My Name Was Matthew Blake Atkinson

“Hey! What gives you the right? To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep Mother Nature in? If God was here he’d tell it to your face, ‘Man, you’re some kind of sinner.’” Tesla What if we lived in a Democracy? That’d be crazy, right? You want a wall? Cool. You’re about $5B short. Do you want to use the same credit card you used to honor the Clemson Tigers with “hamberders”? No? Okay. We have a process for this. Here’s how it works… “Mr. President you can have your wall. You can get it the same way that President Obama got Obamacare; the way Lyndon Johnson got Medicare; the way Franklin Roosevelt got Social Security. In each case the president had a project he wanted enacted; so his administration crafted a bill. That bill went to Congress where committee hearings were held; amendments were proposed; studies were conducted that tested the cost, effectiveness etc. of the proposal; testimony was held in Congress; debate ensued and if the measure had enough support, a vote w...

It’s pretty much 2017. And if I read that aloud, my mind has trouble processing that number as anything but a year in the distant future. Because, it seems like it was about 20 minutes ago that I was going to the bi-centennial parade in Kentwood, Michigan on 7/4/76 and theorizing that I was born at just the right time to have an outside shot at living to see the tri-centennial in 2076. 41 years later, I don’t think it’s a longshot to say that I have a better chance of making it to 2076 than America as we know it has to see its 300 th birthday. I was talking to the kids the other day about a book I read in high school, “The Ugly American” and the idea that there’s a way we see ourselves and there’s a vastly different way we’re seen by other countries. Just an utter lack of self-awareness of who America is collectively. We thought shit was bad when that book was written in the 50s, but how much worse are we perceived now and I shudder to think what we'll look like in anothe...