My wife took a ski lift up the rocky mountains for a girls trip this weekend, leaving me alone with a certifiable kitten, a needy pup, and two apathetic cats. I find being alone more difficult now before I met my wife. Sure, I longed for companionship, but when one has prepared for eternal solitude (never sniffing marriage/partnership/companionship) well… You learn how to pass the time rather than skydiving off a bridge. You read Jonathan Franzen’s How to Be Alone at the park with a six pack. You take long walks across neighborhoods and listen to long-form podcasts. You write pointless blogs like this one.
The days, weeks, months, and years since December 19th 2019 have been the best years of my life, and while I hoped for a life like this I honestly did not believe it would happen for me. Having spent years thinking I would end up alone, and preparing as such, I should have the tools to lean back on during brief periods of isolation (one would think). I look around the house like Vincent Vega in the morning wondering “what now?”
Maybe it’s boredom, a state I abhor, and my wife seems immune from. I wouldn’t say I’m bored often but seems to find me… frequently. I get too caught up in questions of purpose and what external and internal voices call for me to do with my day. What are my reasons for doing things? I think I should workout but I don’t fucking feel like it, nor desire to. Full disclosure, I detest “working out” and physical activity in general. I do enjoy long walks, alone, with my headphones in. Summers in Texas however might cremate me without an urn.
So how do I pass the time when my wife departs for brief periods of time? I scroll through the half dozen streaming services I have looking for anything I might take a chance on trying. Weird how the ubiquity of entertainment makes it less desirable to be entertained. The 90’s and 2000’s were better days when we had a mono-culture and simply less of everything, scarcity.
Well, why don’t you do [FILL IN THE BLANK] and [FILL IN ANOTHER BLANK], or [YET ANOTHER THING YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO]. Why? Cuz fuck it, that’s why? I don’t wanna do any of things. But I don’t know what I want to do. I know I want to be with my wife. Or my friends who I all live in California.
Why don’t you make new friends? Cuz I don’t wanna. I like my friends. Also asking other strange men to get up to speed on your weird as quirks sounds scary and an unreasonable expectation. What you realize, in loneliness, your only friend is yourself. The only thing I can find to pass the time are my own crazed thoughts, thinking about things only I seem to care about. Even if I had my own friends here, they would not give two shits about why Gerald Ford was and continues to be a damn important American. Only in my own mind can I deeply consider the former president’s and discuss his vitality to today’s politics.
Yes, the man was as square as they come. A classic republican through and through. I am and remain a registered Democrat, despite the party being a complete embarrassment, weak, and completely in the wilderness politically and in the minds of most Americans. I vividly recall my position on the future of politics on November 7th 2016, the day before the election. Donald Trump was going to lose to Hillary Clinton badly. We had just had 8 years of Obama where had inherited a almost fully collapsed economy in 2008 and by 2016 had turned the whole country around in a positive direction. The Republicans appeared as rutterless as the 2025 Democrats. Republicans were supposed to be in the wilderness for the next decade.
But as we all know, that’s not what happened. The Trump years have taught us Americans don’t require civility nor chivalry in their public officials. Americas prefer strong and wrong over woke and anti-common sense most of the time. I feel comfortable saying this as liberal-registered-democrat living Texas, Americans don’t care about wisdom anymore. Both parties, both ideologies, don’t care about foresight. Neither party, neither ideology, wishes to find compromise in writing the laws of the land, forget about fucking unity. Forget about public service and doing the people’s work.
We miss Gerald Ford. We need voices like his. Gerald Ford was very obviously who he was. There were no secrets about who the man was. He was a Republican, and I am not. 10 years ago I thought the man a joke-pie wrapped in the squarest of boxes, but today, in the context of two separate Donald Trump presidencies, this country desperately needs a healer, someone honest and willing to take responsibility, but most importantly an individual who sees public service as a divine duty. Gerald Ford worked for his fellow Americans and was damn proud to serve.
Write It When I’m Gone dives deep into the life and mind of Gerald Ford and his thoughts about Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, the Clintons, Dick Cheney, and Congress. In his private conversations Ford reveals how deeply troubled he was with loss of civility beginning with Newt Gingrich in the House. In regard to Reagan, Ford told author Thomas DeFrank “he was not what I would call a technically competent president” and criticized Ronny’s lack of knowledge of the budget and foreign policy. This scrutiny came not from just Ford’s opinion but from other foreign leaders who shared their concerns about Reagan’s lack of detailed information and generally his detached and disengaged style of government. Ford called balls and strikes about ole Reagan, and everyone else.
While thinking highly of Bill Clinton, Ford honed in on Clinton’s weakness in foreign policy and “skirt at any of the social occasions.” Clinton’s failures to quickly intervene in the Yugoslavian Civil War, particularly in Bosnia, stood out to Ford. The consequences and legacy of the wars remain present in my mind. I have met many of those displaced from that war throughout my life, both in Denmark and in the United States. Clinton missed an opportunity to help quell tensions but also help move the region out of its soviet and communist past into a new future. I’m no expert on this matter but looking at the conflicts created by Putin’s Russia today perhaps if the United States had better intervened in the earlier their influence may have better shaped the region.
Now, back to the “skirt” and Clinton’s dogging. “I’m convinced that Clinton has a sexual addiction. He needs to get help – for his sake.” Not a statement I would expect a former president to ever state for the record, dead or alive. While Ford detested Clinton’s personal behavior, he abhorred the fact Bill would not admit he had lied and perjured himself. This was a deep dishonor and an erosion of the office which serves the public. Clinton personally asked Ford for help after his impeachedment. Just like his decision to pardon Nixon, Ford correctly requested Clinton admit his lie and admit perjury. True to his self-serving self Clinton replied “I won’t do that, I can’t do that.”
It’s quite easy to argue Ford lost to Carter simply due to the fact he pardoned Nixon. Now, I understand Americans being upset at the time with the decision. I was upset with Biden at his own hypocrisy pardoning the middling idiot Anthony Fauci and seemingly the entire Biden clan. However, if Nixon had been allowed to go on as a citizen without a pardon we now know Leon Jaworski, special prosecutor of the Watergate scandal, would have investigated Nixon, indicate, tried him, and ultimately convicted Nixon to jail. Years and years would have been spent on the new trial of Richard Nixon. Both Ford and the country would have been mostly focused on this issue while the country was suffering economically and the C0ld War still marched on. Ford rightfully pardoned Nixon not because he was friend, colleague, and fellow republican, but so that the country could move on, heal, and he could do the work of his fellow Americans.
This lesson and the many lessons from Ford ought to teach us how to move forward as a country and look back at our recent past mistakes. Do I personally like Trump? No. I have never nor would I ever vote for him. But putting him through multiple persecutions was a mistake. Not understanding the state of the country in 2015 through today is a failure of the media, journalists, historians, Democrats, and for most of all myself. I failed to see and feel current wave of the country. Looking back on history and living in Texas has helped me really understand the pulse of this country. Write It When I’m Gone though really took my understanding to a new level.
Disaesthetic 