Finding Out What the Words Meant

250 years ago today some folks didn’t just jot down some words, they wrote something bold enough to get them killed, and then they signed it anyway.  It was not a plan, it was not a policy, it was a belief and they would spend the next 8 years of war finding out what those words really meant.  Or as Thomas Paine put it at the time, "these are times that try men’s souls."   Words like “All men are created equal”, “endowed with certain unalienable rights”, and “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.  And right alongside them, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”, and “right to alter or abolish”.  And they needed to explain why, “long train of abuses and usurpations”, and “design to reduce them under absolute despotism”.  And then, at the end when words weren’t enough, “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor”.

The Declaration of Independence is a hell of document, and I would encourage you to take the time to go and read it again, or for the first time if you never have.   It was a break from the status quo… a refusal to go back.  It was an absolute refusal to continue to accept the inherited systems, we were no longer willing to do things the way things had always been done.  A declaration, with a metaphorical exclamation point that power comes from the people, not the rulers.   The declaration did not build anything.  It simply said that we believe in something different about how power should work. 

And then we had to figure out how to live with it.  Because believing in something is one thing, but once the shooting stops and dust settles, belief does not actually run anything, let alone a country.  It does not resolve conflict, it doesn’t balance power, and it damn sure does not account for the fact that people are well, people.  And people come in good flavors, bad flavors and indifferent flavors.  

Belief can inspire folks, it can unify them around a cause and it can even win a war.  But belief cannot govern anything.  And John Adams understood that too, writing to Abigail after independence day was approved, "I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these states."  The ideas were inspiring.  Living with them will be expensive.

So, they were left with the much harder problem.  Not just defending the idea, but building something that could survive, something that was durable over time.  Something that could take all of that inspirational language about equality, rights and consent and turn it into a system of government that could hold together over time, under pressure and in the hands of imperfect people.  

And here’s the thing, that work did not end in 1787.  The Constitution was not the finish line.  The Constitution was really just the starting gun for a new argument about what those words in the Declaration actually meant.  Over the last 250 years we have debated them, tested them, expanded them, ignored them, defending them and on way more than on occasion, we have fallen short, well short, of the inspiration.  While the words remained the same, we the people were the variable, the wild card in this grand experiment we call a country.  Any old school engineer will tell ya the same thing, the system diagram is usually the easy part.  The unpredictable variable is almost always the human standing next to it.

Time is funny that way.  It has no interest in what sounds good on paper.  Give an idea enough years and enough real world pressure, and it eventually reveals itself, kind of like a diamond – time and pressure.   Every generation gets handed the same box of parts.  The names change, the technology changes, the fashions definitely change.  The questions, however, stay remarkably similar.  What does freedom mean?  Who gets included?  How much power is too much power?  What do we owe one another?  None of us get to skip those questions, not if we are serious about searching for that more perfect union.  We just inherit them, wrestle with them for a while and then hand them off to those in the next generation who they themselves are seeking that more perfect union. 

I’ve spent a lot of time this year pondering on the difference between understanding something and carrying that thing.  Some lessons come from books, some from teachers or mentors, and others that just show up, whether invited or not.  Losing my Beautiful Bride taught me that.  There are words I used my whole life, love, commitment, partnership, grief and loss.  I thought I understood those words.  Then one day I found myself carrying them instead of defining them.  It turns out there is a tremendous difference between understanding a thing intellectually and actually living it.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if that is what happened between the Declaration and the Constitution.  A group of folks wrote down the words they believed in, then spent years finding out those words actually come with a cost.  Not admiring them, not quoting them, not celebrating them on anniversaries.  Living into them, carrying them.  There is a gulch between simply believing in a thing and waking up every morning being responsible for it. 

One of the harder lessons from this year is realizing that some things are never really finished.  Grief isn’t.  Healing isn’t.  Learning how to live a life you didn’t plan for isn’t.  every day requires a little adjustment, a little recalibration, a little acceptance and a little hope.  The work doesn’t end because we wish it would.  We simply keep showing up and doing the next right thing, and then the next and repeat.  

It seems the American experiment works the same way.  The Declaration wasn’t finished in 1776.  The constitution wasn’t finished in 1787.  The project wasn’t finished after the civil war, the civil rights movement, or even today as we celebrate 250 years.  Each new generation inherits the work, leaves its fingerprints on it, makes a few repairs, and hopefully improves a few things on the journey on our way to that more perfect union.  The project was never the document, the project has always been us.  

250 years later, we’re still in that gap.  We still wrestle with questions about freedom, equality, fairness, opportunity and responsibility.  We have built an extraordinary country, but like the people who came before us, we are still trying to align our attitudes, systems and structures with our ideals.

And if I am being honest, this is the part of that experiment that worries me the most right now.  We have never lacked disagreement in our country.  In fact, disagreement was baked right into the system.  The founders have famously argued with each other constantly, how could we get those amazing founding documents without the tension of debate.  They debated, they compromised, they fought over ideas and occasionally drive each other crazy.  What they seemed to understand was that the person on the other side of the argument was still a key part of the grand experiment.  Lately it feels like we have lost a big chunk of that understanding.  We've become quicker to assume the worst, quicker to question motives, quicker to start with why we can’t instead of how we can.  And much slower to extend empathy to folks who simply see the world differently than we do.

Some days it almost seems against the rules to do that now, at least from my perspective.  It seems like we just talk past or around each other rather than simply listening to understand and speaking our truth responsibly.  We have divided ourselves into various teams, we have subdivided ourselves into groups based on any possible difference.  It seems like we may have forgotten that one of the earliest rallying cries from the American experiment wasn’t about winning an argument.  Above all else, it was about preserving the union, I seem to recall some words about that, united we stand, divided we fall, or something like that.

It feels like we have become very good at identifying what is wrong with everyone else and considerably less interested in examining ourselves.  The declaration speaks of equality, rights, consent and human dignity.  Those ideas require more than laws and institutions.  They require, above anything else, a willingness to see the humanity in one another, even when it feels the gap is too far, especially then.

We have built machines that can answer questions in seconds, we carry supercomputers in our pockets and can communicate with anyone on earth at the mash of a button on our device.  And yet somehow, we still struggle with the same human problems that a bunch of colonists wrestled with 250 years ago.  There are still days when it feels like we are drifting farther away from the simple ideals that formed the foundation of this whole thing.  We are in this together Y’all, that is the only way it works.  That does not mean we have to think alike.  That does not mean we have to vote alike.  We do not have to agree on every issue, that would scary anyway.  The thing it does mean is that we understand that we share ownership on this project.  Self- government only works when the people doing the governing believe that everyone deserves a spot at the table too.

So maybe on our 250^th Burfday, the question isn’t whether we know the words, most of us at least know some of them.  Maybe the better question is whether we are still committed to the dream that literally formed our great union.  Are we still committed to doing the dang thing that comes after the words.  Whether we are still willing to examine where we have succeeded, where we have failed, utterly and otherwise and where there is still work to do.  What parts of that original promise have we fulfilled?  What parts are we still building?  What parts are we tearing down or ignoring?   Truth be told, I am not sure how to answer all those questions.  Some days I think we’re closer than we’ve ever been.  Other days I wonder if we are drifting so slowly into the mirror universe so slowly, we don’t even see it happening. 

Maybe that is what’s been on my mind lately.  Not whether America is perfect, it’s not.  Not whether we’ve succeeded, we haven’t.  not whether we have failed, we haven’t.  The pressing question seems to be whether we are still willing to do difficult things together.  Because 250 years ago a group of folks bet an entire future on the idea, we should also be able to.  And I for one, believe we owe it to them to do our absolute fucking best to ensure the next 250 years are spent chasing that more perfect union.

So, let's go to the workbench and keep chiseling away at it.

The Navy Years, where the foundation of who Smitty is was forged

I didn’t know it at the time but that frigid late December day in 1984 when I boarded my first ship, the USS Stump was the start of the most amazing journey.  Sitting cold and completely out of its element because it was in drydock, was the day the forge that would form who Smitty would be got lit.  I was young, loud in the way that only an inexperienced dumbass can be, carrying a mix of false confidence and cluelessness that probably made the old salts roll their eyes.  Everything smelled like metal, fresh paint, fuel, and of course salt.  I did not understand anything about honor, dignity, respect, responsibility, or even how to be a man yet.  And somehow, I knew I was standing on the gangplank of life that would eventually shape me in ways my young cocky self could not even imagine, even in my wildest dreams.  And that certainty is something I’d not yet felt in my life, at that stage anyway,  I was ready for a bosun whistle and “underway… shift colors” piped over the 1MC, and at that moment I did not even know that that meant we were tossing off the moorings and headed out to the great blue.

Here is a picture of my first ship in drydock after some repairs on the sonar dome.  If you look closely you can see those two .

Those first days felt like living inside a machine that could not care less about me.  It was however my home now too, and my shipmates were my family and in a weird way it was the safest place I had.  That was true of the drydock and the ship, they both had a gravity to them that held me tight.  I learned quickly that the work had a sort of monotonous rhythm to it, and I liked it.  Shipboard life had its written and unwritten rules, and those standards were not up for debate.  I was still running on bravado, bad assumptions and a cockiness that ended up bumping me into the UCMJ, that is the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  It also led to not fully meeting the Chief’s expectations about how I was to show up, regardless of any event, situation or location and regardless how much I had drunk the night before.   Those hard lessons stuck and are still sticking.  Eventually young Smitty learned it was better not have the Skipper rip the stripes from my uniform,  then take half of  my pay for a couple of months and to add insult to injury, keep me on the ship with a lot of extra after hour duties for 45 days, not that I made any money to go do anything anyway.  Those lessons learned the hard way have never faded.

The Navy has a not so subtle way of putting a man in his place without ever raising its voice.  You learn quickly that nobody owes you patience, nobody owes you respect and nobody is impressed by the loud kid.  They have expectations, and a lot of them, and one of those is that you meet those expectations.  I had to earn my space by showing up, taking my knocks and finding the lesson, do the damn thing you are expected to do and not make the same mistakes twice, that was also a clear expectation.  As a cocky young kid, that was an expectation I struggled with and paid the price for.

Little by little that false confidence was replaced with something sturdier.  The forge wasn’t just hot.  It was steady, it was deliberate.  It kept hammering the same spots until they got stronger.  The forge was about repetition, discipline and the humbling realization that doing the right thing is more often the quiet struggle and almost never convenient.  This was the beginning of becoming a man who could hear “underway… shift colors” and understand that it meant so much more than the ship getting ready to move.  It was the realization of my responsibilities, to the ship and my shipmates.  I did not have words for it back then.  Now, it could not be clearer.

The loudness that comes with being a NUB, non usable body, started to fade, not because anyone told me to quiet down, but because I was learning to listen.  I started to see the difference between talking and communicating, listening more, asking more questions, and being humble enough to admit I didn’t know, that was hard at first, and I learned it was a superpower.  I also learned the difference between showing up and showing off, the men I served with were not interested in my bullshit, any of it.  They expected and demanded consistency, effort, contribution, and a willingness to learn without excuses, even learning shit I had no idea I would be expected to learn.  

Every small task, sweepers, and waxing the passageways, I freaking hated that, underway replenishments, standing the midwatch when I was exhausted was a reminder, honor and integrity is not earned in grand moments with grand gestures.  It is built in the small, consistent, mostly invisible and unnoticed actions that contribute to a greater good than my dumb ass understood at the time.  That realization came slower than it should, but the lessons have remained core to who I am.  It was also at this time that I started to understand accountability is a gift to be cherished.  When someone corrected me it was not to knock me down, it was to lift me up, push me towards my better self.  It was to keep me aligned with expectations of a crew that depended on each other to stay alive and hear those words, moored… shift colors when got home safe.    

That kind of responsibility was not theoretical, it was immediate.  It was real and with its quiet pressure was shaping me faster and harder than any mistake or punishment ever could.  The forge wasn’t just hot, it was precise, it was deliberate and with a consistency that knew exactly where to heat the metal to get the desired product.  Looking back I realize the subtle shifts were creating momentum that was driving real change in who I was.  I was a little less dumbass, never none, but at least less, and a little more dependable.  A little less of I got this and a little more teach me so we all get through this.  I didn’t see it then, but the Navy was pushing the boy out of me one layer at a time.  As those layers started to fall away they were replaced with the stronger layers of a man who could carry the weight without complaining, someone who understood the value of the mission and the man standing next to me.  those early days did not just prepare me for service in the Navy, they were preparing me for every day that was to come on my journey through life.     

With all the goings on in the world I find myself reflecting back on those lessons I learned as a young man, and the ones that came after my service, more often than I expected to.  Not the technical or the rigidity of it but the deeper truths about steadiness, responsibility and choosing integrity and doing the right things, even when it is inconvenient.  My last couple of posts were me trying to process the noise, trying to find a place to drop anchor that will hold fast so I am not just drifting or being pulled around by the current.  I have not found a strong anchor point yet, that is a big part of writing about it is the search for that anchor point, where it will hold fast.  Those lessons from my youth are helping me in the chaos of the world, reminding me that I am part of something bigger than myself.  Thank goodness those lessons didn’t fade, the forge hardened them and they stuck.  They are the compass I use to set my course, even when its foggy and I can’t see shit.   

The world feels unmoored, drifting, and dragging anchor.  The news feels like that time the Navy shot an Exocet missile at our ship to test our missile defenses- scary as shit!  Sailors as a default learn a lot about navigation, for the obvious reasons, those lessons are helping me navigate the world while we are in a hurricane, which I’ve been through by the way.  Those words, underway… shift colors have also taken on a new meaning, something broader with different context.  It still means we are headed out to the big blue, to accept new responsibilities, new expectations and those are choices we must make, regardless of whether it is scary or even terrifying.  Maybe that is why typing these posts matter so much to me right now.  Maybe it is my way of tossing off the mooring lines that have held me tight to the pier.  Maybe it is honoring that kid who walked up the gangplank all those years ago not knowing anything.  Maybe it is applying the lessons learned by the man who walked back down that gangplank with a foundation strong enough to weather what came next, including whatever the hell this moment is.

I am not pretending to have answers, but I know the next right thing to do is toss the lines, blow the bosun whistle and shift colors and trust myself enough to step up, lean in and keep moving forward. 

This is a betrayal of what we say we believe in as Americans

 I have recently been pondering on the quote penned by Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton in 1887 that highlighting the moral dangers of unchecked authority, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."  I heard my Mom say that quote no less that 8.7 million times growing up.  I don’t think I ever fully understood it, until just recently when its meaning shifted from the words in my head and dropped like a rock into my gut. 

When power decides it does not have to answer questions, when it closes ranks and doors after its use of force, when it tells a tale that is in direct conflict with what we all saw with our own eyes, there is a cancer present.  It is no longer just theoretical, it is here, now and evident in the way our federal officials are behaving.   It is here now in the way communities are told to accept their narrative instead of demonstrating transparency and collaboration with local law enforcement.    

Our countries’ creed is not complicated, it’s really simply actually.  The power bestowed on our elected officials is on loan, on loan from we the people, the same people who hold these truths to be self-evident, ya know from the Declaration of Independence.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  With two dead American citizens we ain't doing very godo on that front.  

Our government was literally created to protect those rights, we declared it so in a loud and in your face fashion to King George III back on July 4^th of 1776.  A big part of what makes this experiment that is the United States work is based on trust.  When government forces, of any kind, block transparency and accountability, trust erodes.  And that particular slippery slope is one that is not good for our country. 

When I wore the uniform, the oath I swore was not to a person, a party or a department.  I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic.   Day in and day out the work required discipline, restraint, and accountability.  We learned quickly that real strength does not come from how loud ya bark orders, it comes from carefully you wielded authority.  Facts were laid out, orders explained and expectations set, those are the bedrock of military order.  When shit went sideways, and it sometimes did, we did not get to barricade doors, obfuscate the truth, or tell tales of woe, we took responsibility for our actions and we course corrected.  There was not some obscure reason for that, we were literally putting our lives in the hands of our shipmates, and they were putting theirs lives in ours.  That is not something one fucks about with.  .

 I learned that honor is not the ribbons we had to meticulously maintain for display purposes, honor is a habit.  Choosing to do the right thing, even when it is hard, even when it is seemingly impossible and even when it comes at a personal cost shows ones true character.  that character shows up in the quiet consistent choices we make, day in and day out.  Choosing transparency over convenience, humility over spin, the really hard right over the really easy wrong ain't easy and has tested me more in my life than any other thing. 

I have had sign in my office for years, “Do the right things, and do those things right”.  Hardest thing to do, regardless of what it is.  While we are free to make decisions in this county, any of them we want – that is what freedom is.  We are not however free from the consequences of those decisions.  That means accepting responsibility for our actions, doing that is true courage.

And when things do go sideways, we must have the moral courage to not only accept responsibility but also to invite scrutiny.  To let independent eyes check our work, provide an independent accounting of our actions.  Those values are not disposable when thing get uncomfortable, that is when we learn who we truly are and we can only hope we don’t come up lacking.  Those values are exactly for the moment when things get hard.  The truth is simple, it needs no spin, it needs no embellishment and it needs no permission. 

The same standards that kept all my shipmates safe should be used to keep our communities safe.  If squids, mostly kids, can log every evolution, submit to inspection after inspection and answer for their action because lives are at stake, then any officials who exercise lethal authority on our streets must do the same, we must hold them to the same standard.  That is not too much to ask, at all.  Fact-o-business, that is the fucking barest of minimums a free people should demand!!

American values are not abstract to me, for the most part they have become muscle memory.  Human dignity first.  Truth in the open.  Power on a short lease because it belong us, not those we chose to represent us.  I was taught that my words matter, that I must own my mistakes and that I was responsible for making any wrongs I made right.  The government does not get a different rulebook, no sir!  If anything it should be held to even higher bar.  Liberty is not a license to do whatever you want behind a badge.  Liberty is the rulebook that provides the authority in a way that we the people can trust is fair and just and in alignment with our values.

the bar is not terrible high on this.  Open the scenes. Honor the warrants.  Share the evidence.  Let independent hands do the work here, and let the public see what that those hands find.  If we truly believe the words we recite, equality, liberty, and justice for all,  then let us practice them even when its inconvenient.   We all know in it in our bones, and the Mandalorians say, this is the way!  If our institutions have drifted, as I feel they have, then we have a responsibility to pull them back, with the kind of stubborn integrity this country still claims as our own. 

I am angry, viscerally so.  I am heartsick.  And I am done pretending that what we are watching is anything other than what it is, a betrayal of what we say we believe in as Americans.  Power used in the dark is not public service.  It is cowardice and it is theft of the public trust.  Steals trust from the very people who granted that power in the first place.  It steals dignity from the families who deserve the truth, not some ridiculous narrative.  It steals the future from a country that can only govern itself when the truth is out in the open and acknowledged.  You cannot protect a community, as we are being told they are doing, while at the same time blocking that community form the truth – period all stop.  

To our federal government, hear this clearly.  You are NOT intitled to your own story, you earn that by opening the scene, honoring the warrant, sharing the records, and letting independent hands to their work where the public can see it.  You earn it by submitting your actions to the same scrutiny that you would demand of us.  You earn it by admitting error when error exists, not spinning stories moments after two people were killed.   To do otherwise is a sure sign that something else is happening here besides the narrative you are attempting to persuade us of.   

I did not spend 10 years in service to this great country to watch the Constitution be treated like a prop in a shitty movie.  It is a set of values that either bind us in moments like these, or it reveals us to be frauds.  If we still believe in human dignity, say so by proving it with an open process.  If we still believe in liberty, say so by refusing secrecy when force is used against us, in our name.  if we still believe in justice, say so by letting neutral eyes test the story against the evidence.  Anything less is just a demonstration of moral bankruptcy dressed up on federal letterhead.

So here is where I stand, I absolutely refuse to allow this to be normalized.  I refuse to soften my language or lower the bar.  I refuse to trade my values fro someone else’s comfort, and I will not hand the next generation of Americans a country that confuses control with accountability.  In my bones and every fiber of my being I know this is not right, and in your bones, you damn well know it too.  I am sad if your hatred of whatever it is has so clouded your judgement that you feel any bit of this is OK. 

The truth will set you free. Lets open this up to scrutiny.  Let the evidence be evaluated.  And as Mando says, this is the way.