Sure, I'm in Peter. I think I'm getting a reputation as an Ed and Elaine Brown supporter, which I'm not, but I have looked at what I could find about them and Ed Brown does seem to have a little "show business" in him. There's a video of him pausing before an interview to don a tri-cornered hat and then flashing a goofy smile and giving a "There, ok" to allow the interview to proceed.

There was a film directed by the late great Sam Peckinpah at the end of the 70's called "Convoy" and it's an awful film but it's also as American as apple pie and baseball. This situation in Plainfield reminds me of that film in that it combines outrageous stupidity, a guy that wants to stand by what he believes no matter the cost or legality, and a bunch of crazy people sucked in by sheer heat and volume of the situation. In the 70's we seemed to like oddballs, misfits, and people crazy enough to stand by their convictions. We liked strange stories and conspiracies. Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, ghost stories, and UFO's were all over the television. We had Watergate and were not far removed from the murders of JFK, RFK, and MLK. Lyndon Johnson walked away from the presidency and seemed to seriously lose his shit according to some accounts. Evel Knievel was a superstar and let's face it he was famous because he kept trying to kill himself on television. We had a feeling that there was shit going on behind the scenes that didn't add up and might not be in our best interests.

Somehow this has all been beaten out of us, or some will say we've just grown up, by the Reagan 80's (where his goal was to bring back the 50's)and it's resulting aftermath and we've become this boring lot that just wants to conform. Instead of the strange and goofy stuff on television in the 70's, we have "Reality TV" where the population seems to have developed an unquenchable thirst for reveling in the pathetic. We seem to love how pathetic other people can be and never get enough of it. This is probably due to years of exposure to the never ending stream of advertisements that keep reminding us, we don't smell good, feel good, look good, drive the right car, have enough money, and we can never get enough to eat. It's left us a hungry, angry, vicious, cynical, outright nasty, quick to judge, and always dissatisfied society and nothing I'm saying here is big news or a revelation of any kind. We don't like to give anything away because we never feel we ourselves can have enough. We just know we are helpless and pathetic so it makes us feel good seeing somebody acting even more pathetic than we are. So bring on the bad singers, the backstabbers, the crying housewives, the cheaters, the liars, the people famous just for being famous and acting like fools, and the overeaters that now fill up our television screens morning to night. Give us an idiot for president that makes us all feel like "Hey, even I can do a better job than him."

I'm ranting, I know, and maybe my problem is I'm too compassionate, I still allow myself some sense of childlike wonder, and damn it, I just hate to conform. So when I saw Ed Brown stepping out of the mouthwash, American Idol, pharmaceutical advertisement, MacDonald's hamburgers, two pizzas for the price of one, Paris Hilton, reality tv, you're nothing without a Lexus, everyday bullshit...I thought...holy shit, a human being. I also thought, well they will just label him a fucking nut and kill him. Take him out like the rest of the trash. That's the easy way, which is another thing we love here in this country...the easy way...and the easy thing to do is label him, dispose of him, and wash our hands. That's the grown up thing to do, right? It is easy to say we've got a lot bigger problems than Ed Brown, please just make him go away. It's easy to call him a nut because he'll put on the tri-corner hat and rail about Freemasons and tell us Ed Brown no longer exists. It's easy to say fuck him he just wants to avoid paying his taxes and he's just another greedy asshole with a 110 acre estate that wants all the benefits but won't give anything back.

Then I think, well, he gave up a commercial property that was worth at least $1,000,000, he gave up his wife's profitable dentistry practice, he's going to end up having to give up his 110 acre estate, and he may give up his life in the end. The feds will come out on the winning end of this in terms of the unpaid taxes...pretty much already have, now it's just about the punishment and example. It would have been a hell of a lot less expensive to pay the taxes. That's a lot to give up just because you want to live your life as a tax cheat. Maybe he's just crazy right? Or maybe it goes a lot deeper for him than the tax issue.

My wife and I donate to all kinds of causes and support all sorts of community projects. Darfur, Big Brother Big Sister, Women for Women, Little League Baseball, Pop Warner Football, police and firefighter funds, church related donations (and we don't even go to church), cancer funds, food drives, clothing drives, in all honesty the list is so damn long I don't even know all of them...and we write none of it off, so I am not supporting this guy because I like his stand on being a tax cheat.

I guess in a time where I hear people complain all the time, "What can I do? What can one person do?", even if his message sucks and may even be dangerous, even if I don't agree, he has so far made a peaceful protest and people all around the country heard him and have responded. Probably mostly because they are disgruntled and some because they really do want to be tax cheats and some because they bought that gun to shoot somebody and this is as good a reason as any, and some because they are religious nuts or they want to get back at the Freemasons and Zionists...and all kinds of other crazy horseshit...again it's really easy to list all of the parts of this that are stupid.

What about the idea that one man can make his voice heard? If we just make this simple and crush Ed Brown or just dismiss him as a loon we kill a little bit of that idea at the same time. Ed Brown risked everything he has for what he believes in and most of us, including me, know it's a lost cause. Even if he lives and the government takes what it wants and lets him go under certain conditions, he'll have lost a lot more than he gained.

I am not advocating Ed Brown's cause it's just mercy that I'm after, which I guess these days is hard to come by.