Fifteen years ago I applied for a job that would end up consuming me life in the best possible. I’d endured almost twenty years in various segments of the service industry and I was looking for something completely different than the horrific restaurant manager job that I’d just flamed out of. I fancied myself as a writer, but if I’ve learned one thing over the course of the last 30 years, four novels, a bunch of essays and a bunch of lame ass poetry, it said I’m not really a writer. I’m more of a thinker and a storyteller. I don’t really have the chops to write in illiterate fashion. I was born at a time before ADHD and other “disability diagnoses” were being rolled out to explain gaps in a students, steady habits, and perspicacity.
So I fell into the job of a political organizer as kind of a lark. I’ve done that type of work 20 years previously, and I remember being good at it. As I mentioned, I’m a storyteller, and I found myself knocking on strangers’s doors and having these wild conversations that could literally go in any direction. I was basically getting paid to make friends with strangers. It was fun. Until it wasn’t. But as I looked back at it after two decades of doing so killing service work, it seemed like a damn good idea. So I walked into the interview and talked to a guy who had a very similar experience to me. Same organization, just many years apart. We hit it off immediately. I’ve always been a great interviewee, I’ve never been turned down for a job that I really wanted, but some of my shot that after the white privilege.
So anyhow, I got into this new job. I just the right time to dive into the deep end of the pool. It was immediately following the 2010 election. You remember that as the year that the right wing Weaponized their hatred of the election of the first Black President. It was a red wave that was so big and so surprising that the entire Democratic Party was taken off guard. State houses all across the country turned red overnight. And me being from Ohio, the original purple state, was particularly aggravating. I’d always had a heady regard for my state. You could actually call me a cheerleader for the state of Ohio up to this point. So I took this job and I went to work.
Over the course of the next 15 years, I’ve worked alongside of hundreds of different campaigns. I’ve watched political organizing develop overtime, and I feel like I’ve been a big part of that development myself. You could say my job is to take whatever wild concept my management team wants to orchestrate, think hard on the best way to implement it, design the framework, and then test it until it is fit for anyone to use. At times it can get aggravating, because once I get good at something and feel proud about doing it, I turned it over to the end users and have to start on something completely new. In all honesty, this keeps me younger than my years. I’m a Joneser and damn proud of it.
So what does all this all have to do with brains? Good question. Well, the easy answer is, I hear political speak all day every day. I probably heard more different versions of the same political script that anyone in the history of time. I wish I could say I was being hyperbolic, but it’s pretty close to the truth. Over the years I’ve worked with tons of thousands of political organizers, either in person or remotely, and I’ve heard them. I’ll try to say the same words in their own ways. If I’ve realized one thing about the world we live in, is that words matter. Especially in this fever dream they were living in now in 2026.
I decided about three years ago that I wanted to learn why people think the way they do, and why different people with the same backgrounds, including siblings, neighbors, and natural allies can be so polar in their viewpoints and actions. I wondered how someone who is so obviously a hedonist and confidence man could so thoroughly take a group of Christians and other spiritual people under his spell. So I started digging. It’s the project that can never be completed because there will always be some new insight around the next corner. I don’t expect anybody to read this, but if you do happen by, I bid you welcome. Please feel free comment with your own insights.
your brother terry
More Than A Map 