EP11 - THEY SHOT MY PRESIDENT

This will be my last letter to you. I don't know if it will be my last day or even last year in prison. Since the last batch of Supreme Court decisions were published, I've been innocent now for a number of weeks. "Actual innocence" is the legal term, and I am certainly that. Yet, as you can see, I am still writing from a cell. So, things are once again not working normally. Whenever there is a question of post conviction innocence, even in murder cases, judges move very quickly to set the questionable inmate free in the interest of justice. This has become a rather set pattern since DNA evidence began to overturn so many cases in the 90's. When they re-test the crime scene samples and the pube belongs to someone else, there is typically no such delay in ending incarceration.

The people keeping me here have already lost, at least according to the Supreme Court. Their verdicts used to mean more, I am told. No matter. What's another month or two? Obviously nothing to a hardened con like myself. But since we are stepping into a new and more honest era in America I will admit that this last and somehow even more illegal portion of my incarceration has been costly. One day now seems to count for about three, mentally. My baby boy was born earlier in my sentence but now I have missed his first steps and first words. These are things I would have been out for if our courts were working correctly. Also, I was recently greeted with the knowledge that my houseplants have died.

Still, there is a sense of building hope that I will be out soon. Legally speaking, there are no winning arguments to keep me here. The law is plainly on my side. I realize this has not been a helpful factor for political dissidents in prison lately but realistically the bar for any further blatantly illegal political repression has at least been set higher. Doubtless there are already many ambitious bureaucrats lining up to try, but these people have never worried me. I feel good these days.

I have even begun to take time to enjoy the sights and sounds of Butner Prison, sights and sounds I may soon leave behind forever. There are the trees beyond the fence that form an endless sea of green. There is the campfire that incarcerated native Americans won the legal right to keep burning. There is a deformed, opera singing midget who will serenade anyone on their birthday. There is the inmate with no face because he blew it off with a shotgun in an earnest but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to avoid prison while he was being apprehended for crimes against children. Butner is a unique place.

Release is at least likely enough that I have cleared out my locker and even gave away my last bag of pork rinds. Through persistent nagging of various staff I also got to read the uncensored parts of my central file, which has long been an event to check off my prison bucket list. It was exactly what you'd expect: a completely boring portrait of my life behind bars and a very dramatic description of what it was outside. The only part that interested me was the government's official belief that I own two Honda Civics. Heinous disinformation. I would like to take the opportunity now to grab the attention of whatever government agency reads these letters. I have never and would never purchase a Honda Civic. Please correct the record. Perhaps you have me confused with some other civic nationalist and this whole thing could have been avoided.

Being in this position of potentially imminent release, I have packed my recent life into two paper towel boxes under my rack. I would not have my belongings, minimal but prized, set out in such a way as to make a tempting target for cops to destroy. I have been relentlessly fucked with by staff here since I arrived and simply know better by now. Despite the bad feeling I get from keeping my legal papers in one place I have no choice for now, even though my boxes were recently torn up and my belongings and bedding were scattered and covered with soap. This, by itself, is neither unusual nor much of a problem. Cutting my watch band was also not life-changing but was clear enough statement. The problem for me is that the cop found my three notebooks with almost two years of writing and was careful to leave a few ripped pieces on the floor before the rest went in the trash. The BOP has made it clear they will not be following up on such a minor incident, or any of the other minor incidents like throwing me in The Hole for Christmas on false pretenses.

So, I have some catching up to do. These letters are not my only task in here. My forthcoming book will be delayed at least a few months. It is for this reason that this will be the last letter I write to you from prison. I will either be out very soon, or here for some time while I make up for lost time. Truly though, I suspect I will be released early.

Like all who are close to the door, I spend all day thinking about the first day of release. Since I likely won't know exactly when that day is until it arrives, I won't see my family at the gate. Can't have them just standing by and hoping for the best several states away from home after all. It will at least be nice to make that first phone call without the B.O.P. listening... soon it will be only the F.B.I, and N.S.A., and D.O.J., and D.H.S.. Probably not the A.T.F. though. I've never stepped on their toes, to my knowledge.

As I do time, I try not to write with timeliness in mind. No dates, few specific events. There are publishing delays and these letters are supposed to be a record of the feeling of what its like to be on the wrong side of power during the 2020's, not another news round up. But this month has been different.

I was watching the July 13th Trump Rally live in our TV room when he was shot. Since the Supreme Court ruling that declared what I did to not be a crime, I have been watching a lot of TV and try to catch all the Trump rallies. One of the perks of being a political prisoner is that unlike everyone else you are locked up with, you get to check the news for clues about your fate. Well, I guess some of the schizophrenics do too, but that's different.

Now to see this live is well different that to see that clip endlessly replayed on cable news. It was a very long time between hearing a rapid burst of gunfire and seeing that fistpump. I remember well how long it seemed, and don't remember feeling my heart beat the entire time. It looked fatal. There was no commentary from the Fox News anchors.

Of course there are those who called his reaction to the bullet theatrical - that he had the election in mind and not the people watching. The next day I heard National Public Radio predictably describe it as Mussolini like. Speaking only for myself, watching and cheering in prison, that fist meant a hell of a lot.

There is no way for me to gauge the mood out there in the world about post-shooting Trump, but in here I am never alone watching the Trump rallies anymore. Especially since his charges were dropped in the same week, America's inmates are riding the Trump Train. This has even given rise to a new legal theory. We call it: "No ear, no hearings."

It has been fun to note the media's transition from open panic while Biden was still running to poorly concealed dread that "President Harris" isn't all that statistically more likely. Sure beats the local news, which is mainly that the price of cigarettes is at an all time high in here. But the guys are pretty sure that's going to correct itself by November as well.

Nothing is done till it is done of course. If Trump does not win, my boys will do keep doing years and even decades in federal prison. I'll be fine in the personal sense because I'm at least halfway through my time even without a pardon. Life after lockup won't be any different for me. I got hassled at the airport before this and don't mind that much that they will never quit watching me. I'm lucky, as far as people in my boat go. But I am growing tired of my country's capacity to disappoint. I often must remind myself that just under half our population don't actually have beliefs. They only have social consensus.

I received one of these reminders very suddenly when the talking heads at CNN were declaring the need for a new candidate less than seventeen seconds after cutting away from the debate. Ol' Joe was done then. Even if he didn't know it, his people did. His presidential run had been decided in group texts, not primary ballots. And it all seemed so deeply appropriate, after his last victory had been secured by COVID rules vote counting, done quickly behind cardboard covered windows in Detroit.

Which takes us to the inevitability of his torch being passed to Kamala. Sure, Joe lingered long enough that they ran out of time to just throw up a focus group selected candidate. What we have now though is what was always coming, just more clearly set out for the public to marvel at. Left politics in America have finally reached the pinnacle of feminized bureaucracy. They are running the personification of borderline personality disorder. The Cat Lady Republic is attempting to realize itself.

Say what you will about a political party that simultaneously runs on sex changes for children and a return to normalcy. They don't automatically lose. Their statistically strongest issue is removing all legal barriers to women killing their own offspring in the womb. In a time and place where that is the reality, anything can happen. There are even guys in prison talking themselves into voting for a prosecutor for president. If its that weird in here, Lord knows what you people are dealing with.

Despite it all, I think things are ok. I haven't always. I think Trump will win. I think I'll get out of prison. I think my boys and all the others locked up for January 6, self defense against leftists, and demonstrating against their local school boards will get out too. I think MAGA has a future and its future is JD Vance. I think Vance will see to real prison reform.

Remember two others were crucified with our Lord. There was a good thief and bad one on those two other crosses. Both are in here with me.

Thanks to those that wrote me. If I got your letter and the address was legible I wrote you back. If you never got a reply it probably never got to me. Thank you to everyone who supported me with a little cash too. My commissary fund went so much further than you think when I was hungry. Every one of those dollars was something my wife didn't have to somehow come up with when I was losing weight.

Soon, or soon enough, I'll step back into life in a country that has declined, but that I've served. A country that has not treated me well but is still full of people who have treated me so well. That I still love. I loved it from solitary, looking out a window into that green ocean of old trees that doesn't end before the mountains start. Those mountains are where I know there is still room for me to make a home. I don't want to make one anywhere else.

Aug 12th, 2024