Tomndebb gently chided me for “pulling a Phaedrus” for the length of time it’s taken me to produce this. While I regret “playing the tease,” I really don’t feel an apology is necessary. This is important to me, and I needed the time to write precisely what I mean.
This is the account of a young man whom I believe is destined to play a transforming role in the future of this country. But to tell his story, I need to start with a historical context, and then tell the early life of his companion. It’s a shocking story, but necessary to give the background.
Historical Parallels:
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3,500 years ago, the King of Egypt had a firstborn son. The boy suffered from a debilitating genetic defect, but was bright and observant. And he saw his father giving deference and enormous gifts to the priesthoods of the gods, and particularly of Amon. But the gods would not cure him of his ailment. As he grew and studied, he realized that the Sun is the source of light and heat, that it causes plants to grow, which in turn feed animals and men, that it draws up water to cause clouds and rain, etc. In a quantum leap, he concluded that the gods of Egypt were superstitions, and that there was but one god, who was symbolized most properly by the Sun. Using the minor deity Aten, equivalent to the Sun’s disc, he encouraged worship of the Aten, and when he succeeded his father, proclaimed the Aten as the one true god. The Aten was not a god of strict rules, but a life-giving force in whom one should rejoice. His wife and younger brother backed him in this, and he instituted a reform. But, focused on changing Egypt’s religious life, he ignored trouble in the outlying provinces, which ended up in nomads invading them. And he discounted the degree to which orthodox religion works on people’s fears, especially their fear of the unknown. And after his death, his reform was reversed by a child king controlled by the Grand Vizier and the surviving priests of Amon.
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2,600 years ago, in India, the Sakyamuni family, princes over a small state, had a son. He was raised in the orthodox virtues, but kept innocent of the problems of life: poverty, chronic illness, the debilitating effects of old age. Then, one day, he saw a beggar, a cripple, and a feeble old person, and had compassion on them. And the knowledge that human beings like himself were subject to these problems transformed him internally. And he renounced his royal state, and pursued the seeking of wisdom, on how one might overcome these problems. Eventually, again, he had a transforming insight: not the problems themselves, but their effect on the human spirit, is what defeats a person. If one can achieve a state of mind where what happens to one does not matter, one can be victorious over whatever besets one.
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Eighty years ago, a well-to-do young man went for a swim at his family’s island home on the Canadian border. His family history is of interest: his distant cousin, who had recently died, had overcome his own childhood illnesses through physical fitness and rough living, and gone on to become President. And when he married, it was to the President’s niece, in the White House. All three shared the same name. His own father now deceased, had left a monumental estate to his mother and him. But that swim in chilly waters left him vulnerable to the attack of the poliomyelitis virus, and he never walked without external support again. But in recuperating from the polio attack, he ended up in places where he saw other polio victims, poor and without resources. Meanwhile, his wife had taken seriously what her social set saw as noblesse oblige – providing help to those less fortunate. And she made it her life’s goal to combat poverty and all manner of social stigmata. But his sharing in suffering and overcoming it, with therapy, brought him to the conclusion that anything can be overcome, if one has but the will and someone provides the resources. And from that he forged a future where he told a nation who had lost hope that the only thing they had to fear was fear itself – that together they could combat and overcome the blind economic forces that were defeating them individually. And, by trial and error, he made it work. And he went on to lead that people to defeat the forces of totalitarian, imperialist hatred in the name of freedom and democracy, announcing that all men have the right to freedom of speech, freedom to worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. And, just as that war was ending, he died.
Each man was transformed by the interplay of external circumstances impacting him with his own sense of what is right and of compassion. Each made an impact that changed some part of the world. And each fell short: Akhnaten’s memory was nearly forgotten until archaeologists discovered his city at Amarna; the teachings of Gautama were transformed into a salvationist system where devotion to Amida brings one to a “pure Western land” that is more or less heaven with an Asian accent; and FDR’s goals led to the excesses of the Great Society, the Vietnam War, and the reaction of the Reagan Revolution.
But their dreams, their ideals live on.
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*In my home town 125 years ago, a young clerk at Moore’s Store named Frank Woolworth hit on the bright idea of marking down stock that had not moved to a set fixed price of five cents, with a counter where all merchandise was at that price. Watertowners being cheap, the idea caught on. And Mr. Woolworth ended up with an enormous chain of stores. (His heirs ignored the business, living off their inheritance, and the businessmen whom they hired to run it ended up bankrupting it.)
But the idea was duplicated across America. The Kresges, the McCrorys, the Greens, and many another family started discount department store chains from single stores, some successful, some not. One of these men, very successful and rich beyond the dreams of avarice, had a son who succeeded him as CEO and who built the business even larger. The son, in turn had two boys. The older was the egotistical child of privilege, sent to military school in his teens. The younger, sent to a private school, is the person whom I believe is the subject of our story. Let’s call him “Adam” for purposes of this account, playing off the fact that his companion is named Steve.
I am specifically not naming names – you can draw your own conclusions, as I did. In this account I am omitting locational information and his name, for two reasons: (1) While I know the first name, the idea that he is the scion of that family is my conclusion from remarks about the family lifestyle and where they’re located that make the conclusion of who he is logical. But I do not have proof. (2) Whether or not this is the case, the private information from the website could be grounds for a lawsuit from people who have enormous resources – either breach of privacy or slander. And a third reason: (3) I believe that he deserves the right to decide when he will act publicly, and what I’m doing is merely sharing my conclusions about him and his probable future.
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Steve’s story: In Louisiana in the 1980s, a couple had a son. I have only the boy’s recollections to go by here, but by the time he was born, the man was a habitual drunk with a severe streak of violence; the woman was a working mother who supported them.
In addition to physical abuse, the man was a sexual predator, who ended up molesting Steve as a preschooler, eventually subjecting him to anal rape. When Steve was six, two things happened to change all this: first, they had a second son, and second, his mother walked in on them as his father was engaged in anal sex in him. A short argument ensued, with the ultimate result of her grabbing his gun and shooting him in the head with it.
She took the boys to a friend’s house, the police investigated, and the boys were put in foster care for two years, then returned to her. At this point she was dating again, and ended up marrying the man, who appears to be a remarkably decent man. I gather (from implications rather than explicit statements) he was an executive in the business I mentioned above.
Steve suffered a number of problems as a result of all this, including physical scars from the physical abuse, and incontinence and enuresis from the sexual abuse. And I don’t think I need to detail what it meant to his psyche to have experienced all this as a small child. He became very quiet and reserved, shutting people other than family out for the most part.
After three years, they moved out of state, to the place where the chain was headquartered. The stepfather adopted the two boys.
Steve, a bright boy, was placed in private school – the same one that “Adam” was attending. And life seemed to be good for Steve.
Then his mother and his younger brother went to church one day, Steve and his stepfather staying home. And on their way home, they were struck by a drunk driver and killed instantly.
The impact of this on Steve was devastating. The single thing he had to cling to in the world was his mother and little brother. He retreated to the treehouse he had built, and would talk to no one.
“Adam” appears to have been raised to show compassion and employ good manners towards all. And when he heard that the mother of a classmate whom he liked had been killed, he went to express his sympathy. Steve’s stepfather sent him up to the tree house. And “Adam”’s just being there for him broke through Steve’s reserve and grief. “Adam” would hold Steve as he grieved and talked out his sorrow.
“Adam” stayed with Steve the greater part of the time for several days, and they became close friends. Steve later said that he looked on “Adam” as his mother’s last gift to him, since it took her death to bring them together.
(Near post-size limitation – continued next post)
