Steve’s Newsletter Volume 1: Issue 3

Steve’s Newsletter Volume 1: Issue 3

The Cacophony

As much preparation as I put into being a dad, I continue to be surprised at the variety and volume of noises that are produced by my three spawn.

One kid was easy.

We rocked out together, most notably to Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song in which he would do a pitchy but generally accurate Viking Cry. I thought nothing of the racket and mark those first years of parenting as some of the best times of my life.

The second kid was mostly nonverbal until nearly 5 years of age. (I wrote about that here for reference.)

So, with a precocious first kid and a nonverbal second kid, things were still okay. However, just about the time the second kid rebooted, we had a shrieking and fearless third kid come along and the cacophony began.

How noisy is three?

I use the mathematical formula x = y^y  to describe it where the y equals the number of children and x equals noise.  

One kid very simply equals the noise of 1 kid (1¹). Two kids are proportionately as loud as four kids if those four kids were taken in isolation and added (2²). Three kids have the volume of nine kids (3³). At some point there is a cut off where the noise just can’t get louder. My educated guess is that 10 kids are as noisy as 100 kids, (10¹⁰) but 100 kids are equally noisy. My theory is the mash of human flesh absorbs much of the sound, though I will need more time studying the phenomenon in indoor playgrounds to verify.

Algebra nerds might wonder why I used y as the independent variable rather than the other way around. The answer is simply the stereotype that y chromosomes are rumored to be more noisy than x chromosomes and I have three boys. My time around little girls is extremely limited and I cannot verify if they are more quiet.

I was warned. My mother repeatedly told me that I would regret being loud with my oldest. Man was she right. While I don’t agree with all aspects of “gentle parenting” I’ll concede that the quiet mousy parent tends to produce quiet mousy children. However, it seems that most gentle parents stopped at one child, and I think the sample size might be a little biased on the subject.

Would gentle parenting prevent my five-year-old from dropping matchbox cars off the kitchen table onto a tile floor…

One…

By one…

By one…

Probably not.

Yet to be fair to my kids, if I didn’t have noise-related PTSD from my time in Afghanistan, I would probably be a lot less sensitive to such things.

My wife complains less. She takes solace in the fact that psychologists say that noisy children are safe children—children that grow up in a household where they can express themselves without fear of retribution and long-term trauma. She gets angry when I ask if we can have just a little bit of trauma—specifically first thing in the morning.  

It’s not just the sheer volume but the mind-boggling variety of sounds that gives me the feeling like I am living in a collection of Edgar Allan Poe works.

The silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
The heart-beat rapping beneath the floor
I now hear some meowing and tintinnabulation
And who the fuck is knocking at my chamber door!

Recognizing that not everyone is a Poe aficionado, I could just have well quoted “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

Oh, the noise! Oh, the Noise!
Noise! Noise! Noise!
That’s one thing he hated! The NOISE!
NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!

So, here’s to tinnitus and weaponized decibel meters and well-adjusted kids.

When they are teenagers, I am sure I’ll be begging them to say more than sarcastic single syllables.

Not If but When (They Come for You)

This short essay was prompted by the following post on LinkedIn.

This (and many posts like it) advance the argument that because undocumented immigrants are “illegal” they should not be compared to the death of 6 million Jewish people in the Holocaust.

Here’s the thing. A person’s legality is a purely social construct. It can be given and taken away with the flick of a pen, just as it was done in the Holocaust.

So, if you are unwilling to compare what is going on right now to the early days of the Holocaust, it’s only because you don’t understand how the Holocaust began.

I’m going to talk about a major event of the Holocaust below and then I am going to talk about the last few years in the United States. My understanding of history, current events, and US legal history makes me comfortable comparing the two. Here’s why.

First, the Holocaust part.

On January 20, 1942, Nazi leadership held the Wannsee Conference. You have probably never heard of it, but you’ve heard of the results. The term “final solution” originated here. The final solution of course was how to mass deport Jewish people from Germany and all of the newly conquered territories.

The results of the conference can be summarized by this excerpt.

The Race and Settlement Office was to work toward the goals of

1.  increased emigration of the Jews;
2. directing the flow of emigration; and
3. speeding up emigration.

What remains interesting about the conference is the emphasis that the cleansing be done by LEGAL MEANS.

So, for example, if you have a marriage between a German and a Jew, the marriage must be annulled through legal means in order to achieve the three goals above.

The final solution took “legal people” and made them illegal.

Jewish people were legal.
And then they were not.

Now, let’s jump to the United States.

Can we make people illegal just by saying so like they did at the Wannsee Conference?

I guess you can ask the 30,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan immigrants who were granted special status under President Biden and are now facing deportation under President Trump.

They were legal.
And then they were not.

You could also ask the surviving members of the Japanese, German, and Italian internment camps during WWII.[1] George Takei certainly has something to say about his experience.

They were legal.
And then they were not.
The Supreme Court said so.[2]

But wait, there’s more!

Hey you!

The person born here!

Maybe like so many other Americans, you have a chronic lack of empathy.[3]

So, let me appeal to your selfishness.

THIS ADMINISTRATION AND COURT IS GOING TO HARM YOU DIRECTLY IF YOU DON’T WAKE UP!

An oft repeated poem by German Pastor  Martin Niemöller goes like this.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Here’s the thing. The people in power in the United States government have already told you they are coming for you if you are not able-bodied, heterosexual, white, and male, but it’s been buried by the noise of a punditry that focuses on gaffes rather than serious journalism.

Maybe you weren’t listening, so I will kindly repeat what I have seen in a long but not comprehensive list.

First off, let’s talk about substantive due process and the war against it.

Substantive due process is a judicial construct by the US Supreme Court that seeks to identify and protect those rights not specifically mentioned in the US Constitution.

These rights recognized under substantive due process include but are not limited to:

the right to abortion
the right to birth control;
sex between consenting adults;
same-sex marriage;
interracial marriage;
the right to refuse medical treatment; and
interstate travel.

Each and very one of these is on the table for reconsideration, per the concurrence by Justice Clarence Thomas in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Because, along with abortion, each and every one of these is a product of substantive due process. What the court giveth, the court taketh away.

Or to put it differently,

These rights were legal.
And then they were not.

Maybe you think that Clarence Thomas is only one justice and doesn’t have the power, to make new law. However, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said they respected the precedent of Roe v. Wade and yet voted to overturn it in the Dobbs Decision along with Justices Thomas, Alito, and Barrett.

Likewise, in the narrow opinion recognizing the right to gay marriage, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito were in the dissent. Joining forces, with Trump appointees, they have a six-person majority antagonistic toward gay marriage. (Each of these have a record on the issue that goes beyond the scope of this short piece.)

It is no stretch to say that the same six-person majority, each of which are from a conservative wing of Roman Catholicism would be antagonistic toward birth control and end-of-life measures.

Interracial marriage? Loving v. Virginia (1967) fell between the right to contraception, Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and the right to abortion, Roe v. Wade (1973). Numerous people have pointed out that Alito’s dissent in the gay marriage case of Windsor applied the same logic of the dissent in Loving. To be fair, Alito noted that the Dobbs decision should not be construed to attack things like gay and interracial marriages, but he’s already shown his cards. When someone goes out of their way to tell you they are not going to harm you, it’s usually a sign that they are going to harm you.

All of this is under the shadow of Sonia Sotomayor, who at the age of 70 with diabetes has a statistically higher risk of dying. If she gets replaced by a Trump toadie, Alito can keep good on his promises along with one other justice and still leave a five-person majority to strip everything else away.

So, I ask you, are you sleeping with someone of the same gender? Are you married to someone of the same gender? Are you married to someone of another race? Would you like to die of natural causes without being connected involuntarily to machines?

If you answered yes to any of those, then your rights are at stake.

Maybe you are none of those. Are you disabled? Do you have a disabled child?

Then you probably benefit from the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and it’s 2008 amendments. This isn’t a law review article, so I won’t bore you with exhaustive list of case names and citations except to say that Clarence Thomas has joined fellow conservatives in limiting the scope and efficacy of the protections provided by the ADA at least 12 times.[4] Project 2025 is well documented to be antagonistic toward the ADA, especially as it relates to funding for health services and public schools.[5] It is only a matter of time before a case comes before the US Supreme Court and Thomas writes the majority opinion.

Are you non-white? Because while dismantling the 1964 Civil Rights Act seemed like a silly concept only a few years ago, Project 2025 is also bent on gutting all of the offices that make it meaningful.[6] The same notions of regulating interstate commerce that gave the 1964 Civil Rights Act life 60 years ago would be viewed as laughable in the modern court.[7]

Alright, what about able-bodied white females, married to their definitely-not-closeted, white-male husband and genes that would make the Race and Settlement Office proud.

Sorry ladies, but the Heritage Foundation which authored Project 2025 and has a front-seat access to both the presidency and the Supreme Court thinks you should be broodmares.[8] Granted, that’s a better fate than your gay neighbor who will be in prison for five years because of consensual sex.[9] Still, I’d be concerned if you’d ever like to leave the house again.

So, they are coming for you eventually.

Do what you are capable of.

It takes a special kind of person to blow up a government vehicle, and I will be the first to say I am not made of such stern stuff. But you can give to the charities and legal funds that protect undocumented immigrants. You can hide them in your spare room. You can provide them safe addresses to which they can receive mail. You can gum up the works of the administrative state with phone calls and false reports (while recognizing the line between annoying and illegal.) Get creative now and make a scene.

Or you can wait until they come for you.

Book Feature

Notes from Afghanistan was my debut book, written about my year as a translator/interpreter in Afghanistan.

Spoiler alert, we lost the war, and nearly everything gained slid back to pre-invasion times. I make note of that in an updated preface written after our ignominious withdrawal in 2021.

The naive optimism of the person who wrote the book in 2013 stands as a marker in time, even if I was wrong about nearly everything.

I learned Pashto at the Defense Language Institute in a year of exhaustive study and then later taught myself Dari. After a few years in the US Air Force as an Airborne Cryptologic Linguist, I went to Afghanistan as a civilian linguist. My job was to support the intelligence gathering by Marine Special Operations Command units operating in Helmand Province. Helmand remained one of the most violent areas throughout the war, so that is the backdrop of my time there. My assigned work was 12 hours a day, 7 days a week and remains classified. What I did the other 12 hours a day was unclassified and I was free to take copious notes on my day-to-day grind.

It is often a book about finding purpose and staving off boredom. Besides endlessly running laps around a compound the size of a few city blocks, my solution was to teach English and native literacy to the Afghans who worked with us. The bulk of the book is through that lens, teaching up to three classes a day.

There are plenty of books on Afghanistan, some better than others, usually long arcs of intrigue dealing with the Soviet Union, the CIA, and complex international relations. This book is not that, though my MA in International Relations does have me delving into that at times. What differentiates Notes from Afghanistan from others is that it focuses on the day-to-day interactions and lessons rather than some grand intrigue. Something as mundane as two Afghan roommates feuding along ethnic lines would never be covered by the likes of Steve Coll. Yet that very roommate dispute can be seen as a microcosm of a conflict in which we spent 20 years and more than $2 trillion (along with 3,621 coalition deaths.)

Below is one of the best five-star reviews I have received:

If any of this appeals to you, it is available in the formats of Kindle Unlimited, Kindle, and Paperback using this link.

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These are footnotes for the longer piece.

[1] Dr. Lila Rakoczy, Preserving WWII Internment History in Texas, Preserving Second World War Internment History: A Texas Perspective, June 6, 2019 https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/preserving-wwii-internment-history-in-texas.htm.

[2] Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)

[3] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-us-has-an-empathy-deficit/

[4] Okay, I’ll bore you. The ADA has been up to the US Supreme Court more than 20 times. Clarence Thomas was on the side of the majority that sought to limit the scope of the ADA. Bragdon v. Abbott, 524 U.S. 624 (1998); Sutton v. United Air Lines, Inc., 527 U.S. 471 (1999); Murphy v. United Parcel Service, Inc., 527 U.S. 516 (1999); Albertson’s, Inc. v. Kirkingburg | 527 U.S. 555 (1999); Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581 (1999); Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356 (2001); PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin, 532 U.S. 661 (2001); EEOC v. Waffle House, Inc., 534 U.S. 279 (2002); US Airways, Inc. v. Barnett, 535 U.S. 391 (2002); Clackamas Gastroenterology Associates, P.C. v. Wells, 538 U.S. 440 (2003); Tennessee v. Lane, 541 U.S. 509 (2004); Spector v. Norwegian Cruise Line Ltd., 545 U.S. 119 (2005)

[5] The Top 5 Ways Project 2025 Would Hurt Disabled People, Center for American Progress, October 28, 2024 https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-top-5-ways-project-2025-would-hurt-disabled-people/

[6] Project 2025’s Distortion of Civil Rights Law Threatens Americans With Legalized Discrimination, Center for American Progress, October 31, 2024 https://www.americanprogress.org/article/project-2025s-distortion-of-civil-rights-law-threatens-americans-with-legalized-discrimination/

[7] Because a hotel in a major capitol city involved interstate travel, it was involved in interstate commerce and therefore could be regulated under the commerce clause. Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964)

[8] Jonathan Abbamonte, U.S. Fertility Is Declining Due to Delayed Marriage and Childbearing, The Heritage Foundation, March 4, 2025, https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/us-fertility-declining-due-delayed-marriage-and-childbearing

[9] Amanda Holpuch, Sodomy Laws Remain in 12 States After Lawrence v. Texas, New York Times, July 21, 2023 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/us/politics/state-anti-sodomy-laws.html