/12/2025.]

1. The Yardbirds, Greatest Hits
2. Excitable Boy, Warren Zevon
3. The Session, Jerry Lee Lewis
4. Is She Really Going Out With Him?, Joe Jackson
5. Non-Fiction, The Blasters
6. Hard Times (movie)
7. The Sting
8. The First Saint Omnibus, Charteris
9. Star Wars
10. The Empire Strikes Back
11. London Calling, The Clash
12. Highway 61 Revisited, Dylan
13. White Album, The Beatles (this belongs higher up the list as I got it when I was leaving high school or starting college)
14. The Great Gatsby (this belongs to my Senior year of high school)
15. Playboy
16. Some Girls, The Rolling Stones
17. Axis: Bold As Love, The Jimi Hendrix Experience
18. Squeezing Out The Sparks, Graham Parker
19. My Aim Is True, Elvis Costello
20. Mott, Mott the Hoople
21. The Pretenders, The Pretenders
22. Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow
23. 1984, Orwell (high school)
24. Fahrenheit 451 (high school)
25. Brave New World, Huxley (high school)
26. From Bauhaus to Our House, Tom Wolfe
27. The Films of William Powell
28. Ran (movie)
29. Cyrano de Bergerac (This one is a little harder to date: I saw the Mr. Magoo version as a kid; then the play at Christian Theological Seminary; read the play in college; then the Depardieu movie)
30. The Rebel, Camus
31. No Exit, Sartre
32. The Wind and The Lion (movie)
33. Sullivan's Travels 
34. Rocket to Russia, The Ramones
35. Johnny Cash
    
36. Waylon Jennings
37. Hank Williams Jr.
38. Hellhound on My Trail, Robert Johnson
39. Bad Reputation, Joan Jett
40. Plays, Ibsen
41. Saint Joan, Shaw
42. The Iceman Cometh, O'Neill
43. Essays, Montaigne

[Please check out the links. To be continued and concluded in My Playlist (Part Three) 5/2010 sch 11/12/2025.]

My Playlist (Part One) 5/2010

[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. You can find everything from my pretrial detention journal that is published under the “Pretrial Detention” link under topics on the right hand of your screen.

This particular journal entry has three problems: 1) I cannot find the last page, which is where I put the date it was written; 2) it is therefore incomplete, and 3) it is rather long. It reads as if I wrote it before I gave up the idea of suicide altogether; it is a sort of intellectual history written as an elegy. It follows a piece dated to 5/10/2010. So, sometime in early May 2010 seems right.

As for length, I am doing as I do with all my very long piece, breaking up over several posts.

The links are, of course, now. No internet access while in pretrial detention.

What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 11/12/2025.]

I tried giving this to an ex-girlfriend. She never took an interest in what I wrote. The list was shorter then . The only one who took this seriously was TJ. She even tried reading The Rebel. But she was that kind of person.

Words and music. I guess you say that is what this is. I am trying to write this from early to late. My memory declines and I have distractions as I write this. If I had not chosen to ignore what I knew, had not turned my face against saving myself, I would not be prison bound.

I always wanted to know things. Now I have seen more than I can stomach. Knowledge is the first step towards wisdom, but not the only step. Do with this list as you will. I hope you will know more about me by this list.

• The Bible
• The Little Train That Could
• The Adventures of Robin Hood
• The Complete Sherlock Holmes
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• Batman (TV)
• Errol Flynn movies
• Gary Cooper movies
• Bambi
• Have Gun Will Travel
• Superman (TV)
• The Prisoner (TV)
• Poems of James Whitcomb Riley
• The Charge of the Light Brigade
• Annabelle Lee
• The short stories of Edgar Allan Poe
• James Cagney movies
• Keep on Smiling, Wet Willie
• Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding
• The Magnificent Seven
• I, Claudius
• Combat (When I was 7)
• Of Human Bondage
• The Three Musketeers (the Michael York movie and then the Dumas novels)
• Birth of Tragedy
• A History of the English-Speaking People
• British Philosophy from Bacon to Mill
• On Liberty, Mill
• The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
• Rumours, Fleetwood Mac
• The Clash, The Clash
• Desperado, The Eagles
• Wilson Pickett's Greatest Hits
• Muddy Waters Live
• Letters from Earth, Mark Twain
• Another Side of Bob Dylan
• Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
• Slaughterhouse -Five, Kurt Vonnegut
• The Maltese Falcon, Hammett
• The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
• A Family Affair, Rex Stout
• Some Buried Caesar, Rex Stout
• Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
• The Stranger, Camus
• Hamlet (that was read when I was about 15)
• Alice Adams, Booth Tarkington
• Burr, Gore Vidal
• 1876, Gore Vidal
• The James Bond novels
• The Ipcress Files, Len Deighton
• The James Bond movies
• Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan
• The New York Dolls
• John Lee Hooker
• Bo Diddley's A Twister

[And that is where I will break off for now. Putting in the links has taken time that needs put to more practical matters. To be continued in My Playlist (Part One) 5/2010. sch 11/12/2025]

James Bond - Ian Fleming Is Needed 5/11/2010

[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. You can find everything from my pretrial detention journal that is published under the “Pretrial Detention” link under topics on the right hand of your screen. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 11/12/2025.]

Anybody notice how thick they make these modern day thrillers? We got a pick collection of thrillers - John Clancy, Clive Cussler. Somebody gave me Brad Thor's “Takedown”.

So square-jawed, so clean-cut, so uber-efficient are these guys. No Sea Island shirts. Certainly no vodka martinis.

No sex, snobbery and sadism, but also lacking any questions of duty. No honorable schoolboys here.

No journeys into danger, but more like cavalry showing up just in time.to save the settlers, as we knew they would. Stainless steel jaws leading the way to the certain demise of the lousy terrorist with a familiarly foreign name.

Even Gardner turned out fatter Bond novels than did Ian Fleming. But Gardner did not write his exposition in crayon. These new boys with their word processing software seem to confuse the heft of their novels with the depth of le Carré.

I am old. I forsook any future and my eyes are on the past. I do not find Harvath [11/12/2025: The protagonist of Thor's book. sch.] anything but a danger to trees. I would like to read the last Quiller and see where Hall left Quiller. I wonder what John le Carré and Deighton still have tin them. I would like to re-read "The Man With The Golden Gun". I can imagine terrible people doing terrible things for the best of reasons. I can imagine all that thanks to le Carré, hall, Deighton, Fleming, and, most frightening of all, Mr. Ambler.

But I will finish Mr. Thor's book just as I eat the meals here: not for its taste, but because it fills the time.

sch

[11/12/25. Turns out Brad Thor wrote 13 more Harvath novels. I also found today this website on Substack: The Real Book Spy. sch.]

My Sentencing Hearing 1-1-2011

 [Since I am publishing my prison journal out of order, I decided to release this from my drafts folder, a journal entry belonging to my pretrial detention journal. I have mislaid those notes, this was found out of place in the pretrial detention notes that I have already published. If you want to read the other pretrial detention journal, just click on the link at the right of your screen for "Pretrial Detention". This has been here since 7/23/23, so I might as well get out to the public.What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 6/18/2025.]

On October 29, 2010, I was sentenced to 151 months in the federal Bureau of Prisons. District Judge McKinney agreed with the Assistant United States Attorney that the federal Sentencing Guidelines applied to me. The judge stated that 151 months would deter me and others from similar crimes. He came to this conclusion without asking me any questions.

I was deterred before I ever got into a courtroom. I would have told the judge exactly that. Of what I saw, I would like to have never seen.

My sisters reported that the law-enforcement people (one from I.C.E., and one from Hamilton County) smirked as the sentence was handed down. I did not see this. 

For some reason, I inspired a great deal of fear amongst law enforcement. The Assistant U.S. Attorney became a forensic psychologist to refute the IU psychologist's diagnosis of me being only depressive rather than anything more pathological. 

My guess is that law enforcement did not want to question their paradigm about my crimes. I think they are wrong, that maintaining their paradigm perpetrates fraud on the public.

As for deterring other, others need to know what happened to me, so they can think it will happen to them. Without publicity, there can be no deterrence.

The Indiana Lawyer published an article on my sentencing shortly after that event, but that newspaper is not read even by all of Indiana's lawyers. 

I was told The Anderson Herald-Bulletin published a piece about 41 days after my sentencing, buried on the third page, and riddled with errors. I had to explain I was not going to state prison to the person who told me of the article.

The Indianapolis Star published nothing.

If I am going to be used as a deterrent, I want to be used properly. I told the judge I held no brief for the creators of what was being trafficked in. He did even glance at me during sentencing. Since he did not even glance my way, I do not know if my statement registered with him.  People ought to know that what they are doing has serious consequences. They may be even obscuring more dangerous actors. Until they know that, there is no deterrence. 

Here is what people should know:

1. The federal government shall send them to prison.
2. The prison sentences shall be long.
3. You will be thought a monster.
4. You will spend the remainder of your life under the supervision of the federal government.

The government will not reach these people through the newspapers. The message has to be taken right into the chat rooms. Of that, it will take more work than releasing press releases touting themselves as effective crime fighters.

I think my sentencing Order and a transcript of my sentencing hearing should be online. Put links to it into the chat rooms.

Deterrence has to scare. It is very much of the legal/judicial mindset that what happens in a courtroom is known to the general public. The public has no idea what happens in 99% of criminal cases. The legal system likes to say ignorance of the law is no excuse without remembering that is a rule of evidence, wholly irrelevant to the topic of deterrence.

When I am released, I will be on lifetime supervision by the federal courts. That leaves me thinking the government really does not have any faith in the deterrent qualities of its prison system. Which then begs the question of why 151 months should deter me any more than 60 months. But those, like my other questions raised here, need to be put to the judge and the U.S. Attorney in charge of my case.

sch

[Originally published 6/18/2025, but moved to today so to fall in line with My Sentencing 10/30/2010 (Part One) and My Sentencing 10/30/2010 (Part Two). sch 11/10/2025.]

More Thoughts On My Sentencing - 11/19/2010

[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. You can find everything from my pretrial detention journal that is published under the “Pretrial Detention” link under topics on the right hand of your screen. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 11/11/2025.]

I got 151 months for transmitting and possessing illegal images. No victims, first time offender, and no pathological tendencies. Remember all of that.

I hope the transcript of my sentencing hearing will be online at some point. I suggest reading it.

I got 151to deter other people from doing what I did. Deter means warning other people what can happen if they do what I did.

The federal government did nothing to publicize my sentence. How this silence helps my sentence deter others is a question best put to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana.

Another reason for my 151 months was to deter me. Frankly, I was sick of all of what got me in trouble before I got arrested.

I will also be under lifetime supervision by the federal courts following my imprisonment. I violate that and I go back to prison.

Reading the sentencing transcript will show that there was no explanation of why 60 months (the minimum sentence under the federal statute) would deter me any less than 151 months - except that this was the minimum time under the federal sentencing guidelines. The federal prosecutor argued that the number and type of images showed I had a certain pathological condition. The forensic shrink, evaluating me, found me not fitting into any such profile. (The women who know me best have no dispute about that, but they do think I am manic depressive rather merely severely depressed.)

No one can explain why if 151 months is to deter me I am to be on lifetime supervision. Nor has anyone explained why a lesser imprisonment would not deter me when combined with lifetime supervision. You will need to put that question to not only the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, but to your Congressperson and Senators.

For anyone doing what I did:

1. The federal government will put you in prison for many years above the federal minimum sentence, without probation or home detention.
2. You will be considered to have pathological issues that make you too dangerous to be on the loose - even if there is no evidence for any such psychological condition.
3. Do not think there is any rationale to the federal guidelines other than punishment.
4. Stop doing what you are doing.
5. If you cannot stop, get mental health help.

And if you want to stop the trading of illegal images, then stop relying on the federal government. Chip in and see that information like this gets out onto the internet.

sch

[2025 looking back at 2010 sees that I omitted - or the point is in an entry now lost - that the federal government made much noise about my arrest without putting out similar publicity for my sentence. Deterrence requires publicity. Raising an agency's profile to rake in more funds from Congress is achieved by making loud noises about the agency's activities. I do not mind being used to deter - it justifies the sentence I served and even more so, I saw more than enough ugliness that I would happily see its transmission stopped . But being a poster boy for why ICE should have gotten more funding is its own sort of ugliness - a self-justifying fraud that I do not wish to be a part of.

As for my life under supervised release, do take a look at the right-hand of your screen and go down to where there is a list of topics. “Supervised release” is one of those topics. You will find how useless it is and how I have been living since my release.

No one trained in psychology has found I fit within the psychological definition of the mentality that is interested in children. That has not mattered one bit to the court. They are beholden to what I hope is a superstition, or to the fear of political backlash. Otherwise, I fear they are projecting their own fantasies and/or their predilections onto me.

sch 11/11/2025]

My Sentencing 10/30/2010 (Part Two)

 [Continued from My Sentencing 10/30/2010 (Part One). I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. You can find everything from my pretrial detention journal that is published under the “Pretrial Detention” link under topics on the right hand of your screen.… Even more confusing, this seems to have been sent to KH, and I wrote another piece on my sentencing. The original, handwritten notes are 8 pages long. I am splitting this piece in two, and will publish the latter, second piece directly after this. In these entries, I am rather blunt about my crimes; the squeamish may want to go read something else. One last thing, I have edited some words because I found after I got my monitoring software that certain words blocked access to my blog; these have been altered. My sentencing hearing was 10/29/2010. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 11/09/2025]

I expect my only complaint with the court to be a complaint for many months. The court thought my sentence would deter others. It might if anyone in the chatrooms ever were to know about it. You know about the tree falling in the forest and no one there to hear it. Just as the cops could think they had earned their pay, so with the judge. He could think by saying my sentence could deter others that others would be deterred.

 I wish the judge were correct. If I am to be used as an example, then I wish to be used properly. I have written that often enough since I began writing these pieces, and my thinking remains the same. More on this in a moment.

I never got to say anything in rebuttal to the police officer. I already looked bad and dangerous, and I think my lawyer feared me also appearing mad. 

If you read what else I write here, and what I have written here, you will know more about me than did the court.  Too not judge the judge too harshly, he did the best he could with a moral leper.

If you are playing with illegal images online, you need to know this:

1. If caught, you will be looking at 10–20 years in federal prison.
2. The more pictures you have, the worse things will be - get rid of all of them now.
3. Whatever you say online will be used against you as being the real you.

If you want to stop illegal images, then do the following:

1. Post a link to this article in the adult chatrooms, and every other adult chatroom known to you. People there do not know how much trouble they could get into. I say scaring them with reality will get rid of the dilettantes and maybe some of the others. Maybe, then, my 151 months will have a deterrent effect.
2. Go into the Yahoo adult chat rooms and flame the one with obviously dangerous names. Give them no place to stay.
3. Likewise, report those names to Yahoo (and whatever other chatrooms you know of).

If I am to be an example, then use me. I can then, also, do something the federal sentencing guidelines give no opportunity for me to do: make atonement. Judge McKinney was correct in saying what I did could lead to harm to another. This, I never intended. Anyone reading all that will appear shall know that. But intending no harm does not also mean not correcting the harm caused, and that's atonement. I apologize beforehand for making the request, but I cannot act myself, and 2022 is too late to start. Please help get the word into the adult chatrooms.

At some point, I hope someone can afford to obtain my sentencing hearing transcript so it can also be posted online and its link to be pushed through the adult chatrooms. This is the way to effectively fight illegal images on the internet.

sch

[2025 talking to 2010. No one published either part of this note. It just did not happen. I am not even sure it was read. Too much raw pain was inflicted in me, and stuff like this only made it worse. So, 2022 did not come too late. Whether 2025 is too late is a question you need to answer. I believe in what I was written in 2010 - the government claimed deterrent effect without actually acting to effectuate that deterrence. That annoys me still - being used as a deterrent with without any intent to do so feels like I cooperated in a fraud perpetuated by the government. Do what you can. Thank you. sch 11/10/2025.] 

My Sentencing 10/30/2010 (Part One)

 [I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. You can find everything from my pretrial detention journal that is published under the “Pretrial Detention” link under topics on the right hand of your screen.… Even more confusing, this seems to have been sent to KH, and I wrote another piece on my sentencing. The original, handwritten notes are 8 pages long. I am splitting this piece in two, and will publish the later, second piece directly after this. In these entries, I am rather blunt about my crimes; the squeamish may want to go read something else. One last thing, I have edited some words because I found after I got my monitoring software that certain words blocked access to my blog; these have been altered. My sentencing hearing was 10/29/2010. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 11/09/2025] 

The sisters, one niece, two of my friends and CC appeared for my sentencing hearing. We started late. The government did not like the report that the report that I was not a p*dophile. They introduced the photos, and one of my arresting officers testified. Much to my lawyer's disappointment, the judge gave what I expected to receive - 151 months in federal prison and a lifetime of supervision by the federal court. I am now a villain.

The government used the number, and content, of the photos to paint me as a creature of various virulent propensities for evil. I never thought I would ever appear so distinctly horrendous for these reasons. Once upon a time, I thought my loutish bad temper would make a horror of me. Add to this the online dialog I had and my going to meet what was an allegedly a 41 year -old woman (and whom I correctly suspected was a cop) were the nails in the coffin.

The judge bought the idea that I was a predator. My 151 months serves to deter me from further crimes. I assume the post-imprisonment supervision for life serves the dame purpose; registration as a SO, not to be where children are unsupervised children, not to be around adults with children without announcing my status, no viewing erotic/nude/pornographic images, and lie detector tests to complement everything. I am not sure how giving the federal probation officer veto power over all my credit purchases for years has much to do with anything.

Those of you playing around online need to consider this: the bullshit you put out online will be taken as reality in a courtroom.

Those of you trading in illegal porn: the more you have, the more dangerous a person you become to the government. My attorney argued (as in Dorvee and other cases) the computer enhancement ought not apply. The judge thought the federal sentencing enhancement for using a computer should still apply. His reasoning was that it made my crime easier. I think his reasoning, novel, had a point, and adroitly sidestepped the issue.

Having more than 600 images made me out to be a very sick puppy. What no one said anything about was how 600 images in the days of broadband were not comparable to 600 images in the days of dial-up. I never knew I had that many. I only knew I had more than I cared to see.

The judge also gave a very good reason for all this severity: my transmitting could easily influence the weak-minded into committing acts of child abuse. This is much better than the reasoning put forward by the probation officer. She wrote in my pre-sentence report that my actions created a market for illegal porn. Considering how many of the images I did see were duplicates, there does not seem a market for creators as much as one for recycling. The judge hit the mark, the moral mark, in my opinion.

According to my younger sister, the officers snickered and smirked wile I gave what I called my eulogy at my own funeral. But the one officer who testified proved a point of mine: their investigative techniques will catch the suicidal and the stupid (those having read these notes know I thought of myself as being in the first category, and they would have me in the second). I gave them my passwords to Gigatribe and Yahoo with enthusiasm. The officer testified that they failed because those trading in illegal porn want child porn sent tot them first. No one asked why I did do this.

There was a third site where I was in full loathing of where I was and what I had seen. When they [the cops] appeared on yahoo, I assumed they were cops. I wanted to get caught. The cops questioned nothing. They got a villain and could cash their pay checks with a good conscience. That they were no closer to the producers of the filth went unnoticed.

[I intended to keep any comments to the end of Part Two. However, even after 15 years I remain angry about one item that appears here. I gave ICE and the officer from Hamilton County my passwords so that they could get access to who I was dealing with. They could have used this information as probable cause for searching the internet accounts of the people I knew on Gigatribe and Yahoo. The officer testified also that this information was more generally useless. I continue to believe their not using this information indicates their incompentence, their wanting arrests to make publicity that would get them funding without doing any real work, or a combination of the two. Continued in My Sentencing 10/30/2010 (Part Two sch 11/9/2025.]

PPPS 9-24-2010

[ I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. You can find everything from my pretrial detention journal that is published under the "Pretrial Detention" link under topics on the right hand of your screen. This was from a letter sent to KH.  What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 11/08/2025] 

 I finished Garp. In 25 minutes, Dad will be here. Not sure I can handle this at all. Between the book and knowing this will be the last time I see him, it feels like death.

I am thinking Irving may be the best thing we have going. Read Garp. The death of Walt was too much for me.

I am getting ideas about the Great America Novel. And about America. I want to get back to writing. Terry always said I had terrible timing. 

I also have been thinking about Fitzgerald. Maybe I can live long enough to prove American lives can have a second act - or even a third. I hope you can stick around for the next twelve years.

Working title for the next novel - America Eats Its Young. Only a working title, as I am stealing it from Funkadelic. America hate making America violent. There can be no great American novel because there is no real America - it changes by geography and by times. America always reinvents itself - no history.

sch

 [This is 2025 commenting on 2010; this is 65 looking back at 50. I still think John Irving is underrated - not the belle of stylist's ball - that will be Pynchon or DeLillo or McCarty (who would've been in the future from 2010). I think it is the best novel for anyone wanting to be a writer. The novel that had its roots in 2010 is still being worked on in 2025. Yes, it was the last time I saw my father. He hugged me. I do not recall him ever doing that. He died in 2018.

In 2010. I knew the Funkadelic song by its title only - definitely a fecund title - but for you and thanks to YouTube, here is the song:

  sch 11/08/2025]

Apologies 9-24-2010

[ I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. You can find everything from my pretrial detention journal that is published under the "Pretrial Detention" link under topics on the right hand of your screen. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 11/08/2025] 

Before going much further, I need to make several apologies. 

To my father and mother - for dishonoring them. I hope what I write may make up for some of this.

To my family - sorry for letting down my end and embarrassing all of you.

To my friends - I apologize for not living up to your hopes and for not confiding just how nuts I was.

I am just sorry for having been so much a bother. i write with the hope of saving someone repeating my mistakes. Live well. 

 I claim no control over what is published here. I can say I knocked off maybe 2,000 pages, which could be published here. The subjects run from explanation to atonement, from the personal to the national. I ask only that you understand them as part of this apology, and the apology atonement for a misspent life.

sch 

Purposes - 3/20/2010

 [ I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. You can find everything from my pretrial detention journal that is published under the "Pretrial Detention" link under topics on the right hand of your screen. 

This is the earliest piece that I have found - so far. I changed the title to better deal with my monitoring software. It was written about 2 weeks after my arrest.

The idea I had fifteen years ago was to make this public at the time of writing. No willing collaborators were found. They may have been correct in the short run. It was writing - trying to understand what I had done, why I had done it, and what was coming my way when I changed from original, self-destructive intentions. I leave it to you to make the decision, if it should have been published in 2010, or even now.

I think the new title better fits the subject. 

What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 11/11/2025] 

 Some may not know that I am under arrest by federal authorities for sending illegal images. Well, I am.

 I have been released on my recognizance to an Indianapolis facility, where I am on lockdown. Lockdown, meaning I leave the facility only court approval.

I started writing about what and why I got myself in this position. I think I owe many, many people an explanation.

Confessions are good for the soul, but I am not sure how interesting confession makes a story. I avoid most confessions because the usual theme is "woe is me". I promise no whining, no self-pity.

 If I can help others avoid problems that led me to prison, then stripping myself in public serves its purpose. Atonement and penance remain constantly in my mind.

Not sure how often things will be published. I ought to have enough for a daily read, but the actual publishing is being done for me. Having enmeshed friends and family, I cannot dictate a publishing schedule.

As well as confessions, I may also add things that have been on my mind that I want to say. It looks like I will be in prison for the next 14 years. Which means I better say what I have to say and not worry about recrimination. I know if I survive prison, I can never go home again.

sch

[2025 talking to 2010: he was still looking for some way to kill himself at this time. What delayed action was finding a means that would be definitely fatal. He had not had much luck with that up to this point. The conversations that would turn him him from suicide to just waiting on his COPD were in the future. In the next month, if memory serves. Certainly within the next 6 weeks.sch 11/11/2025.] 

What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear - 11-13-2010 (3)

 [Continued from “What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear — 11-13-2010 (2)”. sch 8/25/24.]

The federal government has had power concentrated in it from states shirking their duties to the states' citizens. The conservatives are correct that the federal government was never designed to be a general government, but Democrats and Republicans have both found useful expanding federal power. Federal incompetency as a general government is readily apparent, just as we offload more local concerns on Washington, DC.

This dumping has its costs. The least important costs are economic. I heard complaints about business regulations, but a national economy requires national regulations. Yes, businesses lose money in taxes, fines, and energy. Then, too, there are the costs incurred by the federal courts and agencies for enforcing federal regulations. 

Then there is the cost of creating an opposition to the centralizing principle. Concentrated economic power opposes concentrated governmental power. 

Puzzle over why those opposing economic regulation favor expanding the criminal jurisdiction of the federal government.

You stand on the verge of an interesting time in America. I have removed myself from participating in the times ahead. The future belongs to you. Americans can fix their constitutional problem, or continue using them for partisan politics to gain a political advantage. Maybe by the time these notes see the light of day, The Tea Party will devolve into another group just trying to feather their nests. 

I think we have the ability to avoid de Tocqueville's soft despotism, as well as the harsher types developed since his time. I do not know how much longer we have before we find our constitutional flaws creating a breakdown that will eclipse that of Weimar Germany.

sch

[Well, you have not only not fixed the constitution's flaws, you have let them get worse. You have passed the interesting times into a time when your freedom is at risk by electing a wannabe dictator. Great job.

I realize I left out the greatest cost incurred by states in transferring responsibilities to the federal government. The states have lost much of their capacity to govern in a way that helps the widest swathes of their communities.

De Tocqueville's original chapter can be found here. 

sch 8/25/24.]

What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear - 11-13-2010 (2)

 [Continued from “What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear — 11-13-2010 (1)". sch 8/25/24.]

I wish President Obama had better explained the economic benefits of healthcare reform. We could keep putting health care on the backs of Big Business — the cost put them at a disadvantage with foreign competitors, they employed less and less of the population. Then, too, sick people do not help the economy. Small businesses cannot compete with jobs that provide health care. 

National healthcare seems to create the governmental dependence deplored by de Tocqueville. However, the economic life of American citizens in 1840 is not comparable to today. Surely no one wants a return to an era when early death was commonplace — not any more than we want to trade places with the residents of Mumbai or Zaire. Liberty concerned de Tocqueville, and government inaction can also threaten liberty.

The Declaration of Independence contains the standards by which to judge our government. Government is to protect our equality in the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our state constitutions almost all incorporate the Declaration into their Bills of Right. Protecting those rights faces an ever increasingly technological and economic complexity of our world.

It may well be that complexity has long outstripped the power of our state governments. The New Deal recognized the failure of state governments in the face of The Great Depression. Federal dollars and their power came to the rescue. No one questioned that power during the Cold War other than conservatives like William F. Buckley Jr and Goldwater. They did not address how the states and the federal government were to work in the face of a modern economy. When Ronald Reagan came along, he had no problem using federal power to further conservative goals. 

sch

[Kind of smells like conservatives only like what they can use, regardless of ostensible ideals. To be continued in “What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear — 11-13-2010 (3)”. De Tocqueville's original chapter can be found here. sch 8/25/2024.]

What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear - 11-13-2010 (1)

 [Note to the reader, I read my original opening and wondered how I came to the conclusion that de Tocqueville feared a tyrannical bureaucracy. The opening quote was, “But it would seem that if despotism were to be established amongst the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them….” Conservative Republicans and their patrons in the business class find the administrative state oppressive by cutting into their profits to protect the public good. I cannot say now that my reading of de Tocqueville is correct. Instead, I start with my second paragraph. sch 8/25/2024.]

I believe that Newtonian physics applied still to politics. For every action, there is a reaction. People may love equality and conformity, but there is a limit to that love. As Henry Ford learned, people want more than black cars. People will eat Big Macs, but Burger King will make it your way.

We also have a history that de Tocqueville lacked. We saw the gray, dullness of Soviet life, punctuated by fear and depression. Furthermore, we know the outcome of totalitarian equality.

We have seen the equality of fascism and Nazism — imposed by nationality and ethnicity and fear.

We know where we do not want to go and where we should not go. But we must also recognize human nature has not changed since de Tocqueville's day. People will value security over democracy. Ben Franklin said something like that. We would do well to remember that when we seek out leaders to save us from ourselves. [I think I skipped over a transition or a premise back in 2010. History shows us the freedom promised by autocrats falsifies its security. Its security is the security of the slave. Nietzsche railed against the herd instinct of democracy, only it is belonging to the security of the democractic herd that we have a truly just security. Those who say only a strongman can keep us safe want not justice but power over you. sch 8/25/2024.]

Too many of us live in the badlands. We struggle paying our bills. Who will not be tempted into wanting security — even if it means giving up your liberty? We had economic security in my childhood because General Motors had no competition. In my middle age, we have allowed a concentration of wealth and capital, and a fleecing of the middle class without any social benefit. We entered the Information Age years ago with the working class awaiting the return of unskilled factory jobs. The President has been raised to the level of secular savior. We live in a country where de Tocqueville's fears of despotism may come from the billionaire class.

The business cycle once broke established wealth in favor of new money. The capital demands of new businesses are great just as capital gets scarce. Small businesses fund a huge amount of the American economy. They also lack the organizational funding capable of gaming the American political system. All this passed by de Tocqueville because Big Business will not exist for decades after he published his book. Large numbers of workers working in large factories are as dead as the dodo. Nor have our politicians truly explained how we must fill the holes of economy with small businesses left by the demise of the old industrial model. What we got was the service economy.

sch

[It seems to me a lot of what I wrote here still applies in Muncie. I have worked with people who wax nostalgic about the loss of General Motors jobs. Educational levels are high school or GED, mostly. There are no calls from on high are heard extolling the virtues of higher education. There are even more signs of the billionaire class directing the government for their benefit, rather than the general good. The one thing left us is the ballot. 

To be continued in “What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear — 11-13-2010 (2)”

sch 8/25/2024.]

That Amongst The European Nations Of Our Time The Power Of Governments Is Increasing, Although The Persons Who Govern Are Less Stable - 11/12/2010

I cannot see much here of contemporary interest. For those wishing for a Christian government, this should be given serious thought:

... Nor do I hesitate to affirm, that amongst almost all the Christian nations of our days, Catholic as well as Protestant, religion is in danger of falling into the hands of the government. Not that rulers are over-jealous of the right of settling points of doctrine, but they get more and more hold upon the will of those by whom doctrines are expounded; they deprive the clergy of their property, and pay them by salaries; they divert to their own use the influence of the priesthood, they make them their own ministers – often their own servants – and by this alliance with religion they reach the inner depths of the soul of man.

That Amongst The European Nations Of Our Time, The Power Of Governments Is Increasing, Although The Persons Who Govern Are Less Stable

This chapter brought to mind how de Tocqueville mixes democracy (politics) and capitalism (economics) together. In this chapter, he writes about the rise of industrialization and corporate capitalism. 

It must be admitted that these collective beings, which are called combinations, are stronger and more formidable than a private individual can ever be, and that they have less of the responsibility of their own actions; whence it seems reasonable that they should not be allowed to retain so great an independence of the supreme government as might be conceded to a private individual.

This got me thinking about how in 1840 we are entering a new period of economic development and I see that applied to Europe, also. 

...As a nation becomes more engaged in manufactures, the want of roads, canals, harbors, and other works of a semi-public nature, which facilitate the acquisition of wealth, is more strongly felt; and as a nation becomes more democratic, private individuals are less able, and the State more able, to execute works of such magnitude....

Travel to Metamora, Indiana to see how Indiana to see how Indiana invested in canals and the state's return on investment. (Likewise, Indiana has a state park located at New Harmony, Indiana.) The railroads killed the canals and pushed forward heavy industry.

I wish I had the ability to double-check on American development during this time. Within ten years, America would have its war with Mexico and a gold rush and began hurtling towards the Civil War. The revolutionary generation was extinct (or so close not to matter) by 1840.

It may well be that technological and economic complexity leads to the need for concentrating power centrally rather than merely a democratic impulse. Soviet Russia industrialized via centralized control without a trace of democracy. Modern Singapore has a successful capitalist economy without much of a democracy. In the end, all roads lead to more government.

The question remains what it was for the Framers of the United States Constitution: how to regulate government power to minimize the inevitable abuses of that power.

sch

[I have always thought the separation of state and religion saved religion from the taint of worldliness. This is a remnant of my American Baptist upbringing, but it is also proven by history. Check out the Papal States, modern Iran, or modern Saudi Arabia. Christian Nationalism imperils religion, not save it. sch 8/25/2024.]