On Corruption

I remember the day well. It was hot even for July in a spare concrete building in Bermel Valley. Bermel is at 6400 feet of elevation, a desert valley surrounded by 9000 foot tall mountains. The summer heat was relentless. God how I hated it, imprisoned in a uniform designed to make one sweat as much as humanly possible.

We’d just gotten out of an hourlong Shura attended by all the tribal elders in the region. Outside, paratroopers stood guard in their body armor. I’d removed my helmet but not the body armor and the room had not been air conditioned. As the district governor, mayor, and elders talked I had struggled to stay awake, a wad of dip in my lower lip, occasionally swallowing water from a small bottle and spitting into another.

The paratroopers outside shifted from foot to foot, smoking cigarettes and bantering, trying to stay alert as the relentless sun beat down on us. The interpreter tugged at my sleeve as the room broke into small groups of individuals and tribes bantering with each other, and trying to talk with the Americans.

The interpreter pulled me toward a tribal elder I recognized from patrols. We wanted to work with his village, strategically located between our base and a special operations base to the south. Keeping the village free from Taliban — at least on the sidelines, if not actively supporting us — was a key priority. A conversation with him was useful.

This was my first direct, personal exposure to corruption. I heard him out. He wanted solar panels for his tribe, except, as it turned out, the panels were to be installed at his house. And he lived outside his village. He even explained that we could keep some of the solar panels we delivered to him, a proposal I treated like a joke. I agreed to relay this information to the commander and headed outside to rejoin the security detail.

Afterwards, the interpreter agreed it was a funny situation. We laughed about the obviously corrupt scheme. Then, while driving back to the base, the interpreter asked if there was any way to get solar panels for his own village, hundreds of miles away. He told me that something could be arranged between him and me personally, the unit didn’t need to find out. That, too, I treated as a joke. As it turned out, my time writing for and editing The Yale Record as an undergraduate came in very useful for counterinsurgency.

Paktika Province. That’s just how things worked, there. Everyone wanted a cut, everyone was willing to give you a piece of their cut.

A habitation in the rural areas of Paktika Province, age unknown

Now I’m sure I’d encountered corruption before that in the U.S. Some infrastructure deal that got done the wrong way, or a construction project where the bidding process was rigged. I’m from Branford, Connecticut — right outside New Haven. There has been corruption here a long time, and never more conspicuously than during the 20th century. It is a well-known fact that the mob held great sway in cities up and down the NYC – Boston corridor after prohibition. Don’t believe me? Watch The Departed. Read up on where Joe Kennedy, Sr. made his money. It wasn’t just New York City, or New Jersey.

But corruption is much more than the mob. I didn’t realize that, growing up. I had to see corruption in Afghanistan, and then again in Ukraine, living and reporting there. Because here in the U.S., we don’t have corruption like they do in Afghanistan or Ukraine any more. Maybe we used to have something like it. But nothing approaching the levels of corruption you find overseas.

Except we do.

It’s easy to see the corruption in Ukraine and Afghanistan, albeit for different reasons. In Afghanistan, what we call corruption is an entire system based on reputation, tribe, and personality. It’s not a “system” at all, in a modern sense. That doesn’t mean it isn’t sophisticated. One needs to hold just as much information about how to navigate Afghanistan’s system in one’s head, probably (if one is illiterate, as many are in the rural areas) entirely in one’s memory, as one needs to know about the proper way to run a political campaign, or a business. When we described their system as corrupt because people with power solicited and took money, we weren’t entirely right — everyone knew they were soliciting and taking money. They would not be powerful in their communities if they didn’t solicit or take money in exchange for action. This is how a patronage system works, and it was their system.

Most Ukrainians know and understand that corruption is wrong. To them, it is a legacy of the Soviet system and of the Tsarist system before that, both of which ultimately operated as large-scale patronage networks. If you knew someone, you were “good” — if you didn’t, you needed to be very lucky. Ukrainians advocate for more transparency and less corruption in their own society precisely because they recognize corruption for what it is, and dislike it — unlike most Afghans, who are comfortable with a system we would recognize as openly and even enthusiastically corrupt.

Here in the U.S., it’s more difficult to see the sort of open corruption one does in Afghanistan, or among prominent Ukrainians. This is in part because it has been made illegal in many cases, driving the overt corruption underground, and in part because we prefer not to think of ourselves as corrupt, although as a society, we certainly have widespread corruption. We’ve defined a crime narrowly, and then slowly closed our eyes to examples of corruption that fall outside the scope of the law while retaining its characteristics.

Knocking doors across Connecticut, the most common complaint I hear, beyond affordability even, is corruption. When I started running for governor, my platform was simple: create a large voluntary state guard. Decentralize power from the federal government to the state level, then decentralize further to the city and town level. That’s all I talk about, and believe me when I say this, nobody expects a person to show up on their door preaching the 2nd Amendment in Connecticut. Nobody!

Most folks keep talking with me after I get going, and the conversation, because it is usually unexpected, which is to say interesting, leads wherever the person I’m talking with wants it to go. Most citizens I’ve spoken with understand that whatever the federal government is doing, the state has a limited ability to impact that one way or another. So they’ll talk about the high taxes in Connecticut. From there the conversation usually leads to corruption.

Democrats tend to see corruption as being characteristic of Republicans and small towns. Republicans and independents see corruption as being characteristic of Democrats and big cities. The commonality? You guessed it: everyone is convinced that there is widespread corruption. I don’t think they’re wrong.

On the contrary, I think we greatly underestimate the amount of corruption in our state, and in our country. And this is a bipartisan issue. Let’s start by agreeing that the typical bribes we associate with corruption are the most conspicuous form of it — when a person accepts money to make or influence a decision that is supposed to be based on merit, that is bad, it’s not something we permit in America or Europe.

Next, to understand the magnitude of the problem, let’s go over the other, less visible forms of corruption we know exist from sources such as The Panama Papers investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Shell corporations in other countries with lax reporting laws; LLCs that exist to own a portion of some other LLC, itself a holding company; even word-of-mouth agreements between the wealthy and powerful to preserve each other’s interests all serve to obfuscate when a politician receives a benefit in exchange for some consideration. There are dozens of ways to steal without doing it openly, provided one has the resources.

And if one has been in a position of power long enough, it’s harder not to take advantage of opportunity than to receive benefit. For someone who’s been in Congress or the State Legislature for 20 years, benefits accrue to you without your even knowing it. Every time someone sees your name on a piece of paper, you receive special consideration. Every time you arrive in a place where you can reasonably expect to be known, people are there ready to flatter and delight you. A moderately competent politician who’s served long enough at the state or federal (and in some prominent cases, such as mayor, local) level exists largely in a state of constant corruption.

Corruption, I’ve come to believe, is a word that describes how an individual behaves when in proximity to power. Given enough time, everyone becomes corrupted. It’s like the Ring of Power in the Lord of the Rings (this is merely a useful analogy; I realize that I’ve referenced this twice now in the past two essays and am getting tired of the analogy myself). Everyone eventually succumbs.

From this perspective, term limits become a remarkably prudent thing, something George Washington and others seem implicitly to have endorsed at the Republic’s beginning. On the face of it, term limits could be seen as limiting democratic choice. But if corruption is a characteristic of human life, term limits are one of the few ways to ensure that no politician is tempted to serve longer than he or she should — which many are — and many do.

Or think of the saying “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” By extension, “moderate power corrupts moderately” and “little power corrupts a little.” In a world where people must wield power from positions of authority, they must also become corrupted to a greater or lesser degree.

Here are some of the forms of corruption both parties tolerate:

Nepotism. If you recognize the last name of a person in politics because of something one or both of their parents did in politics, they don’t belong in politics and are damaging the system. Nepotism is not just when one person with power abuses that power to assist a family member or friend — it is also a word that describes generational corruption. Easy to find in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, deeply anti-egalitarian, in the long run leads to outcomes such as the ones we’re seeing now in the White House. Buckle in for 2028 folks!

Influence Peddling. Widespread in ways that are difficult to track. The example given by Wikipedia is that of then-Democrat and governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich attempting to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat. That’s pretty obvious! And Blagojevich, who has since received a highly sought-after presidential pardon from Donald Trump, served years in prison to atone for the act. Technically it’s not illegal in the U.S. But how many politicians abuse or misuse their influence for personal or private gain? I think the longer one stays in office, the more difficult it becomes not to use one’s influence. Best case scenario, in an emergency, the misuse or abuse at least has some positive effect, such as, for example, calling in favors in order to help Ukraine when Russia invaded, a thing many American politicians did.

State Capture. The process by which well-funded initiatives — ideological or economic in nature — use access and influence to have politicians rewrite the law to benefit themselves. Don’t think that happens in Connecticut? What’s happened in the last 10 years to the utility companies, how they’ve ruined Connecticut as a place for solar power (the most accessible form of renewable available to consumers and homeowners) is a great example of “state capture.” A majority of Connecticut’s legislators and every governor has permitted this to unfold. In Connecticut, there is no question in my mind that the energy industry has massive influence over how the state operates, to Connecticut’s detriment. At a national level, one might argue that the military industrial complex and the health care industry (a.k.a. “big pharma) has captured the state.

There are other forms of corruption extant. The average citizen has limited bandwidth to think about any one of these, let alone all of them. The problem is ubiquitous — the Democratic and Republican parties both depend on forms of corruption such as cronyism and nepotism in ways that are impossible to ignore. Can you blame folks for feeling disenfranchised? Can you blame Connecticut citizens for saying, quietly and out of earshot of the major parties, that the whole system is riddled with corruption?

This is why if elected governor, I’ll form an anti-corruption task force. If we can’t do anything about it (and I’m not promising that we can), at least we can name the problem. At least we can publicize agreed-on definitions. Some people who currently benefit from corruption may even see themselves reflected in the definitions, and, still having a measure of pride, will take affirmative steps to act correctly and remove themselves from the public political sphere. Others — the sort of person you definitely do not want around power, will find ways to justify their continued self-service.

Why Is A Large Voluntary State Guard Necessary?

One of the most frequent questions I field on the campaign trail is: “why is a large voluntary state guard necessary?” It’s a good question, a logical question: Connecticut and the U.S. are safe. The country has the most powerful military in the world and no nearby enemies. Even our faraway enemies threaten peripheral states such as Hawaii and Alaska, both of which were bombed (in the case of Alaska, briefly occupied) during WWII.

And in that safety bubble, few states feel more quintessentially safe than Connecticut, a place so boring and bereft of danger that most people driving south or north to the great cities of New York or Boston only ever pause at the rest stops off I-95 near Darien and near Clinton to grab a few gallons of overpriced gas. Connecticut, as everyone knows, is a drive through state — not a drive-to state. Why would a place that is so sleepy need a large voluntary state guard? What urgent need is there to rearm?

I was thinking about this recently while watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time since I saw it in theaters. I go to bed quite early and have been working my way through movies I watched when younger in bites of 20-30 minutes at a time, sound off, subtitles on, until I fall asleep.

Something that jumped out to me this time, watching the film, was how the theme of unreadiness repeats itself in the movie. This is emphasized as a major plot point in the second and third movies of the trilogy, and as I remember from reading the books decades ago as a youth, Tolkien does spend a lot of time underlining it — especially Theoden, the King of Rohan, who has been ensorcelled by Saruman and Grima Wyrmtongue, and Denethor, the mad Steward of Gondor, driven to despair by Sauron.

It reminded me of the Game of Thrones television series, and the Night’s Watch, which is introduced as this largely unnecessary relic force guarding a wall of ice far to the north. When I watched Game of Thrones originally, I don’t remember thinking to myself that the Night’s Watch reminded me of LOTR and the plot device of “force that is essential to the defense of the realm is seen as an unnecessary joke.” Deep in a campaign that is preaching the importance of specifically military preparation, the connection was immediately apparent this time around.

An under-resourced defense initiative many seen in its world as a joke

This trope is very recent. Reading ancient and early modern literature, one does not encounter the phenomenon of “the kingdom isn’t prepared” as a common plot device. Why not? Why, reading literature as varied as War and Peace and Beowulf and Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Far from the Madding Crowd and The Iliad — different stories from different cultures and eras — do we not find a Denethor or a Theoden — a leader who has disarmed their kingdom and left it open to the ravages of the enemy?

The answer is that prior to the 20th century, countries and kingdoms that disarmed, or did not arm effectively enough, simply vanished. They were gobbled up by their neighbors. Cities were sacked and enslaved, republics ended, kingdoms became part of more powerful empires. This happened routinely, so much so that when we look at France, we don’t think of it in the same way as we think of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, and a piece of Ireland) — France finished its work of gobbling up Burgundy, Gascony, Anjou, and Normandy centuries ago. Today, France is — well — France.

France was nearly gobbled up and digested by its neighbor Germany twice during the 20th century. This wasn’t the last time in the 20th century we’d see something like this happen (China gobbled up Tibet), and it is (in fact!) part of the context in which Tolkien was writing LOTR, but to Europeans and Westerners, it was supposed to mark the end of an era in which things like that could happen. Stopping the Nazis and prying France (and Poland, and Ukraine, and Norway, and ultimately Germany itself) out of their jaws was terrible work in which tens of millions died and hundreds of millions had their lives upended. We built a massive system of alliances and a global economy dependent on those alliances in part to ward off the return of such a ruinous war.

The story of a culture or a people being unready to face a threat, paradoxically, resonates with us because it is our immediate history — it is a modern phenomenon. In the ancient world, in the world of the Middle Ages, we don’t see literary tropes around unreadiness because those countries, kingdoms, duchies, and principalities were constantly at war with each other. You see tropes such as cowardice and greed and incompetence — traits in a leader that would usually result in the country, republic, kingdom, duchy, or principality becoming subjugated by a neighbor or disappearing entirely. But there is no such thing as a kingdom where people live in privilege and comfort, free from the ravages of war, because such spaces simply did not exist prior to the 20th century.

This is how in Beowulf, on which Tolkien drew for much inspiration for LOTR, the immediate problem facing the tribe Beowulf goes to help is not that their King, Hrothgar, isn’t ready or prepared: it’s that Hrothgar faces a monstrous enemy more powerful than his men. It’s not that the King of the Danes is weak. He commands the loyalty of his men. It’s that Hrothgar is overmatched. Beowulf, the hero, is stronger than Hrothgar, and also stronger than the monsters that beset the kingdom. This isn’t because Beowulf has trained more, or knows some special martial arts trick that the Danes don’t. Beowulf is strong enough to rip the arm off Grendel, the monster, who has in the story been ripping the arms off Hrothgar’s men. He’s just better.

Beowulf, dead, having sacrificed himself to (with the help of one loyal thane) slay a dragon

Or take Achilles and Diomedes, part of the Greek host in The Iliad. Achilles has more fame today than Diomedes, but to the ancient Greeks, Diomedes had equal standing to Achilles — he wounds Ares in a fight and later ascends to divinity himself. The two of them are not (movies aside) better because they train more or dedicate themselves to the art and craft of war. Achilles is mostly impervious to physical damage (save for his heel) and Diomedes is stronger and more dexterous than other warriors. Of course they train, as do other soldiers. But their strength is natural; no amount of preparation will help a Trojan defeat Achilles — not even their best warrior, Hector. Paris, who ultimately kills Achilles with a poisoned arrow, has his hand guided by a vengeful god. The Greeks don’t win because they’re better prepared, or even because they’re more devout than the Trojans; it’s because — as was the case in Beowulf — they’re just better.

Contrast this with the problem of The Night’s Watch in GOT. Presumably if they had 10,000 or 25,000 troops instead of 1,000, their defense of the wall against the Walkers from the North would have been more effective. They’re unprepared because the people living in the lands guarded by the wall don’t appreciate the threat of the Walkers. In LOTR the enemy, Sauron, throws Denethor into despair, corrupts Saruman, and then through Saruman, places Theodon under a powerful spell. There is an enemy actively working to make sure that the people with the power to resist him do not or cannot — in spite of there being a large number of people willing and able to fight against Sauron, many of whom correctly perceive the threat to Rohan and Gondor, respectively. The challenge is organizing a defense that, once put in place, will succeed — and if not emplaced in time, will fail.

Literature reflects the biases of the author, but also the interests of its readers, of the audience; what literature we have from the past, certainly prior to the modern era, tends to be written by aristocrats or the powerful for aristocrats or the powerful. They’re stories, yes, but stories about interests and concerns. They reflect attitudes. And the stories of the past, at least as they concern war, are fundamentally different because they reflect a world where danger and disaster are just months away, always, and this is a fact widely known to all, most (or all) of whom have some direct experience with warfare.

This brings us back to the phenomenon in recent decades of this new trope: the country or kingdom is unprepared for a threat it does not or cannot recognize, and part of the protagonists’ struggle is to alert their countrymen or kinsmen that the threat is real. It’s a story that emerges from a context of relative safety and security that would have been difficult or impossible to imagine even two centuries ago. It emerges, 100 years ago, at the precise time that we (as in Americans, Connecticut residents) begin turning our backs on our militia system.

I don’t bring this up to say “because of fantasy novels we should form a large voluntary state guard for our defense,” I do it to point out that this trope in fantasy novels tracks with our belief that local military organization and preparedness is unnecessary. Maybe those who do not think it is necessary are correct, and those of us who’ve been to war and seen it spreading closer to our borders are just hyper-vigilant, or worried about nothing. It’s also possible that we are unready in a way none of our ancestors could have predicted. What a shame it will be if the very modest preparation we could make now, in peace, becomes necessary later, in war — at the very moment we have the least time in which to organize ourselves for defense!

Why I Voted to Bring Electric Buses to Branford

Last year, in 2025, I was in the final year of my two terms with Branford’s RTM. A proposal came before us, which was debated. The proposal, by the Branford school superintendent, was to bring electric buses to Branford and replace the old fleet of gas-powered combustion engine buses.

As I recall, one Republican stood to speak against the measure, a principled young man named Joseph Lofredo. I think more than one Republican voted against the measure. I’m sure Joseph did. I and the Democrats (and some Republicans) voted for the proposal. I believe I stood to speak in favor of the measure.

I invited Joseph out for beers afterwards at Thimble Island Brewery and we chatted about the issue, and other issues. I heard some concerns of his that hadn’t made it to the floor, and of which I wasn’t aware. He heard my side out. While we didn’t ultimately see eye to eye about EVs and buses in particular (we did agree about other issues, such as the importance of a strong moral education for children, such as that practiced by him as a leader in the Boy Scouts organization), the conversation was characterized by respect and a willingness to consider different sides and perspectives.

This is how politics works: the different sides talk, and do what they can to find a middle ground. When one side inevitably comes out ahead in the vote, it’s still important that the other side gets heard, and to the greatest extent possible that there is understanding, there is harmony. The democratic process isn’t just a mechanism for decision-making that we embraced centuries ago, which tends to produce better outcomes than unilateral decisions — it’s an obligation, using utilitarian methods, to create consensus when it comes to spending, policy, law, and all other decisions by a polity.

Children disembarking from a Zum all-electric bus
Children disembarking from a Zum schoolbus similar to those piloted by Zum drivers in Branford, Connecticut. Photo via Zum Transportation

The arguments against Branford’s electric buses come from all over — they come from within Branford, as evidenced by the town representatives who voted against the contract to use EV buses. They come from around the state — people who don’t live in Branford but don’t want electric buses in their towns. They come from around the country, and even internationally. Social media is a lightning rod, and anyone anywhere who has a bone to pick with EVs is incentivized to strike.

What are the arguments against Branford fielding EVs? First, that EVs are expensive, and EV infrastructure is expensive. Second, that EVs are dangerous — they can catch fire. Third, that they’re an unproven technology. Fourth, the components of EV batteries are mined immorally or exploitatively. There are other arguments that relate to these four — the risk of unproven or dangerous technology, the ethics around mining the resources that go into electric batteries, or the expense. But ultimately, these are the arguments, and they exist almost entirely on what I would describe as the Republican right.

What are the arguments in favor of Branford fielding EV buses? I know because I made them. Combustion engine buses can also catch fire (if you don’t believe me, search online for buses catching fire before 2010, you’ll find a horrifying wealth of examples). In one important regard, pollution, EVs are safer than combustion engine buses; some argue that exhaust technology has gotten better, but better than piping exhaust directly into the cabin where kids sit still leaves a lot of room for improvement, whereas EVs have no exhaust, and produce no inhalable pollution from running.

While I wouldn’t say quite yet that EVs are a “proven” technology, they have been around since the 1980s. Calling them a developing technology doesn’t seem like it does the system of building and maintaining EVs justice, but it would be a lie to claim that they’re near combustion engines in terms of the knowledge we have around what can break and how to fix it. In terms of expense, while it’s still early days, fixing or maintaining EVs shouldn’t be much more expensive — for routine maintenance, it’s actually cheaper to fix EVs, but for collision repair, EVs cost more.

The horrible conditions under which components are mined for electric batteries are the same as those mined for chips and components used in computers, smartphones, and data centers, which presumably are being used by the very people objecting to EVs to lodge their EV complaints online.

There are another two arguments in favor of investing in EVs and EV infrastructure in the form of renewable energy which I didn’t make at the time, but which have become obvious to me (and to others) in recent months. Both arguments come down to national resilience and individual independence.

The first additional argument goes like this: oil and gas prices will always be dependent on external forces. Just to run an automobile, yard tools, or generators, one needs a steady supply of refined gasoline. When war disrupts a system designed for optimal efficiency, the supply of gasoline becomes more expensive — potentially, prohibitively so. EV infrastructure and EVs draw on electricity that can be generated at home, via solar panels with assistance from home batteries, or via a mix of energy sources including wind and nuclear. Being totally dependent on oil and gas as a nation, as a state, as a town, or as a person is taking a remarkable financial risk.

The second additional argument, related to the first, is that so long as we allow China to dominate this market (and they unquestionably do; they sell EVs at 1/3rd the price of the cheapest available U.S. models that have twice the range. I’m not making that up), we’re putting ourselves further behind China strategically. China dominates battery technology now, they dominate solar panel production, and they’re beginning to dominate electric vehicles. That means their dominance is stretching into infrastructure and expertise — two fields where for decades the U.S. has held an insurmountable advantage.

By arguing against EV adoption in the U.S., people are making Americans more dependent on oil and gas markets, and weaker than our principle geopolitical rival, China. They are handing China the future.

I sincerely believe this. If EVs were a totally unproven technology, I’d be unwilling to put children into EV buses. If EVs were vastly more expensive, I’d be hesitant to buy them. If there was a real ethical concern about mining for the elements we use for our everyday lives, and there was something not buying EVs could do about that — again anyone using a computer or smartphone to argue against EVs is doing a bad job of taking their own advice — I’d pause before supporting EV adoption, and specifically with school buses.

But this is the future. The more we lean into it, the more competitive we’ll be economically with China — not just here on earth, where oil and gas are plentiful, but also in space, where the Trump Administration would like us to go using private companies such as SpaceX. There is no oil or gas in space, there’s solar energy.

The Chinese have taken the lead in this crucial field nationally — meanwhile, as individuals, those people who neglected to buy EVs when they could are watching gas go above $4 per gallon for the first time since before COVID. It’s going higher. That’s not the future, that’s the present.

I’m in favor of supporting EV infrastructure, and renewables such as solar panels and home batteries. I’d like those to be manufactured here in the U.S., using minerals mined by U.S. companies, and refined by U.S. concerns. I’d like us to be global leaders in this technology, so that citizens can feel good about buying and outfitting their homes with cheap renewable energy to supplement power created and stored on the grid. I’m proud that Branford did its part as a town to drive our state forward, and I hope more can be done to deliver on the quintessentially American promise for decentralized power to the town and ultimately to the citizen level.

The Art of Taking the Road Less Traveled

As hard as Ranger School was, Reconnaissance School was harder. It was more challenging physically because it came 10 days after Ranger School, where I’d lost 15 pounds and gotten substantially weaker. For the same reason, it was doubly challenging mentally and emotionally. We worked out harder, marched longer, stayed up later. It was hell, pure torture. And it was the thing I needed to pass in order to get to Italy, to the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

That made the suffering — what is anecdotally known as “Ranger School’s 4th Phase” — worth it.

The unfortunately named Reconnaissance and Surveillance Leaders Course or “RSLC” (sound it out with a British accent) was in addition to the most challenging Army school I endured, the one that taught me the most lessons about fieldcraft. Filled with excellent instruction, RSLC taught me important things that I use to this day. The most important of which was, both for the purposes of remaining undetected as a reconnaissance scout and also as someone who enjoys walking in a snowy nature preserve during wintertime: stick to the road less traveled.

In military terms, there’s always a reason the road is less traveled. It’s in nasty, swampy terrain. It’s near steep and treacherous hillsides. It goes through a stream. Dangerous wild animals lurk nearby. No sane person would walk there, let alone set up camp overnight.

Such a place is perfect for a camp, because nobody thinks to patrol there — certainly not frequently, or with any special interest. It’s usually thick with brush. Difficult to access or leave. Perfect for scouts to hide overnight.

I thought about that training recently while walking my dog in the Short Beach Preserve. In the cold, and the snow, two preserves have emerged. The first, which is easily accessible through normal trails, is festooned with dog waste. One can’t walk 10 feet without encountering evidence that some lazy and thoughtless pet owner let their dog use the trail — not the side of the trail! No! The trail itself! — as a toilet.

Yellow snow is one thing. Who really cares, I think, trudging through in a pair of tan army boots suitable for the desert where I first wore them. I’ve stepped in worse.

But the other — right on the narrow trail — it’s disgusting, vomitous.

So I’ve taken to using another pathway through the preserve. In several places it traverses streams or marshy areas. The dog waste is minimized to the beginning of the trail. I’m not filled with an atavistic revulsion for the waste, and don’t need to grapple with the desire to use my old RSLC training to lay in ambush for these wayward dog owners, then confront them in the moment of their misdeed. Nobody wants something like that, least of all me.

A white American Husky regards the snowy Connecticut woods with interest
Freya, our intrepid American Husky, helping blaze a trail through the snowy backwoods of the Short Beach Preserve. The only footprints to be seen is hers and mine from previous trips. The footing: treacherous! The trail: pristine.

And it works! The trail I’ve carved out has several steep hills, and very nasty terrain that is only traversable when some water has frozen. There’s a coyote family sometimes present (I avoid them when they make themselves known). Dog waste? None to be seen. Some deer and rabbit scat. Par for the course.

Taking the well-traveled roads, you’ll encounter most people — including all of the laziest people, who make things difficult. Whether it’s irresponsible drivers on the highway going too slow or weaving recklessly through traffic or irresponsible dog owners who let their pets use the middle of a walking trail as a restroom, the ease and convenience of the well-trod path also comes with measurable downsides.

If you’re willing to go a little outside your comfort zone, take a few more risks than others — adjusted for your competencies and strengths — your pathway through life is likely to be more pleasant. And, as I learned in RSLC, it may even be (paradoxically) safer.

2025: The Year in Sports and Entertainment

We’re at the end of the year. No great movies or T.V. shows remain to be seen. The Sox came as close as they’re going to get to the World Series for the next couple years. The Patriots did remarkably well at football, surprisingly, and the Giants did bad at football, but with the usual dash of hope in the form of an electric running back and quarterback.

Here are some of the things that stood out to me as a consumer of sports:

Boston Celtics: last year was disappointing. The injury of Jayson Tatum put a halt to hopes of repeating as NBA champs, and also dented the team’s odds of a successful postseason this year. I can’t say the team was particularly exciting to watch at their best. Something like the Golden Age of the Spurs. But watching wins is never a bad experience. This season I’m taking a break, and waiting until next season to plug back in. Might have to check out Bruins hockey.

Boston Red Sox: Dealing Devers wasn’t a terrible move, in retrospect, but letting Walker Buehler go was. I don’t think the Red Sox could’ve gotten past the Blue Jays this year. But his intensity and power in the postseason would’ve been useful, as would his presence in the clubhouse. That’s the sort of guy Buehler is on a team. A sparkplug, a firestarter. After he left, Bregman was never quite the same. Buehler pitched well against the Yankees and he might have been able to nudge the Sox into the first round against the Blue Jays (where the Sox, instead of the Yankees, would have gotten thumped out). I’m not sure what that portends for next season. A healthy club could probably make the playoffs again. Will the Sox get far there if they make it in ‘26? I don’t think so, not without a little more hitting and a little more pitching.

High tide mark for the Boston Red Sox in their 2025 campaign

Having said that, this Sox team was one of the more fun to watch over the past decade. They showed flashes of brilliance, as during a midseason run where they rattled off a couple significant win streaks. They were dismissed with difficulty by a fine Yankees squad — who then got hurried out of the playoffs by a dominant Blue Jays squad — and I’m hopeful the Sox can find a way to build on the pieces they have now. They need everything they had this season, plus one more Crochet-level pitcher (easier said than done) and one more hitter on top of a healthy Anthony and re-signed Bregman (much easier said than done). I’m not optimistic about 2026.

And some of the movies and shows I watched that I either enjoyed, or which I think you can probably skip (in my opinion):

The Terror: An incredibly-cast and beautifully rendered fictional t.v. horror serial that walks the line between natural and supernatural following the crews of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, two British warships that were kitted out to explore the Arctic and look for a passage through the ice in the mid-19th century — unfortunately for them, during some of the coldest years on record. The historical Erebus and Terror disappeared with all hands lost; in this telling, either a monster or a relic population of cave bears (depending on your capacity to suspend disbelief) were responsible, plaguing and killing the crew once the ships become stuck in pack ice. Had me engrossed from the first to last episode, with very little filler.

Severance: Smarter people have already written about this show; all I’ll add to the discussion is a ringing endorsement to watch this if you subscribe to Apple TV. I don’t remember the last time I cared as much about characters as I did watching this program. It’s an incredible show, a marvelous experience, and you don’t get cheated entering into that world. It’s worthwhile.

Bosch: Legacy Season 3: Friends have heard me talk at length about the original Bosch series, which I really enjoyed. Each episode of Bosch seasons 1-4 (and maybe more) is a joy to watch — one never feels lectured to or manipulated as a viewer — one’s time as an audience member is not taken for granted. That wandered in later seasons, and very much so in Bosch: Legacy, both of the first two seasons of which were not the most enjoyable views. Much of the enjoyment I got watching Legacy was owing to the residual goodwill built up by those excellent initial seasons of Bosch.

Season 3 was a return to Bosch’s earlier form. Each episode was satisfying in its own right, while credibly building that most powerful of Boschian narratives: has Bosch gone too far? Is his moral code antiquated or even beyond gray — has he wandered into irredeemable evil territory? Hint: everyone who has ever bet against Bosch has lost money. Watching the series sell and then rug-pull a compromised or flawed Bosch gets me every time. Really enjoyed this unfortunately ultimate season of Bosch, and Titus Welliver’s exceptional acting (has anyone done a better job of inhabiting a role? As good, certainly. Better, I think not).

Reacher Season 3: The first two seasons were very enjoyable. Very good, bordering on great. This season was a disappointment in so many ways. Whereas in the past Reacher’s feats, while farfetched, felt somehow plausible, this season was filled with absurd and improbable moments that didn’t stretch credulity so much as violate it. If one had in the past been able to suspend disbelief due to good acting and better plotting, this season misfired on both accounts. The characters who were supposed to be sympathetic weren’t. The pacing was off. Even the villains didn’t bite as hard, in spite of an all-out effort to make them. I’d pass on this.

Foundation Season 3: A solid ending to an enjoyable series, particularly if you enjoy Sci Fi and never read the original Asimov trilogy (as I haven’t). Two of the last three episodes — eight and nine — deliver an extraordinary payoff, one of the very best in the series. The final episode, on the other hand, was so wandering and worked so hard to tie everything up neatly that I barely remember it. It’s rare that an ultimate episode is overshadowed by the episode before, but that’s what happened here. This was also one of the few series for which I always watch the opening song — like Mad Men and The Sopranos, it helps set the stage for the episode that’s about to unfold. Recommend!

The Last of Us Season 2: Didn’t enjoy this. I’m told it followed the video game faithfully. I watched the first game played, and not the second — didn’t play either — and watched as much of Season 2 as I did out of loyalty both to the game and to the first season.

Cinema, theater, and literature have always been lightning rods for culture war. Years ago I took some heat for saying I didn’t enjoy the most recent Star Wars trilogy, and imagine I might take some heat for saying I didn’t enjoy this season of The Last of Us. My opposition to Star Wars episodes 7-9 wasn’t opposition so much as I simply didn’t enjoy it; the plot was incoherent, and the decision to complicate Luke Skywalker the way the director did seemed arbitrary and not worth the payoff. I think as a writer or a showrunner if you’re going to bedevil a character, a hero no less, you owe it to that character to give them some form of redemption.

And so it was that the second season of The Last of Us was probably doomed by the video game — spoiler alert, one of the primary protagonists from season one is brutally and bloodily murdered in the first episode of season two. The murder, which does not seem suitable for television (frankly) is ostensibly complicated by the fact that it is seen as an act of vengeance by the daughter of a doctor who is killed at the end of season one, by the same protagonist who gets murdered.

As an allegory about vengeance, I’m sure the seasons both work well. But as storytelling it doesn’t; when I see a beloved albeit complicated hero (he kills the doctor who is about to kill the second protagonist, who becomes the hero of the second season) savagely tortured to death, I don’t think “hmm, life is complex,” I think about the very real brutality meted out today by various invading and occupying countries against minority groups or peoples. I think about the absence of justice, the impossibility of justice.

Movies and books and plays are not spaces to muse on the impossibility of justice — because to claim that justice is impossible is a cynical and self-defeating idea. Art is a fantastical space in which we get to see heroic and upright behavior — perhaps with struggle, with complication, with challenge and difficulty, to be overcome — fantasies in which justice is accessible. Because the world we live in, the real world, is a deeply unjust place.

There are other problems with The Last of Us Season 2. I watched the season to the end. It ends up being a kind of torture. I don’t recommend it, because of its sacrilegious and inhumane treatment of Joel and other characters. Game of Thrones got all the “violence and grit for the sake of violence and grit” out of my system. Just can’t watch stuff like that any more.

Of literature I read little, and journalism I read quite a bit. The only literature I read this year were stories and books I’d missed by Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), by Stanislaw Lem (Imaginary Magnitude), and some rereading of Hemingway and Carver; the remainder of my reading was tied up with Albion’s Seed and various legal documents relating to Connecticut’s Constitution and General Statutes, so as to become smarter about the state I live in. I tied up my service to Branford’s RTM, as I wrote in another post, and having helped contribute to the law of my town with several ordinances, I was interested in learning a bit more about the context in which those laws were created. It’s interesting. It does feel at times that the code of a state or a country ought to be simple enough that a citizen should be able to understand it before graduating high school; my feeling, reading Connecticut’s state laws, is that they require a lawyer to navigate. While the process by which we have arrived at our laws, statutes, rules, and ordinances as a state has certainly been democratic, what exists today is not egalitarian, and probably a violation of the principles on which the state (and nation) were founded.

For journalism, I read The Wall Street Journal every day. On the day (December 18) I was to choose between continuing my subscription or not, I elected not to; $50 a week for what feels increasingly like banal stories about American culture — the sort of thing I remember reading in The New York Times when I was in high school — was too rich for my blood. This year I’ll likely pick up a subscription to Bloomberg or to Financial Times, I haven’t decided which.

My favorite new game: Is the story from 2025 WSJ or 1995 New York Times?

Final recommendation for 2026: avoid this snack at all costs unless you have superhuman powers of self control.

Danger! Addictive! It’s sweet and it’s spicy, at once!

A Short Indirect Personal Remembrance of Frank Gehry, Tied to my Grandfather

One of my favorite memories of my father’s father — my grandfather, Wes Bonenberger — was the trips we’d take together to different cities; Los Angeles, New York, Boston, San Francisco. His favorite was San Francisco. He loved the look of the city, the way the buildings lay on the land and hugged the rolling hills. He’d talk with me about architects he admired — Frank Lloyd Wright, for whom he’d worked as a draftsman early in his career (only job he’d ever been fired from, he’d say), and Frank Gehry, with whom he’d attended architecture school and hung out at USC in the 1950s.

Wes Bonenberger in Carmel, where he lived for much of his elderly years before returning to Connecticut.

My grandfather didn’t find it difficult to meet people, but he didn’t have many close friends. He was very picky about the people he opened up with. I could say this was a legacy of the McCarthy trials, when people in his social circle were smeared as communists and lost their careers, but I think it was always part of his character. People saw him as quirky. He had a deeply cynical sense of humor, and was thoroughly anti-authoritarian, but at his heart was an idealist who loved the little guy. He was the little guy! A lower middle class kid with a knack for designing and fixing things, who after getting out of the Army following WWII went to USC on the GI Bill.

When we’d walk through cities, Wes would talk about architecture, try (and usually fail) to impart some wisdom to me, and often end up discussing contemporaries. Gehry’s was a name that often came up — one of his close friends at architecture school — a fellow iconoclast, someone who found the architectural mainstream in 1950s America not just stale, but horrifying.

For this reason I’ve always looked at Gehry’s projects with interest; not as someone with deep aesthetic appreciation for his work or what went into it, but for the larger project of disruption and complication, of which he was an enthusiastic and deliberate part.

Farewell to the last contemporary living connection to my grandfather I’m aware of — farewell to Frank Gehry.

Running on Empty

Running has been a big part of my life since I was a kid. At first it was biking — using my dirt bike to get to my friends houses, or going up and down the gravel roads of the idiosyncratic and progress-resistant community I lived in as a child, Killam’s Point in Branford, Connecticut. That too was a form of running — building my leg muscles, letting me slowly and progressively push my endurance levels, getting me comfortable with wiping out on the side of a road that rarely saw traffic.

Later, I joined my prep school’s cross country team. Here is why I chose cross country over soccer, or football: I was feeling extremely stressed, academically and socially, and wanted something that wouldn’t be particularly stressful. During recruitment, members of the cross country team ran out in morning assembly wearing shorts, sweatbands, and thigh-high socks, eating from a bag of Doritos and tossing a frisbee back and forth. It was chill. Not cool, not impressive, just low-intensity, do what you feel like. I signed up on the spot.

This clever bit of propaganda was a massive lie. I worked harder and pushed myself further physically running cross country than I would until I reached Ranger School in the military, or, later, combat in Afghanistan. It turned out that I had a competitive streak. Running cross country helped bring that out and focus it, turn it inward, so much of the time I was competing with myself. We ended up fielding a pretty good team my sophomore year, and then, my junior year. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d stuck with it senior year.

In the military, I reached my peak as a runner. I ran the Florence Marathon in 2006, and regularly logged around 30 miles per week. These aren’t elite numbers, not even particularly impressive for amateurs. But I was benching around 240-250lbs, averaging 6 minutes and 45 seconds for 5 mile runs, and 8 minutes and 30 seconds for runs between 9 and 10 miles long.

Most importantly, I felt great. Running had by that time finally delivered on its promise to make me feel good — chilled out, relaxed. By the time I left the military, running with music was a solid way for me to destress and decompress. It wasn’t about staying in shape, it was about staying sane.

So when I read this piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about running, something about my journey clicked into place. Earlier this year, I made the decision to shed wearables and music entirely when I run, just to get out and enjoy the process as far as my body will take me.

Throw on the old running shoes and go for a spin, let the mind drift where it will

My right knee is pretty banged up, which limits me to certain trails, and certain distances. I can still do a jog pace — but anything longer, or on roads, will lead to the knee (which I injured during my first deployment, and through which I gutted) giving me major trouble in the days after. So practically speaking I’m never on my legs for longer than a half hour anyway.

But it’s so nice to do that half hour or twenty minutes without feeling compelled to measure — distance, time, songs listened to, heartrate achieved — none of it. It’s so nice to just get out there and do what my body’s still capable of at the tender age of 48. That, folks, is a benefit of getting older — and a little bit wiser.

Freezing Senior Citizens’ Property Taxes in Branford

During the election for first selectman, Josh Brooks made an interesting pledge. “I am proposing to freeze property taxes for qualified Branford seniors,” he wrote on his campaign website, and shared on social media.

Is such a plan feasible? Yes — other towns have already implemented some version of it. In fact, Branford has an interesting mechanism in place already that protects senior citizens: seniors can elect not to pay their property tax while alive. After they pass, the property taxes that are owed as the result of nonpayment are collected from the estate, essentially functioning as a type of lien. But the intent of Brooks’ promise is clear: elderly Branford residents don’t need to worry about property taxes leading to losing their homes. That’s a big deal.

Photography is my passion: a poorly centered photo of Branford’s Town Hall

The senior tax freeze could take the existing policy to another level. The idea, as I understand it, is to cap a property tax rate for eligible senior citizens so that while taxes on Seniors’ property could go down, they wouldn’t ever increase as the result of market fluctuations.

For folks on a fixed income who watched in horror as their property taxes shot up in 2024 by 20% or more despite not having made any improvements to their homes, that’s a big deal. Many homeowners were stunned — normally, the reval doesn’t result in anything near that rate. People moving to Connecticut in the wake of COVID plus other variables contributed to that spike in home values. In other words, forces beyond any individual’s control conspired to make it harder to sell and buy housing in Connecticut.

Some residents were unbothered. If you were flexible about employment, and of an age when moving to another state wasn’t a big deal, you might have bought a house for $350k in 2015, then sold it for $600k in 2022 and moved to Kansas or Minnesota and been able to buy the same amount of house outright in a different place with the profit. That’s one of the advantages of living in the United States — the border between states is often more of an opportunity than an impediment to progress. At least, if you’re mobile, and at a point in your career where such mobility makes sense.

But for elderly residents, there weren’t many good options. Particularly for those folks who had a sentimental attachment to their home — it was in their family for a long time, or their grandparents built it, or it was their forever dream house — even though the money was right to sell in 2023 or 2024, those same pressures sending the price of your home up meant there were few (if any) good options to buy. For folks who were living in Connecticut, the spike in housing prices was across the board, so selling for a higher price also meant buying at a premium if you had to stay local, minimizing or even nullifying the advantage of a move.

Branford’s current policy is nice, and decent, and certainly in the correct spirit when it comes to taking care of its oldest citizens. But Brooks’ proposal offers an interesting expansion on the idea. What if, rather than simply accommodating seniors (a nice thing to do) by promising not to kick them out of their homes, the town offered a financial benefit — certainty on their property taxes — essentially, a bonus for their spending a significant portion of the productive part of their lives paying property taxes in the town, and contributing to its prosperity?

I liked the idea when I first heard about it, and I like it now. It offers seniors a kind of dignity that the current arrangement lacks. Rather than saying “we’re not taking your money now, we’ll take it after you die” like the ghoulish children of some Victorian aristocrat in a Dickens novel, Brooks’ new proposal seems to be angling at something more like “Over the past few decades, you built the town we live in today — now let us do something for you.”

And it won’t — in whatever shape it takes — do away with the requirement to pay property taxes. Folks will still pay tax! It will just cap it at a reasonable place. Maybe the age ends up being 70, or 75. Maybe the residency requirement ends up being 30 years. So you know, with the Branford ordinance, that when you move to the town and buy a house in your 30s or 40s to raise a family, that when you’re older that you will never pay a higher property tax rate than whatever the number is when you turn 70 (or 75). And of course, if property taxes go down, yours will as well.

That’s certainty, that’s stability — that’s peace of mind. That’s a compact between the town and not only its oldest and most committed long-term residents, it’s also a compact between the younger residents and the older generation. The elderly have always been held in high esteem in New England; this represents a welcome return to that tradition.

What about the downside? The town will receive less revenue. At a moment when commercial activity has withered in Branford, and the fewer companies who have stuck around in the town are paying less tax, more and more burden is falling on residents to make up the difference. This is something to consider, and folks ought to examine the question at length before committing to any particular plan. As far as I understand it, finance is like farming in one regard: certainty is the most important component. Even if rain only comes once a year, if you know that, you can find ways to offset the dry periods, and find crops that grow under such conditions. Similarly, if the Board of Finance knows upfront that there are limitations on the taxes they’ll raise, they can come up with plans and schemas to account for those limits. Maybe certain projects will be built more slowly, or on a longer timeline.

The details remain to be worked out. But I’m looking forward to Branford’s RTM picking up the issue and giving it the thorough consideration that this project deserves. It’s the sort of thing that will bring the right type of citizen to Branford, and not for a little while — for the long haul. I hope it comes into being.

Leaving the Branford RTM

This started out as a post for social media. Once I started writing, I quickly realized I had more thoughts that I wanted to share than made sense for a post. No surprises there!

I am not running for reelection on Branford’s RTM this year. After two two-year terms, I feel that I’ve done a decent amount of service to the town, and fulfilled my responsibilities as a citizen and civic-minded individual. It’s been a great experience, and between chairing the Public Services committee and serving as clerk for Rules and Ordinances, I’ve learned a lot about how a Connecticut town functions and why. Here are some of the thoughts, conclusions, and observations I’ve made during that time.

First: very few people know much about local politics, even though it’s the level over which one has the most control. A middle-class Connecticut resident probably pays 30-40% of their total tax bill in property taxes, which are what fund local government and services. Rates of participation for most initiatives are vanishingly small. As a result, individuals and small groups have an incredible ability to impact legislation and votes. Case in point: the RTM voted to approve $7 million for artificial turf fields because a half dozen parents showed up at a meeting. The town hastily voted to sped $7 million on fields that are practically guaranteed to injure more kids who play on them! And if you don’t like science, ask someone who stakes their livelihood on rigorously maintaining good health. I was leaning against supporting the measure, but the passion of the parents changed my mind. A small minority wanted these fields very much. I mention this not to express regret at my vote, but to share how a group of vocal minority showing up absolutely impacted a consequential vote.

Second: Local politicians tend not to have training or experience. Branford’s RTM is comprised of unpaid volunteers, with two exceptions: the RTM’s moderator, which is paid a very modest stipend, and the RTM’s clerk, which is paid an even more modest stipend; hundreds of dollars per year. Very reasonable for part-time work which is demanding and important.

To get 28 people in a town of 28,000 to show up monthly and do hours of work each week besides on committees and in one’s own district for no money testifies to the importance of democratic representation in New England. In one form or another it has been our way for nearly four centuries. Far more, if one believes that our ways were imported and adapted from English and Scandinavian forms of government as is the argument advanced by David Hackett Fischer in Albion’s Seed. Isn’t that remarkable!

There are always pressures brought to bear against volunteerism, by people who want or need to be paid for their time, and by people who feel that paying for labor results in higher quality labor. Having sat inside the RTM for four years, at this point, I feel strongly that our ways ought to be preserved as is; there is no argument for professionalizing government beyond an absolute minimum that outweighs to me the arguments against it.

Branford circa 1868. This is how I learned Short Beach used to be on the Farm River.

Third: Ordinances. Rules and laws passed by the town to enforce proper behavior. All the time, I see on Facebook folks posting about the importance of their rights and liberties, and how tyrannical it is that they be taxed to do a thing they want to do. If Vermont puts a $25 tax on campers to stay overnight at a state park (I don’t know if they do), that’s tyranny. If New York City requires $750 for a pistol permit (I don’t know if they do, I’m making that number up), that’s a tyrannical tax.

But the way a town sees this sort of tax or fee isn’t as a revenue-generation mechanism. The way the people drafting the ordinances isn’t to raise money, either. The reason the fees are so low is that the purpose of ordinances and laws are to encourage those thoughtless or disrespectful people whose actions disrupt their town or neighborhood’s peace and harmony to respect it, and, if that encouragement fails, to offer the town and neighborhood a mechanism for correcting thoughtless or disrespectful behavior.

When framed as a question of rights, anyone who isn’t familiar with the important specific context of the ordinance will probably think selfishly about how important their rights are. Rights are important! Tyranny is bad! That same person, when living next door to a person who has an improperly zoned mechanic shop in their back yard and loudly revs car engines at 10pm on a work night may abruptly become interested in constraining their neighbor’s rights slightly, in exchange for quality sleep. One doesn’t buy a home in a residential neighborhood thinking you’ll be living next to a body shop, and when your neighbor turns out to be that one-in-a-hundred sociopaths who simply does not care about others, or about obeying the rules — because of his “rights” and “liberty” — you’ll be grateful ordinances exist.

Fourth: The limits of law enforcement. Ordinances on the books are one thing. Getting overworked police departments to enforce ordinances is another. Particularly in small towns, noise is a constant issue. In Branford, there is a tension between expensive riverfront condominiums enjoyed by retirees, and the Stony Creek Brewery, an establishment that breaks even (barely) by holding noisy concerts and events late into the night. The Branford PD is often at capacity and unable to respond to reports like these. [note: the SCB has since been bought by the New England Brewing Company (NEBCO) and hopes are high among citizens that this will mean a change in how that space is used, though I remain skeptical]

This gets back to the tension between volunteerism and professionalism I mentioned in my second point. For hundreds of years, Branford (like most New England towns) relied for its law enforcement on volunteer constables who were elected. By the 1920s a variety of factors meant that policing by constables was no longer suitable, and Branford (also like most New England towns) employed a full time police department made up of professional officers. Since then it has become decreasingly possible to mobilize citizens for law enforcement or law enforcement adjacent work; state-level ordinances, rules, and credentialing make policing a very difficult field to move into with volunteers.

This trend can also be seen in America’s approach to a full time professional military (active duty went to this model after Vietnam) and the ongoing transition from volunteer to full-time fire departments. Systems that started out as made up of citizens volunteering their time for important roles morph, over time, into systems dependent on full-time professional employees. 

The problem that one runs into on a local level is: you can only afford so much. Taxes in Connecticut are notoriously high, in part because — well — New England has been part of the U.S. longer than most other regions, and it has always taxed citizens at higher rates, for more services. That’s what you sign up for when you settle and make a life in New England. High taxes, robust services. To hire more police to handle more ordinance violations, you’d need to hire more officers. And the appetite to raise taxes higher (each officer comes with a lifetime training, salary, retirement and benefits obligation to taxpayer of millions of dollars) is nonexistent.

Financially, I believe our town (and maybe our state!) are near the limits of what we can afford through progressive taxation. Particularly given falling rebates from a federal government that is overtly hostile to the New England way of life, I believe that it is time to *de-professionalize* and to emphasize volunteer roles for certain ordinance enforcement. A local constabulary could easily accomplish this role. In fact, that’s precisely what it did for the 230 or so years before Branford (and towns like it) opted for a full-time police department. One doesn’t hear about civilization collapsing into lawlessness in Connecticut between 1789 and 1920 without a professional police force because that never happened.

I think we collectively need to have a conversation about ways to spend less money for more services, and that means mobilizing volunteer networks. Professionalization is almost always the best way to provide services to a town, but it’s also the most expensive. At a certain point we’ll run into that reality.

Branford by 1905. The trend in Branford, like many towns, has been toward increasing professionalism and institutionalization, to the detriment of civic engagement and democratic action.

Fifth: Partisanship. In voting terms, you see that play out with straight-party votes. Behind closed doors, though, in caucus, there’s a lot of nuance.

The decision to pass the budget with RTM interference in the administration and Board of Finance’s recommendations — essentially using the RTM’s power to force BoF and the Selectmen to spend more out of the undesignated fund — was the product of a lot of wrangling. On the Democratic side, some wanted the town to spend more from its undesignated fund. Everyone was onboard with the town offsetting tax increases — the question was how much, not whether to do it or not. I wrote about the process here.

Partisanship, though, is when you see people fabricate arguments to support their position, rather than using their position to develop arguments. Modern politics is driven as much by partisanship as anything else. And one of the things I’ve learned inside the process is that partisanship develops its own logic. It is what The Great founder George Washington meant when he warned against factionalism. There are people on the Republican side who cannot ever accommodate Democrats, and people on the Democratic side who cannot ever accommodate Republicans. Friends, if you never see any merit to what the other side is saying, if you find yourself constantly arguing one side of a dispute, you’ve become a partisan. The problem is you!

Conclusion: there’s incredible power and potential at the local level. Knowing how the town government runs as an abstraction and being inside it are two extremely different things. This, local government, is where our ancestors put the bulk of their efforts — not the state or federal government — and there was a reason for that investment. They believed in the spiritual and moral utility of a certain kind of work, the Puritans who put this all together (at least, in the Connecticut and New Haven colonies, which eventually became our state, and those of other New England colonies). Whether you tend to agree with them or disagree, I’ve come to see great wisdom in the way they organized their social and political lives to work alongside their professional lives. They hoped that in organizing their private lives a certain way, they would create virtuous and harmonious organization of their public lives — and that organization would move upward in a useful and natural way, such that governors and (ultimately) presidents would be of that modest, thrifty, and unostentatiously prosperous fiber.

It worked! The Ivy League consists of some the best colleges in the world! It still educates the lawyers and judiciary and professional politicians that have kept our country humming along for centuries! That we have in recent decades turned our backs on the wise and moderate teachings of our ancestors does not in any way diminish their success.

Misreadings, misunderstandings (both deliberate and ignorant) and misuse have all conspired to bastardize what it means to be a New Englander. It’s not difficult to see what I mean by that on Instagram and TikTok if you’re still on either platform (I am not). This is not, as far as I can tell, a recent phenomenon; it’s decades old. As big cities and the American West have lost their allure for hucksters and get-rich-quick schemers, more and more people have brought this distinctly unpuritanical (if not outright unAmerican) idea of hedonistic prosperity for its own sake — the accumulation of wealth as a good unto itself, rather than as a means to an end. This has been to the detriment of Connecticut and Branford, and New England states and towns everywhere.

Here is my feeling: at some point our culture — local, regional — will have to fight back against the corrupting and decadent influence of excess; it will have to reclaim as our birthright a boring, hardworking, and spartan way of life and way of living for which the people who built this state became famous. It is possible to do that in one’s home. To a limited extent it’s possible to put energy and effort into accomplishing that at the town level. Much depends on that project. I hope we’ll figure it out before it’s too late.

Preparing for an Emergency or Disaster (Mobile)

Recently, several acquaintances have asked me how to prepare a “go bag” and it got me thinking. There are many resources out there that offer solid recommendations on what to buy for a disaster and why. Some are disaster-specific (how to prepare for an earthquake versus fires versus a hurricane); others are nonspecific, but focus more on the specific gear rather than a particular situation.

My employer, the American Red Cross, has one of the best overall suite of products for getting yourself and your family ready for some type of natural disaster, and the types of challenges a person can expect to encounter.  The U.S. has tools online — for now anyway! — under FEMA, while that agency still has funding. Both of these are useful and make for an interesting if suitably alarming Saturday read.

Meanwhile I thought I’d offer my thoughts about disaster preparedness briefly. Like most people my age (47 as of writing) I’ve had some experience with natural disasters as an adult. I’ve lived through several blizzards, three hurricanes (Gloria, Irene, Sandy), and one high wind event (tornado briefly touched down in my town). I’ve also had experience with war, having helped evacuate my wife’s parents from Kyiv in March of 2022, while Russia was invading, and deployed twice to combat in Afghanistan as an infantry officer.

A brief aside on war: while government resources and the American Red Cross focus on natural disasters and infrastructure disasters such as chemical spills or radiation incidents, nobody talks at length or in detail about the possibility of war in the U.S., or the steps one would need to take to avoid that man-made disaster — a glaring blind spot, though understandable. What government wants its citizens to think war could happen within its borders?

Rather than break disasters into artificial categories such as “natural” and “man-made,” I think a better way to think of disaster prep is “mobile” and “static.” There are some disasters that are fast moving and unpredictable, where one will need to move quickly from one’s home to some predetermined safe area if possible (and in any direction away from the disaster, if not possible). Other disasters are such that sheltering in place and waiting for services such as electricity to be turned on again is the best course of action. In both cases, one will want to approach one’s preparedness for the disaster with a maximum of caution and care.

Here’s a simple way to prepare for disasters of any type using this binary framework.

“Mobile” Disaster Preparedness

I’m beginning with mobile preparedness because one can carry less on one’s person or in a car. For that reason, the kit you build in order to prepare to move in response to or to avoid a disaster must include essential things only; heavily focused on survival for as long as it’s necessary (practically speaking, 5-7 days). Such a kit has to fit in a backpack if you plan to be on foot, or in the back of a car if you have a family and plan to be driving.

It’s also convenient to begin with “mobile” disaster preparedness because you can take everything you put in your “mobile” kit and use it for any other kit you compile.

One can even imagine tiers of mobility, though this is already getting into the weeds (and with disaster preparedness, you really don’t want to get into the weeds — the weeds being survivalism, which is a whole other kettle of tea). There is the mobility which is a few things you can put in your pocket or carry while running. There is the mobility that is a few more things you keep in a backpack and practice using (always practice once a year). Finally, there is the mobility that is stored in the back of your car for your family, requiring no more than two people to lift. Like a nesting doll, the equipment one uses for the first should be part of the second, and the equipment for the second (the backpack) should be part of the third (the car).

Tier One: Mobile Disaster Response With The Clothes On Your Back

This is the most basic disaster response, and any of our ancestors would have understood it. You have to move quickly and for whatever reason using a car isn’t possible or feasible (path you’d take by car is blocked or you don’t have a car, no time to find the keys, etc.); maybe speed is essential and a backpack with 40lbs of equipment will slow you down too much. In this case you want the following:

-Water purifier or water purification tablets + minimum 16oz or 20oz water bottle

-multitool

-all-weather matches

-rainproof poncho

-plastic baggies

-knowledge of basic fieldcraft

-wallet w/identification; preferably with credit cards and $100 cash, but most importantly with a driver’s license or some other form of valid state-issued identification

The multitool is an essential piece of any disaster preparedness plan; I’ve been carrying the same Leatherman since 2006, and have used it countless times since for a multitude of tasks.

Store the essentials of this kit by the front door or back door of your house or apartment, in or next to your poncho. This covers your immediate bases for survival: drinking water being the most urgent. If you know you have access to potable water, you have just bought yourself ~3-4 days of extremely rough living, which is, in almost any situation, enough time to find help for whatever disaster is, presumably, affecting everyone in your area. For clean drinking water you need (1) a water purifier or purification tablets, (2) a way to store the water [the water bottle] and (3) access to any water source. Good water purifiers can clean even the most rancid water source, though it is no way to live for long periods of time. In this case, you are focused on surviving the initial disaster and displacement.

Your multitool — I have an old Leatherman I got before my first deployment to Afghanistan in 2006 and use for household chores — should have a knife, pliers, various screwdrivers, a saw, and some means by which to open metal cans. It can be used to help fashion a crude shelter, start a fire, or do the various little chores one will need to survive outside for a few days.

All weather matches will help you start fires; together with the multitool and some basic fieldcraft, it will be possible to start a fire even in the rain.

A poncho might seem like an odd thing to have hanging up in one’s closet, depending on your cultural background and location; it is an extremely useful piece of kit for surviving under the most austere conditions. Together with your multitool and a few sticks, that poncho can be turned into a waterproof lean-to if it’s wet outside, and a halfway decent improvised sleeping bag if not.

Plastic baggies are to keep things dry — especially your wallet and the matches.

Knowledge of basic fieldcraft, such as how to start a fire, is important for mobile disaster preparedness. Fire will keep you warm, and can sterilize food and (provided you have a suitable container) water. Understanding and practicing building a fire from very little material (dried twigs and small branches and moss) is probably the one essential skill; everything else is a potential nice-to-have.

Finally, a wallet with identification is for when you get to some place that can help you; a safe town the disaster has not reached, a group of people or an organization that’s capable of helping you. A disaster isn’t the end of civilization, it’s just a (one hopes) temporary adjustment in civilization’s borders; a space of temporary lawlessness and disorganization. Your priority is to get back to civilization as quickly as possible and by any means necessary. That $100 will help you do that if the credit cards don’t work, but isn’t so much money that it puts a target on your back.

Tier Two: Mobile Disaster Response With a Backpack

In tier two, one has both the time, presence of mind, and opportunity — and the situation is suitable — to grab a backpack of no more than about 60 pounds; heavy, but not unmanageable for short movements. Such situations could include (1) you don’t have a car but a buddy does and you’re headed somewhere to survive for a week or two, and (2) you’re being evacuated from a place for longer than a week; it’s not clear when you’re going to be able to return though the assumption is that you can return at some point in the future.

Using the principle of “building out capability” I mentioned earlier, everything from the Tier One package goes into the Tier Two package. Thus, you have the first couple pounds of stuff you’ll need to carry.

Things for your backpack that will make some approximation of modern life feasible:

-sleeping bag rated for 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Sleeping bags deteriorate over time, so understand that even a very high quality bag carried by your father since his time in the Guard during Vietnam may not offer the protection it once did.

-If you opted for tablets in the tier one kit over the purifier before, tier two is the time to pull the trigger on a good quality purifier. REI carries a great selection. In general you’ll want something ceramic, capable of purifying spring, stream, or well water. $50-100 will give you peace of mind that nothing bad is making its way into your digestive system. Tablets are ok for a couple days, but you won’t want to be using them for a week. 

-frying pan and boiling pot. Boiling water for food, coffee, and drinking will be important (the pot), as will the ability to cook masses of food at once (the pan).

-a mug. If you have to spend a week in the wilderness or something approximating the wilderness you will quickly learn that one of the great challenges facing human civilization is carrying and storing potable drinking water. Creating it is a huge hassle.

-a hatchet. For a week, you will need the ability to create more wood than it is practical to gather by hand, and even then, you’ll be surprised at how long it takes to generate the fuel you need for things like cooking.

-a small hand/hack saw.

-a good steel camp spork.

-two changes of season-appropriate clothes in addition to the clothes you are wearing, stored in a high quality garbage bag or some similar waterproof sack. If planning for a week, you will want to build in a couple days for each article of clothing you have to dry if necessary. The weight of a shirt, pants, underwear (optional) and socks can go from a pound or two for summer wear to a few pounds for winter wear. This shouldn’t take up more than 10 pounds in your bag. Long sleeve shirt and long pants only. Underwear should be moisture wicking / easy dry, whether it’s short or long.

-an extra set of hiking boots or sturdy shoes.

-cash; $500 for emergency use.

-all important documents in a ziplock bag (copy of ssn, birth certificate; passport; driver’s license)

-depending on where you are and plan to be going, a pistol with a couple clips of ammunition

-Two packages (100 count) of wet wipes. This will be sufficient to keep you clean and sanitary for a week. No more needs to be said on that front.

-hygiene kit. For brushing one’s teeth and keeping clean; foot powder if you expect to be walking a lot. Shaving probably not necessary.

-easy-prep food. 21 pounds of this depending on what else you pack. The average person can get by with about 3 pounds of food per day. Unless you’re an experienced woodsman and can augment that food with fish or game, you just need to steel yourself for an uncomfortable week of eating less than you’re used to. If you’re going to a pre-planned location such as a hunting cabin or second home, it’s possible that there will be extra food already stockpiled; this is something you’ll want to figure out beforehand. In any case, bring the minimum of what you’ll need to eat to get by. An emergency is a bad time to discover that someone else forgot to restock a larder.

-external battery, charged. Can give your smartphone an extra couple days of life if you’re using it heavily; if used judiciously, is perfectly sufficient for a week.

-smartphone

-camp stove. I have a MSR Firefly I use when camping that has stood me in good stead. It means keeping a 16oz portable tank or two with propane — but if you’re using it once a year and then cleaning the stove afterwards, you’ll keep it functional and clean, and understand how to use it. This is far more practical than open-fire cooking. Again if you’re heading to a cabin you might end up having access to a stove and more food than you need, or an older fireplace with one of those grill mechanisms (my parents have one of these and use it when the power goes out due to storms or hurricanes, they’re not bad). If you do you may never use the camp stove. Like many of the things in tier two, it obeys the principle of “better to have and not need, than need and not have.”

-two gallons of potable water. That’s 16 pounds. It will give you sufficient water to not die for two days, plus cook some food.

-a set of 5  bungee cords; 4 medium length (2-4 feet) and 1 longer (4 feet+).

-100 feet of 550 or paratrooper cord.

-First aid kit.

Two other considerations are preconditions for this loadout to work with maximum effectiveness. The first is a plan, and the second is, I cannot stress this enough, intermediate fieldcraft. Nobody wants to hear that you have to think through some of this stuff to begin with, but if you’ve thought through the possibility of climate or human disaster to the point where you’ve invested, now, $1500 or so in a durable bugout kit that will give you a week worth of survival outside the comforts of civilization, you really owe yourself the time it takes to ensure that investment isn’t squandered.

The fieldcraft first. That doesn’t just mean unwrapping and assembling the equipment you’ve bought, it means using it. Not field-testing it, using it! Take a Saturday to fire up the camp stove and prepare oatmeal or a soup for lunch. Buy more packaged food than you need and use some of that. See how much water you end up using. Test the purifier. Use the hatchet and saw to practice chopping up smaller pieces of wood. This may take all of several hours per year, a trivial consideration for the knowledge and utility you’ll get out of the process.

Tied to fieldcraft, and together with planning, I recommend joining a nature conservancy or land trust, and taking advantage of the opportunity to learn about where you live. I’m in Connecticut. We have maple tree, and oak, and hickory, and there are ways to prepare the nuts those trees shed in the summer and fall (for this reason I have a small hammer to my field kit, for crushing nuts); acorn and hickory nuts (“pignut” as it’s known colloquially for reasons you can probably guess) can be boiled provided there is sufficient fresh water until they’re not only edible but even tasty. Knowing such things means your 3 pounds of food per day is now 3 ½ or 4 pounds.

With some fieldcraft it becomes practical to develop a plan, either yourself or with friends. Maybe it revolves around someone’s cabin. Maybe it revolves around a camp area, or a piece of wilderness with which you’re familiar. In the case of a natural disaster, a week is a reasonable amount of time to expect institutional mechanisms to kick in — American Red Cross, FEMA, state National Guard, etc. Being out of their way if you don’t expect to contribute anything to the response will help responders deliver help more effectively to people who need it. Paradoxically it may be easier to get to potable drinking water in upstate New York than it is in New Hampshire in the wake of heavy flooding. Heading down to San Diego or up to the San Francisco area from Los Angeles during the fires, if possible, helped firefighters manage and respond to the crisis.

Tier Three: Mobile Disaster Response With a Vehicle

With some disasters, a week isn’t enough, but one still hopes to return home. As with tiers one and two, tier three includes all of the equipment listed in the first two tiers. It also requires a plan that accommodates the length of time you plan to be displaced from your home, and the equipment you’re bringing, including the car. If you have an electric car, planning will be more complicated depending on where you live. For the time being, technology is such that there are far more options for life with a gas-operated combustion engine than with an electric engine, though that is changing in places.

The nature of the disaster dictates how you respond to it. A severe natural disaster might devastate an area for weeks or months. As of writing, August 16 2025, parts of the Appalachian mountains have still yet to recover from the catastrophic flooding that struck in 2024, nearly a year later. There are also man-made disasters such as war; Ukrainians near the frontline with Russia may have evacuated numerous times over the past years, or even longer ago. In maneuver warfare, one might have little or no notice to evacuate — I spoke several months ago with a family that evacuated Bucha as the sound of fighting reached them from nearby Hostomel airport.  Most of the people they knew who stayed were murdered by the Russians.

The choice to stay in a place is a difficult one, and exists on a knife’s edge. That family made it out before the Russians arrived — with minutes (not hours) to spare. An interpreter of mine in Afghanistan wasn’t as lucky. He stayed put with his family, and after the government fell was murdered by unknown assailants. After a journey of years through a Pakistani refugee camp, his family made it to the U.S. Whether they will be allowed to stay here is another question.

So what additional equipment should be brought with one if one is evacuating oneself and one’s family?

-a tier-two backpack’s worth of food, season-appropriate clothes, and equipment per person.

-Three weeks of food (a Costco run’s worth) to supplement what’s in each backpack. Focus on canned goods and rice, or MREs if you can afford them.

-instead of giving each person a hatchet, one person should have a hatchet.

-An axe for splitting wood

-A crowbar

-sledgehammer and wedge

Tools! If you have a vehicle, basic tools such as an axe, a crowbar, and a sledgehammer / wedge will be extremely useful. Bonus points if you use them regularly for yardwork already, and have a sense of how to do so safely so when an emergency arises, they aren’t like strange foreign objects nobody has ever seen.

-hammer and box of nails

-bottle of ibuprofen

-portable gas generator. The Honda EU2200i is the consensus pick for powering basic necessities briefly for a month, and goes for about $1100.

-3 full five-gallon gas cans

-Seven gallons of water per adult, five gallons per child. That’s 14 for two people, 24 for a conventional family of four. Hard to pack in gallon containers; easier in 5 gallon containers or larger. Expect to begin refilling this stock ASAP. As mentioned earlier, potable water will be one of your biggest ongoing struggles.

-Soap

-Dishes and utensils

-sponges

-one towel per person

-A rifle or shotgun with a box of ammunition (in addition to the pistol)

Food, water, and fuel. Those are the basics. One can effectively make fuel to heat oneself and to melt water with an axe (by chopping firewood). One can procure water from one’s surroundings — easily or less easily depending on where you are, and where you plan to go. With enough food for the essentials, and knowledge of one’s surroundings, it may be possible to add forage to one’s diet.

You’ll have enough food and supplies to survive for a month, and depending on how far greater mobility with a vehicle. The more austere the environment, the harder it will be to survive, even with equipment. Ideally the place you choose will have supplies sufficient to provision you and your mode of transport — close to a fresh body of water (lake, river), and close to fuel in the form of gas or electricity (airport, highway rest stop, rural town or small city). Think through not only what you’ll need, but how to get more of what you need.

One should begin planning where to go and understanding the effort required to get there on the first day one leaves the site of the disaster.

At some point I will write a followup piece to this, covering how to respond to a disaster by remaining in place where and when feasible. But the effort of writing this has exhausted me.