Crises… precipitate change.
“Virus” - Deltron 3030
“How tall are you?” people often ask me. Their eyes glean with the amusement of seeing a type of circus sideshow, mixed with a modicum of guilt for asking a stranger a personal question. I smile, and happily oblige them with the response. “You must be a basketball player then!” they exclaim. I laugh. A logical deduction, indeed. Who wouldn’t think that a tall, athletic-looking bald black guy is a basketball player? If I went around and asked a lot of tall, athletic, bald black guys that I found on the street if they were basketball players, I’m sure many of them would say yes, in one capacity or another. I don’t blame their reasoning, and I never have. Because here’s the fun part coming up: “I played for a few years in high school. In college, I played lacrosse actually.” Their heads cock, their eyes, for a moment, go vacant as they retreat into their minds, trying to add up what they just heard. I’ve seen the look a thousand times before. A stream of nonsense is about to spew forth from their mouths. “Yup”, I preemptively respond. “That’s me.”
Art imitates life. But does one’s body imitate their life, and vice versa? If no one has looked into that yet, I may be a good test case. I’m a tall guy, yes. I’m also a very lean guy (I prefer the word lean, as opposed to skinny, it makes me seem less soft). I’ve got long appendages fastened to a thin core. They may seem ungainly at times, but ultimately there is a commonality to all of it - a method to the madness. And in my life? Well I’m a guy who likes a lot of different things. A lot of different things. I will listen to a beautiful string quartet composition, followed by the most insane hard metal rock song back to back and not blink an eye. I listened to a 38 hour audiobook about Joseph Stalin for no particular reason other than I thought it would be an interesting thing to know about. I’ll play guitar for an hour then read a book about how America’s great writers were all alcoholics. I’ll read the most excoriating left-leaning New York Times articles, agree with all of it, then watch Alex Jones (I know) conspiracy theory videos and laugh hysterically while sometimes nodding with heavily guilty approval. Though it seems all over the place, I like to think there is a central theme that runs through all these things. Above all though - just like the people on the street who assume I should be playing basketball - all signs point to the fact that I should be doing something that makes sense to the viewer, logically; but, as I happily assure them, I am almost always certainly doing the opposite.
So. After going to a great college and working on Capitol Hill for three and half years, where do I find myself? I find myself here, at 26 years old, about to embark for Rwanda to volunteer with the Peace Corps. I have a solid resume under my feet, in good standing with family, friends and old colleagues. I don't really know anyone who has volunteered with the Peace Corps. It’s not something that I ever truly aspired to do from a young age and no one in my family is particularly partial towards international volunteering. So then: How Did I Get Here?
A College (Political) Philosophy
In September 2009 I stepped onto the Brown University campus as a fresh-faced member class of 2013. Out of respect for my peers who broke their backs to get into Brown based on their academic rigor alone, I have readily maintained that lacrosse was the sole reason I found myself on an Ivy League campus. I was an awful student in high school. Straight up. For those of you who hold academic performance in high regard (Mom) please skip the following section.
Ok now that it’s just us fellow school slackers: I thought school was a game to be played and I loved it. I imagined it like a game, one not unlike your classic TV gameshow - the gleeful studio audience at the beginning of each day yelling in unison: “What! Can Alex! Get Away With!”. Every day was different, an academic maze of my own making, strewn with booby traps that I had laid. But, oh, how I relished the opportunity to navigate it! It was a American Ninja Warrior performance that started every morning: With sheer strength I copied a friend’s homework right before the bell rung, with pure acrobatics I dodged a class with an assignment due, with incomprehensible luck I managed not to get clipped by the random rotating selection to present a project that I hadn’t yet done.
But the fun and games, alas, were unsustainable. I would pull things together when I needed to, but like every casino knows, no matter his skill or guile, if a player stays at the table long enough, he’ll lose. And overall, I wasn’t playing with the number of chips that I should have been. My mom knew this; my junior year of high school, she sat me down, dropped her normal stern tone, which paradoxically indicated the graveness of her message, and just shot me straight. “If you continue down this road, with these kinds of grades, you just simply are not going to get into college. Please think about that.” It was the rare message that stuck - I actually started paying attention in class, found some subjects that I liked and I managed to turn things around for my Junior year of high school. And thank sweet baby Jesus I did because when I went to get recruited for lacrosse, that year of high school - doing well that one single year - was my lone saving grace. Every other year was thrown out, in the words of Comrade Lenin, into “The Dustbin of History” where they belonged.
So there I was, at Brown, thinking that I was a changed man. Given my success taking Biology in high school and considering the ease at which I did well in the class in the face of others’ struggle, I thought that I had a natural predisposition towards the sciences which I previously hadn’t found. A newly discovered academic juggernaut. I wanted to pursue a Pre-Medical track. I wanted to be a doctor. But in the legendary words of Dennis Green: “The Bears are who we thought they were”. And indeed, Alex Jones is who we all thought thought he was. Years of faithfully playing “What! Can Alex! Get Away With!” does not a strong academic foundation make. Especially not a foundation needed at an Ivy League school. Especially not a foundation needed to take its most singularly difficult and mind-breaking major that sheds people like a rocket sheds pieces flying into space. I was like an obese man who once ran from a tiger who now thinks he can take on Usain Bolt. When the threat is gone, the old habits emerge. This is all to say: It didn’t work out and I found out real quick.
In the wake of the Death of the Doctor Dream I did a lot of bouncing around. True to my nature, I greatly enjoyed taking a variety of classes which Brown, being the liberal arts haven that it is, had in spades. I took a Neuroscience class, a class about Art & Architecture, Sociology, Public Health, Vikings, Psychology. All were interesting, but nothing quite stuck; until I took a philosophy class called Reason and Religion.
Reason and Religion was solely focused around logical arguments concerning the existence of God, and I found it totally fascinating. Not because I was particularly interested in figuring out if God exists or not - even though it’s an infinitely interesting topic - but because I found it interesting that this type of topic was up for debate in an academic setting, and that logical arguments could be used, in a precise and intellectual manner, to tackle these big interesting questions. In looking at the arguments, it was clear that a deep understanding of language, understanding its nuance and precision - word by word and letter by letter - was of the utmost importance and conveying or dissecting an argument of any type.
I loved the idea that anything could be debated in a cool-headed manner, even the existence of God which is a realm of life that people consider completely beyond reproach. I loved the idea of intellectual people bouncing ideas off of each other, wading into the dangerous waters, the unmentionable topics, armed with the merit of their ideas, protected by the shields of logic and reason. In my grey Brown lacrosse sweatsuit, I fancied myself one of these people, a pipe-smoking, leather couch laying intellectual at heart, beneath the barbaric bluster of my athletic life.
The classes graded requirements were only papers - no tests, no rote memorization. It allowed me to sharpen the knife of my writing, to become a master communicator, something I found that I greatly enjoyed, and beyond the daily readings, I was largely able to get outside of the normal academic paradigm of memorization and test taking that I had never been able to corral my brain around. I was hooked. Philosophy, indeed, would soon afterward become my major.
“Now What?”
A couple things happen when you declare Philosophy to be your degree of choice. First come the internal questions: This is interesting, but what am I going to do with it? Does anyone care about a Philosophy degree? Then quickly afterwards come the external questions: Yeah that sounds interesting but what are you going to do with it? Am I supposed to care about a Philosophy degree? These questions are particularly pronounced in the elite world of Ivy league lacrosse, where the majority of guys, by decree of which I never received, are angling for business degrees with the hopes of working in the financial sector. The doubt starting creeping in. I had to beef this thing up and quick - so I took drastic action. I changed from a Philosophy major to a Political Philosophy major. See what I did there? Adding the one word would solve all my problems, you see. It would alleviate all my problems, give me focus, give me meaning, give me a sense of purpose, give me nothing at all it didn’t fix anything at all.
As time went on, however, I found that Political Philosophy actually was much more interesting than regular philosophy. The political philosophy classes mostly focused on the ethical foundations that a rule of government stands on. Questions of its legitimacy, how individual rights are formed, in what manner the state should act and what means does it have to do so. This was much more of a debate rooted in reality and carried with it some significant consequence.
After further thought I also found that I may have solved my “What do I do with this degree” problem. And in my view, these things, in albeit a less academic manner, were debated everyday not in the university textbooks, but in the real world. This was happening in one place: Washington, D.C on Capitol Hill.
Politickin’
While Political Philosophy was my major (or as Brown calls it, a “Concentration”) in college, lacrosse was my job, and it’s what I always cared about more than anything else. Playing sports is deep down in my DNA, it’s the thing that I’ve always cared about the most. I loved it, being on a team and playing lacrosse at Brown is one of the memories I hold most sacred. In my mind, there wasn’t much time for other things, like internships and resume builders. This was all well and good - up until I graduated. I remember the parody of trying to piece together a resume after I graduated - trying to build a house with no wood or concrete. With the resume I set out to ask the ever-present Employer’s Question: What had I done with my time?
Well sir or madam! There was, like, this one time where I like, helped give a tour to some alumni for the Sports Foundation! But they picked me to do it you see, they picked me so it makes it legitimate! What else? Well our team was Co-Ivy league champions (an almost unprecedented four-way tie) when I was Freshman, but you bet your ass that I was a contributor to the team, yes I was. An internship you ask? Well, no - but I was on our team’s “Bear Paw Council” which is… don’t worry about it just understand that was very important. And, of course, as every resume maker knows, I was always engaging in action words, oh my devotion to the action words was undying! I Organized, Collaborated, Answered, Convened, Researched, Coordinated. Why would I not? I am a resume maker, and this is my life. No action words, no job action. I know the rules.
It didn’t add up to much though. The action words were ornaments on a Christmas tree with no volume. I needed to add branches. Back in Annapolis with few prospects, I made calls to anyone who would listen, and one person did. My friend’s dad, a lawyer on health policy who had done good work in D.C with Congressman Edward J. Markey of the Fifth District in Massachusetts. He suggested I go up to help out on a Congressman's special election campaign for Senator - and before I knew it, I was in Boston canvassing, making calls, appearing in campaign videos and hitting the campaign trail.*
The Congressman became Senator-Elect in June 2013, and after an interview process that lasted over the summer and into the fall, Bum Alex Jones became Bum-Former Alex Jones and I took my seat at The Desk in October 2013 as the Senate’s newest doe-eyed Legislative Correspondent.
My first day, I took a picture of my desk when no one was looking, because I was so excited that being assigned to actually sit at the desk and look at it wasn’t quite enough, I needed to memorialize the moment in digital form for posterity. Through sheer luck, I thought then, I had managed to find the perfect application for my knowledge base: I was on Capitol Hill and due to spend my days engaging in the real debates in the arcane decorum of the Senate - where the men and women had to adhere to strict rules that limited bluster, where words must be chosen with precision in order to weigh in on the Issues that Matter and shape public policy which affects us all. Right?
Well: Yes and No. I hope to get more into my experience in the Political World in future posts. My time in the Senate was wildly educational, but not in entirely beneficial ways. My whimsy, over time, gave way to disillusionment. More than anything though, my anxieties were not entirely produced by the political environment I found myself in but rather in a sense of feeling “stuck” in it. I felt strongly that I had to get out. Nine hour days blended into weeks, which blended into months which blended into three and a half years. I would stare out the window, sighing deeply, like a caricature, about The World Out There. I considered just traveling to walk the earth, but my government salary hadn’t quite made that a possibility for me. I began to think about going abroad to volunteer. A cheaper option, I thought, and more legitimate. I went to the Peace Corps website. I thought why not, and gave a recruiter a call. She said I was in luck, because there would be a briefing, on the Hill, in your building, this Thursday……..
* For the sake of maintaining good form, I will omit the name of the Senator and the names of the people I worked with in his office. Most of you know, and it's easy enough to figure out, but I've decided to omit it from these and future posts.