A Precarious Moment: Your Golden Age Fallacy is Bullshit.

There’s a certain grim irony in watching today’s right-wing political class sabotage the very global systems that once made their version of “traditional family values” economically viable. And by “traditional,” of course, they don’t mean the truly old model—subsistence farming, communal labor, multigenerational support. They mean a very specific, very recent historical blip: the postwar, single-income, male-breadwinner household. A structure subsidized, not by timeless virtue, but by rubble, racism, and Roosevelt.

It’s worth recalling that this brief window of prosperity—white, nuclear, middle class—wasn’t the natural fruit of conservative ideals. It was the byproduct of two enormous, liberal internationalist forces: the decimation of industrial competition in World War II, and a massive, coordinated effort by FDR and allies to build an open, rules-based global trade order. These policies were not incidental—they were essential. And yes, they were deeply flawed and racially exclusionary in practice. But they also laid the foundation for an economy that, for a moment, allowed bottom-half men to earn enough to support families in ways that now seem mythic.

What’s tragic, then, is that the same political movement now claiming to defend the “traditional family” is dismantling the architecture that made their version of that family possible in the first place. As John Ganz recently put it, “[MAGA Republicans] are destroying everything that kept the world relatively prosperous and safe for the past 80 years.”

Tariffs are at the center of this self-defeating crusade. We know—from history, from economics, from lived experience—that tariffs don’t revive domestic manufacturing in any sustained way. Trump’s own 2018–2019 tariff spree resulted in net losses in manufacturing jobs. Bush’s steel tariffs fared no better. Even in the 19th century, when American agriculture still reigned, tariffs made life harder for farmers by making imported equipment more expensive.

Now, tariffs are sold as a tool to protect workers and restore “family values,” but in practice they punish working-class families by raising prices on goods they rely on. And when those price hikes aren’t met with real wage growth—because they rarely are—the result is a net loss in economic stability. And with economic insecurity comes exactly the sort of familial instability the right claims to want to reverse.

So why push them? Part of the answer lies in the political utility of trade restrictions: they create endless opportunities for those in power to dole out exemptions, punish enemies, reward donors. They invite corruption. Trump has already signaled his openness to such “offers,” in what feels like a perfectly American blend of strongman populism and late-stage capitalism.

Ganz, again, offers a sobering reminder: "FDR’s embrace of trade wasn’t just about prosperity—it was about avoiding the “beggar-thy-neighbor” spiral that deepened the Great Depression. It was a recognition that mutual flourishing was possible—and necessary—in a globalized world. To reject that lesson is to court another age of retrenchment, division, and shared decline."

And what of the “traditional family”? That ideal—so often evoked, so rarely interrogated—was never as stable or universal as its defenders suggest. It was exclusionary, isolating, and, for many, quietly devastating. Its decline has brought loneliness, yes, but also new forms of freedom, new kinds of kinship, and the beginnings of more honest conversations about what support, love, and solidarity might look like in this century.

We are, undeniably, in a precarious moment. But precarity can be clarifying. It reminds us that what we build next—economically, politically, familially—does not need to mimic the past to be good. It simply needs to be more just, more inclusive, and more resilient. And maybe, if we get very lucky and a little bit wise, more joyful too.

The First Cut

"Just so you know,” Joe said, handing her a starched black apron on her first morning at the butcher shop, “the women will hate you.”

It was December, and the snow had just begun to press its soft weight on the rooftops of the small Michigan town where she’d landed, suddenly and with little plan, like a letter delivered to the wrong address. She had stepped off the bus with a canvas bag and a name no one here knew, and walked the main street with that quiet, resolute look of someone who had left something unfinished behind.

The butcher shop had appeared like a lighthouse in a cold mist—its windows warm-lit and slightly fogged, the air inside perfumed with spice and marrow. She had wandered in, not quite looking for work but knowing, instinctively, that work might be the surest way to anchor herself to this new geography. Joe had hired her without asking many questions.

"Eiighteen an hour,” he’d said, as though it was neither a gift nor a risk, just the natural order of things. “Come in Saturday. Early.”

Now, standing in the raw, meaty hum of the shop, she looked up at him, confused and half-smiling, as if searching for the punchline. Joe stared back at her through the thick lenses of his black plastic frames, his expression unmoved.

“They’ll hate you because you’re beautiful,” he said, as simply as one might mention the fat content of pork belly. “Because you’re bright.”

He didn’t mean it cruelly. There was no edge in his voice, no caution. Just a plainspoken kind of knowing, the way you might tell someone that porcelain tiles hold the morning’s chill long after the sun has risen, or that the best walnuts are kept near the baking supplies in aisle nine.

She nodded slowly, the smile fading. She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear with a hand that had not yet learned the rhythm of knives and cleavers, that still smelled faintly of lavender soap and ink.

Behind the counter, Megan—the old manager with a soft-spoken mouth and a hard-earned calm—watched the exchange. She gave her a wink, a glance like a hand extended underwater. Joe was right.

Megan, impervious to the hierarchy of gazes and the economies of desirability, had no use for the kind of rivalry that flickered in other women’s eyes like a match half-lit. She didn’t care if men looked or didn’t. She didn’t measure herself in comparisons. That made her rare. That made her kind.

And so, she began—learning the cool heft of bone beneath blade, the language of fat marbling through muscle, the choreography of wrapping, weighing, exchanging. She would come to understand the temperature of silence in the back room, the scent of iron that clung to her hands even after hot water and lemon. But most of all, she would learn to read the eyes of the women on the other side of the counter—not with judgment, but with a tender kind of comprehension.

She would not hate them in return. That, too, would set her apart.

Training Wheels

The alley was never the place you’d expect magic to happen. People avoided it. It was narrow, dirty, and somehow always colder than it should’ve been, even on days when the sun made a half-hearted attempt to warm the concrete. It was the kind of place where things weren’t quite right—flickers of light from the streetlamps, too much shadow in corners that shouldn’t exist, the occasional low hum of something mechanical, like a forgotten engine deep within the building. The alley seemed to know something the rest of the world didn’t, like it had been around long enough to see the patterns, the failed attempts, the slow decay of promises. And today, on this Sunday, it had a particular kind of gravity to it.

Manny stood there beside his son, the bike gleaming in a fitful sun that threatened to collapse under its own weight. One hand on the handlebars, one hand on the seat. He’d taken the training wheels off. Of course, that was the plan, wasn’t it? Get him on the bike, get him to move. But this wasn’t just a simple bike ride. This was some sort of strange, quiet microcosm of the world—a little black hole in the corner of the universe where all of Manny's doubts and fears collided, where past and future merged, where everything could either fall into place or go terribly wrong. And yet—nothing. There were no bystanders, no cheers from the sidelines, just the distant clatter of metal against stone and the smell of trash from behind a rotting dumpster.

"Alright," Manny said, his voice carrying a tremor. "We’ll give it a shot, but if it doesn’t happen today, we’ll try again another time." A moment of preemptive defeat, but a kind of protective shield, a way of navigating the inevitable disappointment that always seemed to linger just beyond the horizon. Maybe it was genetic. His father had always been the same way: soft-spoken, hopeful, but with an ever-present awareness that things didn’t always work out as planned.

And so it began: the attempt, the wobbling, the doubts creeping in from the edges of Manny's mind. His hands were steady but unsure, holding on to the seat and the handlebars as if by some strange alchemy he could will the world into submission. But no. This wasn’t about control, was it? Because what happened next was something completely out of his hands.

There was a moment—a fleeting moment, more of a sensation than a thing—that passed between them, between the bike and the boy. And suddenly, his son was flying. There was no other way to describe it. Manny didn’t have a word for it, not in that instant. But the boy was on his way, moving, gliding past the detritus of a city that had long since lost its sense of purpose. And Manny stood there, hands empty, knowing that for reasons he couldn’t even begin to comprehend, the universe had simply decided to give them both a break.

The air in the alley, still thick with the dust of a hundred failed attempts, had shifted in some inexplicable way. The boy was gone—past the garbage bins, past the edges of reality itself. And Manny, with his hands still tingling as if they had held something precious, let the alley collapse back into its usual quiet, unsure whether anything had really changed, or whether this would all vanish, like a forgotten dream. The boy, for his part, didn’t look back.

The Baker Down The Road..

Did you shed a tear while watching the Band of Brothers episode where the camps are liberated, only to then become the baker down the road?

It is apparently incredibly difficult for many of us to believe that the suffering of different-others is both real and unjustified. I believe, at least in part, that this is because it leads us to grief, guilt, and a feeling of powerlessness in a time when we already feel fearful of our own suffering.

Here's the shitty part, fam: You cannot shift suffering. Not by measuring worthiness, or assessing blame. Suffering is a circle. It grows, or it shrinks. If you are suffering, so, too, are others. Every move to alleviate that condition in others is simultaneously a move  alleviate it for yourself. It will not do you any good to create or entrench enemy-others from your neighbors. It will do nothing to alleviate your pain and suffering. It's an ugly, short-term, pressure relief valve, but in the medium- and long-term, it will only create more division, more ugliness, more pain, and yes, more suffering. 

The way out of your suffering is to go into the suffering of others. Not by avoiding, by othering or by shifting it. Don't look away. Don't allow your fear and suffering to make you cold, indifferent or tribalistic; or even worse, to take joy in the suffering of those even less fortunate than you. Open your eyes. Bear witness to the suffering of others. Weep with them and rejoice with them. 

This is the only way out and through. We cannot remain strangers.

Hard Times

Wrestling, when you’re a kid, is all muscles and mayhem. It’s dropkicks and body slams and bad guys who laugh too hard. But every once in a while—if you’re lucky, if you’re listening—it breaks through the pageantry and speaks in a voice that sounds an awful lot like your own.

For me, that voice came from Dusty Rhodes.

It was 1985, and I was maybe eight, maybe nine. I was the son of a sheet metal worker with calloused hands and a Marlboro cough, a man who could fix anything but couldn’t seem to fix the hole that kept widening between him and the world. My dad drank; enough that you noticed the change in the room when he opened a beer. Enough that I started noticing silence more than sound.

He was a stoic vet who didn’t talk much about work or anything else, but when he did, it was always the same story: someone younger, someone cheaper, someone faster. Laid off. Replaced. Shrugged out the door like he never mattered. He wore his dignity like a second skin, even as it thinned.

And then one night, we were sitting in our faded blue recliners, the ones that still smelled faintly of sweat and sawdust, watching wrestling. NWA. Jim Crockett Promotions. Not the neon circus up north - real wrestling. Blood, grit, and Southern-fried truth.

That’s when Dusty came on the screen.

He was wide like a working man, not a sculpted superhero. He looked into that camera like he was staring down every boss who ever shorted a paycheck. And he said:

“First of all, I’d like to thank the many, many fans throughout this country that wrote cards and letters to Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream, while I was down.
Second, I want to thank Jim Crockett Promotions for waitin’ and takin’ the time, because I know how important it was—‘Hard Times’—for Dusty Rhodes to return.
And, Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream, with that weight, got what I wanted… Ric Flair, the World’s Heavyweight Champion…”

But it wasn’t just about Flair.

It was about us.

“Hard times are when the textile workers around this country are outta work, they got four or five kids and can’t pay their wages, can’t buy their food.
Hard times are when the auto workers are outta work and they tell ‘em, ‘Go home!’
And hard times are when a man’s worked at a job thirty years—thirty years—and they give him a watch, kick him in the butt, and say, ‘Hey, a computer took your place, daddy.’ That’s hard times!”

My father didn’t say anything.

But I looked over, and he wasn’t blinking.

Dusty wasn’t just cutting a promo. He was preaching. He was standing in front of a camera, under hot lights, speaking with the cadence of someone who knew what it meant to carry your family on your back and still come home with not enough. His voice cracked not because it was weak, but because it was weighted. Full of names he’d never know, lives he’d never live—but felt in his bones anyway.

That night, I watched my dad nod along to every word. It was the first time I saw him agree with someone on TV. The first time wrestling made him feel seen, not just distracted.

And it was the first time I realized that wrestling wasn’t all theater.

Sometimes, it was therapy.

Dusty Rhodes didn’t have Ric Flair’s suits or limousine lifestyle. He didn’t speak with polish. He spoke with gravel. With hurt. With history. He was every factory foreman who got passed over, every dad who came home early because they didn’t need him anymore, every kid who watched from the hall as his father sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands.

When Dusty said, "I am the American Dream," he wasn’t bragging. He was reminding us that the dream had sweat stains and bills to pay. That it didn’t come wrapped in red, white, and blue—it came wearing steel-toed boots and a quiet kind of dignity.

He wasn’t telling us what to believe. He was telling us we weren’t alone.

That mattered.

Especially to a kid like me, in a house like mine, where hope sometimes showed up wearing wrestling boots and a lisp.

I’ve seen that promo a hundred times since. The cadence, the power, the way Dusty points his finger at the screen like he’s pointing straight at your chest. People remember Flair’s robes, Austin’s stunners, Hogan’s posing. But Dusty gave us something more rare:

He told the damn truth.

Not the political kind. Not the kind that shifts with headlines. The deep truth. The kind you inherit. The kind you live. The kind that hurts and holds you in equal measure.

And all these years later, I still hear that voice sometimes. In quiet rooms. On hard days. When work feels like a fight, or the world feels too cold.

Dusty Rhodes, the son of a plumber, the American Dream, reminds me of something simple:

That pain is universal. That pride still matters. And that hard times don’t last forever.

Todo

Death, it’s always there—looming, crawling, whispering, a presence thick like fog in the back of your mind. It’s never far off, never taking a day off. But I’m faster. I outrun it, or at least I like to think I do. I lace up my James Worthy New Balances—bright, ridiculous shoes, names that could’ve only come out of an era where names meant something—but that’s the thing. They’re the only part of me I can trust, the only part that doesn’t betray me as I tear across the canal bank, my legs pistoning in the heat. Todo. Todo. Todo. Every step, every breath, one word, one answer: a mantra, a prayer, a defiant rally against the relentless countdown that never stops.

Luis, always the prophet, always the one to speak the truth of the moment: "How much can change in an instant? His voice in my ear from June, and the answer, Everything. Life to death, a blink of an eye. I can’t say it didn’t stick with me—didn’t worm its way in like a bad song. And then, the Blue Angels come crashing into my universe, a blur of blue and white streaks, a performance of beauty and violence, like some messed-up metaphor for this thing we call life. The earth shakes, the sound’s almost a physical thing, rattling my bones as they peel away into the sky. A giant claw mark on the world’s face. The wind picks up again, hot and insistent from the south, pushing me forward like some unseen force.

And still, I run. Todo. There’s no real finish line. There’s only the chase, the sweat, the air, the ground beneath me. Death’s behind me, keeping pace, but I won’t let it have me. Not yet. Not today. I’ll outrun it for as long as I can.

The Cage Door Slammed..

I was almost six years old the night the Freebirds broke Texas, and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

It was just after Christmas, 1982. Most kids were playing with new toys or sneaking extra dessert, but I was sitting cross-legged on the carpet in our apartment in California, spinning the UHF dial until the signal came through—static, wavy lines, and then there it was: World Class Championship Wrestling, beaming in from some far-off place called Reunion Arena.

I didn’t know much about Texas. I didn’t know anything about regional loyalty or family dynasties or who was supposed to be the good guys. But I knew what looked cool. I knew what sounded like the music I liked. I knew who felt like they were having the most fun in the room.

And the Von Erichs, well—they were fine. They were handsome and athletic and probably great if you were from Dallas. But I wasn’t from Dallas. I was from the coast. I was rock ’n’ roll, not country. I didn’t want barefoot boys with feathered hair and football muscles.

I wanted Michael P.S. Hayes.

The first time I saw the Freebirds, it felt like someone had snuck a rock concert into the middle of a wrestling match. They wore sequins and sunglasses and attitude. They didn’t jog to the ring, they arrived. Hayes, Gordy, Roberts—they moved like they owned the world. When that entrance music hit, it felt like the whole screen was shaking.

They didn’t belong, and that’s exactly why I loved them.

So, when they showed up as friends of the Von Erichs, it felt like maybe the world was making room for something new. The country boys and the outlaws, the blue bloods and the leather jackets, Texas and Georgia and maybe even California, all getting along. It felt like possibility.

Then came Christmas.

Kerry Von Erich vs. Ric Flair in a steel cage. Title on the line. Michael Hayes as the special referee. I was buzzing before the bell even rang. The Von Erichs looked ready. Flair looked like a villain out of a cartoon. And Hayes? Hayes looked like he had a plan.

The match built like a storm. You could feel it through the screen, even on that grainy broadcast with its rolling lines and static pops. And then came the moment: Kerry had Flair right where he wanted him. Hayes opened the cage door. Told Kerry to walk out. Hand him the win.

And Kerry said no.

I remember sitting up straighter, eyes wide. This wasn’t how I thought it would go. Hayes was helping. Kerry should’ve taken it. That’s what made sense to me. But he didn’t.

So Hayes shoved him.

And then Terry Gordy—big and silent and waiting like thunder—slammed that steel door on Kerry’s head like he was closing a chapter. Like he was declaring war.

And I, six years old in California, watching through static and wonder… I cheered.

I jumped up. I laughed. I whooped like I'd seen my team win the Super Bowl.

My Dad’s girlfriend peeked in from the kitchen, confused by the noise. “Didn’t your guy just get hit in the head with a door?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “my guy slammed it.”

I didn’t see betrayal. Not then. I saw rebellion. The Von Erichs represented something I didn’t understand yet—homegrown pride, tradition, family. The Freebirds were something else entirely. They were cool. They were loud. They were what I wanted to be.

But over the next few weeks, things got harder to explain.

I watched as the Texas crowds turned, furious and hurt. I watched Kevin come out fists flying. I watched David talk about loyalty and blood. And I started to feel it—not guilt, exactly. But weight. Complexity. That strange feeling in your chest when you realize the thing you love might not be for everyone. Hell, it might not even be on the right side of history.

I didn’t stop loving the Freebirds. I couldn’t. They were my first wrestling love—the way they moved, the way they talked, the way they made everyone feel something, whether they wanted to or not. But I started to understand what they’d done.

I started to understand that sometimes, the people who look like they’re having the most fun are also the ones doing the most damage.

That was my first wrestling heartbreak. Not because my heroes lost—but because they won, and I had to figure out what that meant.

Looking back now, it all makes a kind of poetic sense. I didn’t grow up in the Sportatorium. I didn’t carry the Von Erich name in my heart. I found wrestling on my own, on a scratchy UHF station in a cluttered apartment in California. And the Freebirds—their swagger, their sound, their defiance—spoke to me.

I still pull up that match sometimes, watch it on YouTube through the grain of memory. The cage door still slams. The crowd still erupts. Kerry still falls.

And even now, all these decades later, part of me still smiles.

Because that was the night I learned wrestling, just like life, wasn’t black and white.

It was neon. It was noise. It was chaos and charisma and heartbreak all wrapped in glitter. It was Badstreet.

And I’ve been cheering ever since.