Two Days in the Life of Mookie Betts

It was late July last year or early August, when the Red Sox were long out of postseason contention and the autopsy notes were beginning to roll in, that a strange and oddly beautiful wave of optimism began to ripple through Red Sox nation. The season was lost, but the young guys were playing well. They were playing really well. They were making plays. They were winning games. They were playing better than they had the year before. If players like Jackie Bradley Jr., Xander Bogaerts, and Mookie Betts kept improving, and the Sox figured out a few other things (Hanley Ramirez, Pablo Sandoval) and filled a few gaps, this team could be pretty good. Maybe even really good.

And then, over the course of the off-season, pre-season, and the first few weeks of the regular season, it all came together. Hanley Ramirez moved to first base where he is clearly much more comfortable. David Ortiz's announced retirement and slightly diminished work load has re-energized his bat. Dustin Pedroia is healthy again. The Sandoval problem kind of worked itself out. Acquiring Kimbrel allowed the Sox to get another year out of Koji as a set up man. And Stephen Wright was able to hold the rotation together while Joe Kelly and Edwardo Rodriguez got healthy, David Price worked out a problem with his mechanics, and Clay Bucholz finally, finally, finally proved his does not have a spot on the rotation. (The pitching is still obviously the weak spot, but it's not so weak to keep the Sox out of playoff position.) Even moving Swihart to left field seems to have worked out.

And those young guys who seemed to be making progress suddenly became three of the best baseball players in the world. You could pick nearly any game in the last month and a half and odds are JBJ, Bogaerts and/or Betts did something remarkable, but, even with the Bogaerts leading the world in batting and JBJ's hitting streak, Mookie Betts on the last day in May and the first day of June was special.

Lead-off hitters are supposed to excel at a couple of very specific skills; get on base any way they can, see a lot of pitches to drive up the pitch count, and get into scoring position in a wide range of scenarios. In some ways, perhaps the most important skill for a lead-off hitter is the ability and aptitude to go from first to third on a single. Which means lead-off hitters tend to be faster and smaller than anybody else in the line-up and certainly smaller than the power hitters in the third, clean-up, and fifth spots. At 5'9”, 180lbs. with great speed, Mookie Betts fits that physique to a T. And thanks to good old fashioned physics with its force and mass and acceleration and whatnot, that physique is not the best for power hitters, who tend to look like David Ortiz (“husky” as one might say), Alex Rodriguez (linebackeresque), or Ken Griffey Jr., (tall and lanky). In short, lead off hitters aren't selected to hit for power.

So, it was something of anomaly when Betts absolutely crushed his lead-off home run on May 31, 2016. And it was downright weird that Betts crushed another home run in his second at bat in the following inning. Multiple-home-run games are uncommon, but not that uncommon, but two home runs in a row out of the lead-off spot is. By the second inning, Betts already had a remarkable game. But remarkable turned to historic when he hit his third home run.

No lead-off hitter for the Red Sox has ever hit three home runs in a game. The Red Sox were founded in 1901. Let that sink in for a moment. In the 115 year history of the team, on which played some of the greatest players in the history of the game, no one had ever done what Mookie Betts did on May 31, 2016. But what was even more impressive about the third home run is, by then, the Orioles had caught on that Betts can hit inside pitches. So they were pitching him outside. His third home run was an excellent pitch to the high outside corner, a difficult pitch to hit with power for even the bruisers in the middle of the line up and Mookie Betts crushed it too. And he wasn't done.

The game was pretty much decided when a fly ball was hit off Robbie Ross, Jr. (the Robbie Rossest Robbie Ross that ever Robbie Rossed a Robbie Ross) into shallow right center field. The camera follows the ball, leaving Betts out of the frame for a moment. With Dustin Pedroia and Chris Young running after it, it looks certain to be a bloop single. Then Betts re-enters the frame. It looks like he's about a mile away from the where the ball is going, but then that mile is gone in a blink and Betts is Superman sliding. Already flat on the ground, he catches the ball and slides right between Pedroia and Young. Lead-off hitters don't hit for that kind of power and right fielders don't make that kind of catch. It left Jerry Remy, who's only job is to talk about baseball, speechless. You could make an argument that Mookie Betts put on one of the greatest single-game performances in baseball history on May 31, 2016. But he wasn't done.

He lead off the very next game with a home run. And then, because a few minds hadn't yet disintegrated under the splendor of his performance, he hit another home run in his second at bat. No player, in the history of baseball, had ever lead off with a home run in each of the first two innings two games in a row. But if it was the catch that propelled his May 31st performance into the stratosphere, his second home run made his June 1 the stuff of legend.

In some ways I don't blame, Wright, the opposing pitcher for trying to do something, anything, to make sure Betts didn't hit another home run. I am 100% certain his manager or coach told him to make Betts uncomfortable or perhaps “brush him off the plate a bit.” And I think that, as a professional pitcher in Major League Baseball, there was almost no chance for an actual injury to Betts. But in the moment all I thought was, “That fucking asshole just threw at Mookie's head.” If it is possible to joyfully brandish the dancing double-bird at someone, I joyfully brandished the dancing double-bird at the Wright when the camera cut to him as Betts was rounding the bases.

It's one thing to hit three home runs in a game. It's another to hit three home runs in a game out of the lead off spot. It's another to hit three home runs in a game out of the lead off spot and make a breathtakingly graceful catch. It's another thing to hit three home runs in a game out of the lead off spot, make a breathtakingly graceful catch and hit another lead off home run the next day. Mookie Betts and the Red Sox came back to Earth relatively quickly from this little streak of magic. The weaknesses in the pitching staff showed themselves again with Bucholtz being moved to the bullpen, Kelley apparently in need of a few more rehab starts and Rodriguez oddly shaky in his first start back.

But it's another thing entirely to hit three home runs in a game out of the lead off spot, make a breathtakingly graceful catch, lead off the next day with a home run, and then crush your second home run in as many at bats after the pitcher threw one at your head. At the end of May and the beginning of June, Mookie Betts put on one of the greatest baseball performances we are likely to see.

How We Got to Trump

There are a lot of potential lessons from the rise of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president and, given how the Republican establishment is falling in line to support someone they very recently told us was unfit for the job, it looks like many of those lessons will go unlearned. Perhaps the most important of the lessons, at least in terms of potentially improving our political discourse in the future, is how a Trump candidacy can even fucking happen. As much as Republicans, Trump voters, and some currents of the media would like us to believe that Trump is sui generis or a fluke or the result of an historically weak Republican field, he is the result of a long political process, one that has consequences far beyond the human parody now leading the Republican party. Understanding that process is the first step, both in preventing a Trump presidency and in recreating a political system in which future Trumps are impossible.

McCarthyism & the Red Scare

I don't think the idea of “real Americans” was born during McCarthyism and the House Committee on Unamerican Activities, (I'm sure there is a brilliant doctoral thesis out there about the idea of “real Americans” and how that idea has moved and changed and manipulated political discourse in our country.) but it was during the Red Scare that the traits of the “real American” began to include being a Christian living in a small town (rather than one of those out-of-touch big cities), who believed in capitalism (rather than in socialism or any of its possible forms). Furthermore, this is when actors, writers, and university professors were all summarily barred from the “Real American Club.” Given how it has defined populism, America has always had a fraught relationship with its public intellectuals, but it was here with McCarthy that the very act of intellectual exploration, or the development of intellectual talents, awareness, or resources, became inherently suspect. Essentially, this was the beginning of the end of nuanced, intellectual, and truth-seeking discourse in the public mainstream media.

The Southern Strategy

In the city of codes, the dude who just fucking says it, rules. I feel like there should be some bodily punishment for every Republican who refers to their party as “the party of Lincoln.” With the Southern strategy, Nixon and his allies sought to capture the racist southern Democrats who were alienated by the Civil Rights movement, by, well, by turning the Republican party into the party of racists. But, of course, no one said that. Instead, over time they developed a whole system of codes and policies (e.g. The War on Drugs) that disproportionately affected African Americans and other minorities; a system of codes that is easily transferable to whatever non-white group Republicans in power can blame for America's problems. All Donald Trump did with his racist nonsense was stop talking in the Republican code.

Morning in America

The American century from 1870-1970 saw the greatest increase in overall standards of living in human history. A combination of technological advancement and federal economic management essentially created the middle class, the single-income family, and retirement from the wreckage of the Great Depression and World War II. Really, the only white people who weren't substantially better off in 1970, than they had been in previous decades, were the rich oligarch assholes at the head of so much of society's previous misery. (Of course, they also benefited from the technological advances so it's really, really hard to argue they lost anything anyway.) Obviously, they weren't going to take their slight diminishment of power sitting down. And so, though the stagflation and general malaise of the 1970s were really just a blip at the end of unprecedented century and nothing that couldn't be fixed by some energy independence, rich assholes used it as an opportunity to dismantle the wealthiest and most equitable (for white people) economic system the world had ever seen.

Politics has always been an emotional game, but I believe it was here, with Regan's “Morning in America,” where a candidate ran on the idea that everything would be fixed if we just had the right person as president. Trump's success right now is almost entirely based on the idea that he'll just fix things because he's a good leader and we have Regan to thank for that. (Oh, and pretty much all of our current economic problems, but this piece isn't about those.)

Bill Clinton's Triangulation

It's one of those ideas that makes perfect sense: if you listen to both sides of an argument and take a position roughly in the middle, you'll get a lot of people to agree with you. Shit, you might even stumble into a good idea or compromise while you're at it. And by “makes perfect sense” I mean, “reveals politics as a shell game of shifting power structures that has nothing to do with fighting for the best policies.” In some ways, after losing so much political ground to Regan Republicans, Bill Clinton's triangulation wasn't a bad idea for winning back the White House and stemming the tide of conservative legislation. Unfortunately, rather than triangulating with him after his re-election, Republicans simply moved the center rightward. In the short term that meant Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the Defense of Marriage Act, Welfare Reform, the continuation of the drug war, the further dismantling of financial and consumer regulations that were such an important part of past growth, and, lest we forget, the George W. Bush presidency.

In the long term, this lead to an overall shift in policy towards the right (despite a population that is actually fairly liberal when their opinions are broken down issue by issue), while hamstringing the more liberal members of the Democratic party who suddenly found themselves radicalized simply for saying the same things Democrats have been saying since FDR.

The Myth of the Liberal Media

There was never a time of unbiased media. Though most did their best, journalists are human beings and their own biases and opinions are naturally going to color their reporting in some way. That said, there was a time when, despite the problem of bias, journalists at least tried to present objective truth to the public. Now, thanks to conservatives who kept ending up on the wrong side of the truth and Fox News, journalism consists of stating a few unassailable facts and presenting two opposing opinions about it, as if those opinions carry the same weight, whether rigorous critical analysis and research would reveal those opinions to have equal weight or not.

So many people, through little fault of their own, end up believing that utter bullshit is true, or, at least has enough truth in it to confirm their bias. Furthermore, we've now reached a point where the mainstream televised media doesn't seem to know how to critically explore an idea, topic, or policy, in a way that moves towards the truth. (It should terrify us, that comedians like John Oliver and Samantha Bee, seem to be the only one's who have figured out how to do in-depth reporting about a topic.) To put this another way, because we are no longer allowed to present a liberal truth without a side of conservative bullshit, mainstream media (which includes Fox, of course) is no longer capable of revealing Trump's bullshit.

McCain Picks Palin

As destructive to our democracy and our political process as all that other shit was, we still might not have Trump if it weren't for Sarah Palin. By selecting her as his running mate, John McCain legitimized a fringe-faction of the Republican party, while also legitimizing the anti-intellectual, totally myopic image of the “real American just speaking her mind.” In a way, Sarah Palin completely changed how we discuss the idea of being “qualified to be President.” Palin was so far beyond the idea of being qualified to be President that she very nearly undercut the debate about qualifications entirely. And, of course, without Palin there is likely no Tea Party.

The Tea Party Lies It's Face Off and Wins

Not a single thing the Tea Party “revolution” was based on had any shred of truth to it. We need to remember that. Not one fucking thing. We have the Tea Party because for one mid-term election, American voters bought a ton of bullshit about death panels, birth certificates, and the tyranny of getting health insurance. It wasn't just that a section of the population got particularly angry about a policy they didn't understand and then voted for a bunch of like-minded individuals; it's that Tea Party leaders and the Republicans who enabled them lied to the American people and the media let them. Since then, the Tea Party has become entrenched in Republican politics and shifted the Republican party far more to the right than maybe it has ever been, to the point where it is actively and unapologetically undermining the functioning of government.

Of course, government is still functioning and Barack Obama is still doing things, which, to those who believe in the Tea Party, means the Republican establishment is failing them. Hence, the destruction of John Boener's career. It's only natural then, that of the field of choices, Republican primary voters would choose the one posturing as the most extreme anti-establishment candidate.

How We Got to Trump

So how did we get to Trump? In short, white supremacism as a political force never went away it just hid itself in codes and we have removed critical discourse from our political process that reveals the racism and nationalism in those codes. I know there is a temptation to blame both sides for a political problem and though Democrats and especially Bill Clinton were involved in laying the ground work for Trump, the responsibility for his candidacy is not equally split. In short, Republican and conservative ideology is wrong, has been wrong for decades, and looks like it's going to be wrong until it finally dies. Sure, there are Republicans who offered substantive input into our political process and, sure, the Republican aversion to taxation and regulation can create important debates about the role of government and the efficacy of federal involvement in the economy and society, but, as a political ideology, social-conservatism and supply-side neoliberal economics are factually bad for the citizens of the United States of American and, well, human beings in general.

In order to keep getting elected despite being wrong, Republicans had to cater to racists, create wedge issues and litmus tests, wave the bloody American flag of shouted patriotism in a time of endless war, leverage the worst traits of organized religion, and become the lapdogs of the wealthy while preventing the rest of the country from learning just how much of their bullshit is bullshit. Given that Trump has four bankruptcies, a litany of failed businesses, is currently under investigation for fraud, would have as much or more money if just didn't mess around with what he inherited and still gets away with telling us he is a successful business, his nomination really isn't a surprise. Trump and the modern Republican party are a perfect fit.

Books for the Weird Kids

I was reading Jesse Ball's forthcoming novel, How to Set a Fire and Why and a phrase flickered through my brain, “This is the perfect book for weird kids.” Once the phrase hit me, the list followed. Not all of these books feature “weird kids” as protagonists and only one or two of them were written specifically for young adults, but I think all of them touch on the bravery and creativity that I think define the idea of “weird kids.” So, thanks to the book that I hope will finally make Jesse Ball the international literary superstar that I think he deserves to be, here are some books that are perfect for the “weird kids.”

How to Set a Fire and Why by Jesse Ball

Lucia's father is dead, her mother is essentially catatonic in a mental institution, her elderly caretaker aunt is just barely scraping by, and she is far, far too smart for her own damn good. A sharp wit, an aversion to the bullshit society asks of us, and exactly zero fucks to give, Lucia is your new favorite character. Though Lucia is very much a teenager—Jesse Ball does an excellent job not forcing adultness on her—it's a few moments scattered throughout the book where her insight breaks through the adolescent doldrums to reach profoundly human, and yet realistic insights or phrases that makes this book so special.

Every brilliant book Jesse Ball writes I think will finally bring him the fame that he deserves. Given that How to Set a Fire and Why is Ball's most realistic and straightforward work, with YA crossover potential that still maintains the sense of wisdom, radical politics, and wonder that defined his early works, and an intoxicating narrator I think this might finally be the book.

Lord of the Barnyard by Tristan Egoff

John Kaltenbrunner is a genius of self-sufficiency. From a young age, he has the knowledge and the aptitude to run his family's farm without any help from the outside world. His is a genius that makes the rest of society (maybe even civilization) irrelevant to him. There are few things society hates more than being ignored and so all the forces of school, government, and religion converge on a young John Kaltenbrunner to take away everything that was important to him and crush every resource he once used to sustain his independence. His farm is taken and he gets sent to jail.

When he returns to his hometown, he ends up on the lowest rung of society that can be occupied by a white man; garbage collector. (Among other things Egoff does brilliantly, Lord of the Barnyard confronts directly the classism and bigotry of our still severely stratified society.) But he eventually gets his revenge by organizing a garbage collector strike that results in massive city-wide riot that is one of my favorite scenes in all of literature.

The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace

Grace Krilanovich's novel of drugs, drifting, and language is the thinking goths vampire novel. This dark and moody novel is drenched in language and imagery and manages to portray it's drug-addicted drifting hobo vampires beautifully without glorifying them. (Romanticizing, maybe, but it's not like Krilanovich is the first to romanticism marginalized lifestyles. Actually, now that I think about it, that's pretty much the entire point of the Romantic movement.) In a truly just world the phrase “The Orange Eats Creeps,” would be scrawled on the inside of locker doors as a code to fellow travelers all across the country.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

A lot can happen when you start a band in high school. It could be your foot in the door to the music industry, or lead to fame the long way around, or create nothing more than some good memories of thrashing on instruments in a garage and dreaming of far more than your talent and/or work ethic could ever accomplish. But none of it can happen without that first spark, that first whatever it is you feel in your bedroom or in the back of your friend's car, or during gym class or whatever, that lets you imagine you could be doing something else. You could be in control. You could express yourself. You could be exploring fashion and identities. You could discover yourself. You could be an artist.

Egan's masterpiece is about a lot more that just the music industry and its style looks forward to the next great movements/developments in English language literature, but, with all of its wide ranging brilliance and stylistic innovation, A Visit from the Goon Squad is about that spark that keeps the goons of time at bay.

Flight by Sherman Alexie

No other book I've read so perfectly captures the contradictions and complexities of adolescent male anger and how that force, often most mysterious to the young men who feel it, can lead both to tragedy and to growth. The protagonist, Zits, is about to shoot up a bank, but in the instant before he makes the biggest mistake of his life, he goes on a vision quest in which he inhabits the bodies and minds of people across history.

Ultimately, what Zits discovers is that there really is no such thing as an “individual,” just moments temporarily sliced out of the continuum of human life and human decision by the limitations of perspective. Zits discovers he is a part of something that stretches back in time and, if he stops himself now, forward into the future. And Alexie does an amazing job of communicating those ideas through the diction of a teenager, making this one of the books I often recommend to teenagers. And it even has a happy ending.

How I Became a Nun by Cesar Aira

As a rule, Aira writes weird books. Some of the weirdest in fact. How I Became a Nun starts when a sour tasting cone of ice cream leads to a murder by arsenic poisoning. (As happens.) Naturally, that leads to the impossibility of identity and gender in centralized power structures.

There are many things that Aira does well as a storyteller, but, perhaps what he does better than everyone else is maintain a tense but perfect balance between rational techniques for storytelling and utter batshit insanity, so that it is often impossible to tell when a scene has transitioned from realistic to flat out bonkers. Whether they feature weird characters or not, all of Aira's books celebrate the freedom and fun of being weird.

I Await the Devil's Coming by Mary Maclane

Maclane was the first queen of that magical, wondrous, rainbow dedazzled kingdom of not giving a fuck. A literary sensation and scandal when she was alive, Maclane was an amazing cross between Fredrich Nietzsche and Annie Oakley, with a dash of Whitman and Dickinson's impossible love child. I Await the Devil's Coming is something of a memoir, something of a journal, and something of a manifesto. Maclane herself became one of the first sexually open, feminist superstars, with this debut book selling 100,000 copies in its first month. (So naturally, the patriarchy did their best to erase her from our cultural memory.)

Her prose can be raw, even desperate as she dreams of a freer life than the one she leads in Montana, but despite its volatility, her prose is also intelligent and perceptive. If Lucia from How to Set a Fire and Why came to Porter Square Books, I'd give her I Await the Devil's Coming. McClane is the patron saint of everyone looking to leave this shit town to become a fucking legend.

Geek Love by Katharine Dunn

And, of course, a list of books for weird kids wouldn't be complete without Katharine Dunn's classic. To me, the important idea in Geek Love, at least for this list, is that “normalcy” and “freakishness” are constructions. Whether it's through breeding experiments or the accumulation of social mores or the calculated and intentional marginalization of identities that threaten homogeneous power structures, the ideas of “normal” and “weird” are movie sets, creations that can be built, torn down, replaced, and modified both at the societal and the individual level. Once you see that, and weird kids do see that, the world of potential identity and experience opens up before you.

I was weird kid adjacent growing up. Though I hung out with some of the artists, started a lit mag (that had a shockingly long life), took AP classes, and dabbled in one-act theater, I also played football and hockey and felt comfortable being and looking like an affable cisgendered straight white man. My parents even supported my dream of being a writer. Which is a long way of saying that, though I had my adolescent struggles as everyone did, I never learned the bravery that weird kids learned.

Given that bravery, is it any surprise that weird kids make our art, design our fashion, drive our culture, and invent our great technological breakthroughs? We clearly learn something when socially and sometimes even official outcast from society, something that can help us grow into the world's most successful and important adults. Perhaps the title of this list is something of a misnomer then. I hope that there will be comfort in these books for the weird kids now and maybe even some pride. But I also hope those of us who weren't weird, either by choice or by social pressure can get a lot of out of the books as well. I hope we can see how valuable those risk-taking kids really are to our world, how much joy and beauty their weirdness adds to the world, and perhaps even, try out a little of that bravery for ourselves.

Packing for Paris

I leave for Paris tomorrow, so I have been doing a fair amount of planning of what I want to bring. As a reader and a writer, that means I've spent most of my time trying to figure out what books and projects to bring along with me. (I'll handle the clothes and other incidentals later. I mean, the flight doesn't leave until, like, 8 or something.) Packing, as a reader, is all about balance. You never want to be stuck without something to read and you don't want to pay the extra fee for having too heavy of a bag. Furthermore, you need to leave at least a little room for the books you are going to buy on vacation, because, let's face it, you're going to buy books on vacation. Paris poses an extra problem, because along with being one of the great walking cities, eating cities, and drinking cities, it is also one of the great sitting cities which naturally leads to being a great reading and writing city. So, with all that in mind, here are the books and projects I'll be bringing with me to Paris.

BOOKS

The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley

Eventually, I'll find myself back in my hotel room winding down from a long day of coffee, cheese, wine, and walking, and I've always found big old critically acclaimed fantasy epics relaxing to read before I go to bed. Hurley's series has come highly recommended by a number of people I know who read more fantasy than I do, so the first volume was a natural fit. I've also, already read about half of it and have really enjoyed it so far, so I know it's a safe bet for the nightstand in the hotel.

Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson

Anne Carson is a genius. That's just science. Eros the Bittersweet is her exploration of the idea of of “Eros” in classical literature and all the ideas of language, metaphor, and storytelling that grow out of that exploration. Though the content is challenging, the book is organized in relatively short chapters, so it's easy to incorporate into a coffee-sit. You can read a chapter, look up, watch the people around you, talk, stash it back in the satchel to take with you to a park, read another chapter, rinse and repeat.

How to Set a Fire and Why by Jesse Ball

I love Jesse Ball and the galley of his new novel is the perfect packing size. Furthermore, as I as was chatting with another bookseller at Porter Square about my upcoming trip she said something to the effect of, “It's nice to start something on a trip." I don't entirely know why this was a compelling argument, but it was. Also, read more Jesse Ball. 

Paris Vagabond by Jean-Paul Clebert

My original packing list was just the three books above. For reasons lodged in the mysteries of consciousness, I wasn't particularly motivated to read a Paris-themed book in Paris. But then I was shelving at Porter Square and came across this fucking thing. I mean, just look at it. I mean, according to the jacket it was “embraced by the young Situationists as a kind of manual for living off the grid.” What the fuck else was I supposed to do? I'm not made of stone.

PROJECTS

I'm not setting any goals and I'm not sure if I'll do any writing, but as with reading, I don't want to find myself inspired to work and not have anything with me. Furthermore, Paris has been so important to so many English-language writers, including some of my heroes (Joyce and Stein), that it would feel almost sacrilegious to go to Paris without a notebook and a few drafts. Also, if you're curious what I'm working on, well, here's your answer.

Side Project A: The Biography of Alisoun

This is a novel that (at the moment) will be composed of two distinct parts. The first part, which is the one I'm working on, is composed of vignettes of varying length and set at varying times in the titular character's life. The second part will be (at least at the moment) a linear narrative of a particularly dramatic series of events in Alisoun's life. (Chaucer fans will take note of the spelling.) Because it's told in vignettes this is a really handy side project because I can basically write about whatever is in my head at the moment I feel like writing for as long as I feel like writing about it. Though I do have some vague hopes and goals, the current state of this project is very much anything goes. Which makes it perfect for hanging in the satchel while I wander around Paris. Also, in case you can't see from the picture, this was the notebook I got for attending the sixth Winter Institute.

Draft of a Chapter from the New Novel

Specifically, the “Coyote Casablanca” chapter if that makes any sense or is in any way intriguing. I decided I didn't want to bring my laptop so made sure I had drafts that I could read and edit if I felt so moved. This way, progress doesn't have to stop completely on my novel. Furthermore, drafts can be easier to pick away at if motivation comes in little bits and bites and fit a lot better in my satchel.

Draft of Short Story: "The Morning Skate"

Because the first thing you think of when you hear the word "Paris" is “Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.” This actually began life as a chapter in an essentially abandoned novel. I've been chipping away at it for a few years now and I think I'm almost done. It's about a youngish, sports journalist, working on a feature-length story about his home town's junior hockey team. One of the reasons I like to juggle a lot of different writing projects is that I always want to have something to work on, regardless of my mood, energy level, or ideas. And packing a bunch of drafts is a lot easier than packing a bunch of notebooks and a laptop.

Draft of a Short Story, "The Summer Slip"

This is actually a story my father started that I'm going to finish. It's about a family opening their summer camp for the first time after the patriarch and grandfather of the narrator died. They struggle a bit early on to remember all the steps to getting the camp ready for the summer, which they eventually connect to the idea of “summer slip,” the stuff students forget over the summer. It also features of a short collection of classic Lewiston Quebecois swearing. I purposely set this draft aside a few months ago with the intention of letting it rest for awhile.

The Satchel Notebook

Everything else, should there be anything else, will go in the catchall satchel notebook.

Why Moderate Republicans Are 2016's Most Important Voters

Though it certainly can happen here (especially if Hilary Clinton is the Democratic nominee and she runs her general election campaign as if she is entitled to the presidency, which I don't think she is going to do) I don't think Donald Trump can win a general election. Right now, even as the front-runner, he is not winning over the majority of Republican primary voters and given his national unfavorability rating, his lack of support from the Republican establishment, and the fact that he's a fascist, I think there is a good chance he is already close to his ceiling for support. Furthermore, the relationship between the electoral college and America's shifting demographics stacks the deck for whoever the Democrat is anyway. This doesn't mean a Trump presidency is impossible (hold on, let me swallow that vomit back down), but I think it is still relatively unlikely.

But it is not enough for Trump to lose. Trump losing to Clinton (or Sanders) 47% to 53%, as Mitt Romney did to Barack Obama, means that Trump is a legitimate candidate. A 53/47 tells us that Donald Trump was the legitimate representative of the Republican party. A 53/47 loss tells the world that the United States is capable of making Donald Trump the most powerful person in the world. A 53/47 loss means we'll go through this all again in four years, whether in the form of second tries by Trump himself, Cruz, or Rubio, or Chuck Norris, or some radical demagogue who hasn't become a celebrity yet, and all of them will emulate the radical, hateful, fascistic techniques that got Trump so close to the presidency.

It is not enough for Trump to be defeated in November. The unprecedented candidate must suffer an unprecedented defeat. It must be 60/40 at least, but 65/35 would be acceptable and 70/30 better. Only then can we prevent this year's catastrophic carnival from happening again in four years, and only then can we prove to the world that we actually can be trusted with the power we have.

And that kind of landslide requires moderate Republicans voting for the Democrat. There is a lot that Democrats can do to inch those numbers up. An effective ground game, a compelling campaign, the fear of a Trump presidency, along with unusually high turnout from largely Democratic demographics could get us to 55/45 or maybe even 58/42 if all of those new voting restrictions don't mess things up too much. But even that's not enough.

To prevent another Trump, there needs to be a significant Republican defection. We need to show ourselves and the world that we can get beyond the little letters next to a candidate when we need to prevent the election of a fascist. And that responsibility falls to moderate Republicans.

Of course, Trump is not sui generis. His candidacy is the natural, even logical, endpoint to a decades long process that could be traced at least back to McCarthy's Red Scare, through the Republican Southern Strategy, Bill Clinton's triangulation, and the Tea Party of 2010.

It is important to remember how the Tea Party came to power. They were elected in 2010 on a platform built almost entirely on misunderstandings, misrepresentations, lies, and fear. They told us Obamacare would destroy the economy, cost American jobs, rob us of our medical freedom and, I don't know, make it illegal to enjoy a big old ice cream cone on a hot July day, and absolutely none of that is true. Furthermore, they ran on the promise of repealing Obamacare and not only did they utterly fail to do that, they made absolutely no progress developing a legislative structure for the repeal, building a viable alternative, or proposing reforms with a chance in hell of being passed. In the process, they shut down the government, played chicken with America's credit rating, ended the political career of John Boehner, and, in general, ground legislative progress to a halt. Donald Trump is just the Tea Party with a few extra filters off.

So, not only is it important for moderate Republicans to vote for the Democrat in the presidential election, if they want to have a legitimate political party for the foreseeable future, they will need to kick out the Freedom Caucus legislators, who both, set the stage for Donald Trump and have been abject legislative failures, both in terms of policy and procedure (I think at least) and in terms of their own campaign promises. And with the radically gerrymandered districts (more on that later) the only way that will happen is if moderate Republicans who are currently represented by Freedom Caucus legislators vote Democrat.

And then there's that whole thing about radical gerrymandering. The same collective freak out over Obamacare that drove the Tea Party into federal government, drove the Tea Party into state governments. The result has been radical gerrymandering (49.15% of Americans voted for a Democrat in the house, compared to 48.03% who voted for Republicans in 2014, so that 33 seat Republican majority is....democracy?), a coordinated attack on voting rights targeting largely Democratic demographics, the spiteful rejection of Medicare expansion, and an obsessive war on reproductive rights, all while generally wrecking their states' budgets (school systems, water supplies...) through reckless tax cuts. Dwight D. Eisenhower would not improve. (Hell, Richard Nixon might not even approve.)

If moderate Republicans are truly serious about taking their party back from the radical fringe, all they have to do is lose big in 2016. They can then rebuild the party from there.

I know there is still a good chance Trump will not be the nominee, but honestly, this principle holds for any of the other current options. Ted Cruz believes he is on a mission from God, Marco Rubio has proven himself to be utterly incapable of functioning in high pressure situations, Paul Ryan's policies live in a Randian fantasy world, and somehow John Kasich might be even worse, especially on women's issues. Given what the Republican party has become, how they have let racism, cheap power grabs, and radical strains of Christianity infect their party, the only responsible thing for moderate Republicans to do in November is hold their nose and vote for the Democrat.

There is a lot that Democrats and liberals can do to beat Trump, but, ultimately (unless there is truly miraculous voter turnout), that just treats the symptom, not the cause. The power to truly stop Trump, not just the person, but the political concept, rests in the hands of moderate Republicans.