Beto O’Rourke is posting his current travel adventures on a site called Medium. I stumbled onto it after reading an anti-Beto post from The National Review titled Is Beto Doing OK? (Bad move, National Review assholes. You don’t have a clue about how popular he’s going to become or why.) Apparently it’s not being covered by the neocentrist media because…awwww, you know why. Because they want to push Joe Biden or some other Deep State-approved pol down our throats. That’s why.
Anyway…his humanity is impressive. It would be impressive even if he wasn’t a potential president, and is’s almost unbelievably impressive considering his rapidly growing position in the presidential sweepstakes. Go to “Medium” and read it. Read some of his other posts as well. A young Lincoln, sounds like to me.
A sample?
Sure.
From Jan. 16, 2019.
Read on.
(Emphasis mine.)
A lot of big trucks rolling down Pancake Blvd and there aren’t any sidewalks. Gloomy early morning sky in Liberal Kansas. Snow melt on the side of the road where I’m running. I find a vacant lot to cut through to another street, also busy and without sidewalks. I finally get to a smaller road that goes past a mobile home park, then a small subdivision, and out into corn fields to my right and empty fields to my left.
I was in Tucumcari yesterday. Trying to learn more about the town that my great-grandparents lived in more than a hundred years ago. James O’Rourke, son of Irish immigrants, and Anna Lloyd who immigrated to the U.S. from Wales. According to the 1910 census they lived at 1710 Second Street.
I stayed at the Motel Safari, one of these classic Route 66 motels. Mid-century everything. I talked to the owner for a bit. He moved from Tennessee and away from corporate life. Starting over. Giving himself to this hotel that he bought a couple years back. Hasn’t taken a break in more than a year, but is going to close down for the month of February, spend some time back in Tennessee. Take a break, come back stronger.
Ate at Del’s and as I was finishing my blackberry cobbler asked the waitress what I should see in Tucumcari. The murals, the sights on 66. And you should check out this lake, exactly 12 miles from Tucumcari on 54.
The next morning I ran. Just a couple of miles. Down 66, then through neighborhoods, past the History Museum. My leg has really been bothering me since the campaign and so I had stopped running for a while. This was my first run in more than a month. Felt good, running in new shoes.
Have been stuck lately. In and out of a funk. My last day of work was January 2nd. It’s been more than twenty years since I was last not working. Maybe if I get moving, on the road, meet people, learn about what’s going on where they live, have some adventure, go where I don’t know and I’m not known, it’ll clear my head, reset, I’ll think new thoughts, break out of the loops I’ve been stuck in.
—snip—
Please!!!
Imagine this.
Imagine any president of the last 150+ years writing this well and this honestly about his daily activities.
You’d have to “imagine” it, because I’m betting that you’re not going to find anything this real from a single previous possible presidential candidate.
Not ever!!!
Here’s some more:
After breakfast at a diner down from the Safari, I drove over to Mesalands Community College. Met this amazing young man named Dylan, originally from Washington state, who had traveled from Amarillo to Tucumcari carrying his belongings, water and food in a wheelbarrow. He’d seen the wind turbine that stands in front of Meslands, inquired within and soon enrolled. He’s now the president of the student body and was my guide for the morning.
He introduced me to the instructors, the head of the wind energy club, and his fellow students. I learned about how they are learning. Had a chance to introduce myself, asked questions about the program they’re in, about Tucumcari, about where they’re originally from. About how what they’re doing fits into the larger picture – climate change, economic opportunity, infrastructure investment. How it fits into their picture – the job they’re looking for, the purpose they want, the opportunity that’s opened up for them. What it’s like to climb that high, to use a wrench for the first time in your life, to know that you’re on a track and that there’s a destination.
Learned about pump storage, battery technology, the role that production tax credits have had in making New Mexico a leader in wind energy production.What do they make after graduation? Wind techs start off making $19-23/hr though not uncommon for some to make six figures within the first year. They graduate from the program and are hired. Students I met had traveled from throughout the southwest to come here. It’s a good program and leads to a solid, highly paid job.
Everyone I met was proud. Really into what they were doing. The instructors, the staff, the students. Dylan came across as a born leader – confident, humble, thoughtful and full of purpose.
—snip—
I drove to 1710 Second Street. It’s now a First National Bank parking lot. Went to the Tucumcari library to see if I could find anything about James and Anna and what was going on in 1910. I didn’t, but saw a book the community had put together honoring those who were killed in World War II. At the reading table a group of older men were gathered, talking politics, in Spanish and in English. Seemed to be a regular get together. Those jokers in Washington D.C. Why didn’t Hillary do this? Or that? And Trump!
Drove out to the lake the waitress had told me about. Had it all to myself and some ducks. Found some crab claws. Maybe left by a bird. Walked out on a pier. Looked out, took some pictures. Leaned over, scooped up water and washed my face. Picked up beer cans that someone had left and were blown into the bushes. Later learned that it’s called Ute Lake. Formed by damming the Canadian River.
Drove to Dalhart. Ate at the Grill. Was last there in August of 2017. Green chile cheeseburger. The table over asked if I was Beto. We talked about the campaign, about Dalhart. Talked about the livestock show they were on their way to.
—snip—
It continues, and that’s just one day!!!
The word “extraordinary” doesn’t even begin to cut it.
I repeat:
“At the reading table a group of older men were gathered, talking politics, in Spanish and in English. Seemed to be a regular get together. Those jokers in Washington D.C. Why didn’t Hillary do this? Or that? And Trump!”
This is not some Obama-ish “confessional” about his time in the streets of Harlem when he was at Columbia, doubtless vetted by a number of political advisors to reach the maximum number of potential voters. This is the real deal!!! It sounds more like John Steinbeck than anyone else, really.
From Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley”:
“Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
I’m on board!!!
You?
Later…
AG
P.S. And I don’t even care if he wins!!! Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Steinbeck pinned it.
“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
Substitute “campaign” for “journey” above.
If a campaign moved and buttressed by that kind of honesty cannot win here, then America is through.
I’m volunteering as soon as I find there’s an “O’Rourke for President” organization in NYC.
Bet on it.
P.S. After writing the above, I started reading some of his other posts.
The following immediately jumped out.
About taking a run in a DC snowstorm, Nov 15, 2018:
—snip—
My left knee started to hurt. It has been bothering me some, I notice it when I bend down or when I get up if I’ve been playing with the kids on the floor or kneeling to give Rosie some love. I thought about turning around once I got to the Washington monument. But as I was coming around the north side of it I passed another runner.
He yelled out “Hey Beto!” And I turned around and approached him and we shook hands. He apologetically told me that he was from Massachusetts and said “but thank you for being you.” I said “that’s ok, we love Massachusetts too!” And told him thanks and decided to run all the way to the Lincoln memorial. I passed someone running the other direction shielding his face with his hand from the snow.
As I passed the World War II memorial there was a guy in front of me, running next to the reflecting pool towards the Lincoln memorial. I took the other path, enclosed by an arcade of trees. I figured it would shield me better from the snow that was hitting the side of my face. I saw him stretch out his arms as he ran as though to embrace the snow, the pool, the morning, the Lincoln memorial that we could now see in front of us, life, and all the mystery of being alive.
I got to the steps of the memorial and could hear the horses before I saw them. Their hooves echoing against all the marble walls and steps. Two mounted park police, blue helmets, black jackets worn like capes around their shoulders. Shrouded in snow that was heavier than before. The men motionless on their slowly moving horses. Something timeless about them.
I ran up the steps, another runner in front of me. When I got to the top he was finishing a short set of pushups. He got up quickly, we high fived as he headed back down the steps.I walked over to the north wall and read Lincoln’s second inaugural address. My body warm, blood flowing through me, moving my legs as I read, the words so present in a way that I can’t describe or explain except that I’m so much more alive in the middle of a run, and so are the words I was reading.
The words, describing the country in the midst of Civil War. The reasons for the war. Slavery. The masterful, humble invocation of God. Acknowledging that both sides invoke his name and saying of the South: “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.” That he could pronounce this judgement and then remind himself and us that we should not judge…“The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes”
He lays out an accounting for the original sin of our country – acknowledges that this ghastly war is a reckoning, blood paid for blood.
“Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
I don’t know that a better speech has ever been written or given or recorded or made.
These words:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…”
I walked down the steps, too slick to run down.
—snip—
Lincolnesque indeed!!!
