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Tim Walz spoke at the Democratic National Convention last night.

The New York Times called it the “biggest speech” of his career.

Except come November?

It’s forgotten.

No matter who wins the White House.

The speech I want to hear?

One that mattered to its audience?

Was when he first introduced himself as the faculty adviser of the newly formed Gay Straight Alliance at Mankato West High School.

In 1998.

Because Vice President Tim Walz has a nice ring to it as titles go.

But the one that meant the most to those kids?

Mister.

Coach.

No matter what happens in November and the years beyond when he hopefully serves as Vice President of the United States, I don’t think Tim Walz will point to that as an achievement.

What he’s done already?

That matters.

That’s big.

That’s greatness.

Here’s something I’d never hear myself say: I’ve been watching the Democratic National Convention.

Or at least clips from it on social media.

I don’t have the attention span to watch anything for that many hours in a row.

Unless it’s wrestling, and even then I’m taking full advantage of the technology to zip past Gunther’s mic work.

The split screen of the DNC with its GOP counterpart is staggering.

The Democrats have managed to turn the driest of all political processes into a barn burner of a party, while simultaneously selling out the same arena that hosted the RNC in Wisconsin, by being…optimistic.

While their counterparts are peddling their vision of a country and a world on the brink of disaster, the Democrats are opting to frame things otherwise.

Facts are what’s happening.

Truth is what you do with those facts.

Events make up my day.

How I respond to those events?

That’s how my day goes.

And given a choice, I’d rather have a day with Lil’ John as my soundtrack instead of the vocal stylings of Robert James Richie.

Here’s to an amazing day.

Or an awful one.

Your choice.

"But I really, I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That's the highest award you can get as a civilian. It's the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version, it's actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they're soldiers. They're either in very bad shape because they've been hit so many times by bullets, or they're dead. She gets it and she's healthy, beautiful woman."

That’s the GOP candidate for president on the time he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Miriam Adelson for being a “committed doctor, philanthropist, and humanitarian” whose late husband donated $90 million to a PAC supporting Trump’s 2016 campaign, and is reportedly planning to spend even more supporting Trump during the 2024 election cycle.

When he’s not banging Tic Tac containers together like a dementia patient at the checkout counter of a Safeway to show us how inflation works, Trump has these moments when he shows us not just who he is, but the kind of America he wants for the rest of us.

He makes it easy to focus on his condescending view of service, how he faked injury to avoid the draft, how he denigrated McCain’s ordeal in Vietnam, and referred to those who gave their lives in Europe during the First World War as “losers”.

It’s all a distraction from what he and everyone like him really want: power at the expense of others. Because that, in Trumpland, for the authors of Project 2025, is a winner.

Someone who’s stood on someone else to raise themselves up. Who got to where they are by breaking down, not building up.

If that’s what winning looks like in Trump’s America, I’ll take the losers. Anytime.

Dan Has Notes is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Sources

• https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-draws-fire-remarks-medal-honor-recipients/story?id=112883414
• https://forward.com/fast-forward/618034/miriam-adelson-funding-trump-israel/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/16/arts/television/late-night-trump-tic-tac.html
• https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/02/27/trumps-lawyer-no-basis-for-presidents-medical-deferment-from-vietnam/
• https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/18/424169549/trump-lashes-out-at-mccain-i-like-people-who-werent-captured
• https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/

Today’s the first day of the rest of your life.

Depending on the day, that feels hopeful.

Or fills me with existential dread.

Opting for the first this morning.

The focus?

Today.

Just today.

Because it’s not guaranteed.

Better now than never.

Day one.

One day.

Plan for a tomorrow.

Live like there isn’t one.

Working my way through Season 3 of Ted Lasso.

Somehow lost touch with it after Season 2.

No fault of the show’s, just it happens.

Special interests and the vagaries of entertainment choices coupled with the certainty that I know how all the stories will end all wrapped up in wishing I could write something half as good means I miss things.

Instead of sitting in the joy that something like this exists.

Which, given what life can be, I should spend more time surrounded by joy.

And Lasso is pure joy.

An earnest joy.

Unforced.

Consequently, lots of tears.

Happy ones, mostly.

Others less so.

Shows like this are what art can, and should, be.

Not all the time, not all our art, but art that shows us that most of us are, truly, good people.

People wanting that goodness in ourselves, and others, if we could just get out of our own way.

And even those characters cast as antagonists?

Even those have dimension, and depth.

A not-so-subtle reminder that we all do.

Spent the day finishing Killing Eve.

I am nothing if not current on my pop culture.

Not to give too much away, but it’s about an assassin working for an organization that calls itself “The 12,” who gets tracked down by am American working for MI5, the British equivalent of the FBI.

What makes the show unique is that both those characters are women, and it passes the Bechdel test.

Repeatedly, and forcefully.

As a Man Of A Certain Age accustomed to the privileges that entails, it’s both disconcerting and inspiring.

Disconcerting as anything is that shows you that the world might be better if it were different and how you might not fit quite in the same place you once did.

Inspiring for those same reasons.

And the belief that art can show the us the way toward that kind of reality.

One where strength is earned, not inherited.

I know what kind of day this is.

It’s an amazing day.

Because I’ve decided that.

Chosen that.

Opted out of guessing.

Not settling for the default setting.

That has nothing to do with the day ahead.

And has everything to do with what I bring to it.

I’ve decided what kind of day I’m going to have.

And so long as I keep deciding, I have that day.

Helium has one job.

Just be lighter than air.

And in that there is joy.

In a floating bit of inflated rubber.

Or Mylar, if you’re fancy.

Bobbing along at the end of a string.

Feels like hope.

This easily captured thing.

Enough of it, and it could float us away.

Takes so little to lose, too.

One misstep on your day’s journey, and it’s gone.

But not forever.

Some days it’s just finding that next balloon.

Weird.

Hard to define, but like Justice Stewart and pornography, we know it when we see it.

It’s a line the Democrats have latched on to with Vance and Trump, since “plan to end democracy” isn’t as catchy as just calling them weird.

And given that the GOP presidential ticket is busy comparing their wives to their Democratic opponent and laughing like they read about it in a “How To Human” manual, it’s an easy judgment to make.

Does it make me laugh?

Of course: the sheer absurdity of a party that’s latched onto the fripperies of culture war as key planks in their platform amuses me no end.

Does it bum me out that this is what The Discourse has devolved to, when neither side can articulate its plans in meaningful ways so everyone resorts to memes and name calling?

Yes, yes it does.

Still, we live in a world where people are using crucified Minions to convince others to follow Jesus so, yeah.

Sometimes people are just weird.

Pain is temporary, pride is forever.

Not sure where I first read that.

Probably on the wall of a locker room in a an after school special about that one kid who just didn’t fit in until he discovered football.

It’s apt, in that context, because on the other side of that pain, there’s winning.

Except.

Pain leaves behind its own legacy.

And its own bits of itself across what we are.

The person that we were then, still around, wanting that seat at the table.

Telling us that maybe this time it’s forever.

That it’s not so temporary.

Sometimes it’s just better to sit with it.

Let it have its say.

Hear it out.

Because it’s not going anywhere.

Can’t do much about that.

What we can do something about, is how loud it is. How much of it we choose to listen to.

Perception is reality: Helen Keller would describe her driving test very differently from her instructor.

There’s a lake not far from where I live.

I go there when I can.

Watch the sun come up.

Something about water, as the world shakes off the night before.

Some mornings this dog chases me down the road.

Don’t think he’s angry, just bored.

Hangs out by the mailbox, head up as a car passes, deciding whether it’s worth the effort.

Might be a territorial thing.

Or he used to herd sheep, and now these metal beasts fill a spot in his life.

Wouldn’t know what to do if he caught one.

Usually when I pass him, I’m eating a donut, something I do semi-regularly, and sometimes for the same reasons.

Chasing some moment.

A brief flicker, maybe flare of joy.

Thinking that bit of fried dough will fill that void.

Other times, like today, that donut?

Is the point.

Not the fleeting satisfaction at its end.

It’s the ride, it’s the journey, it’s…the donut.

That dog?

Probably doesn’t want to catch a car.

Happy just to chase them, one at a time.

Because there’s always another.

A car.

A donut.

A moment.

Might as well enjoy this one.

One of those things I need reminded of semi-regularly, from Ram Dass by way of Pete Holmes, that the me that is me, the self, is not the feeling I’m having.

I’m not hungry, Dan has a feeling of hunger.

I’m not sad, Dan is feeling sad.

I’m not depressed, I’m experiencing depression.

Buckminster Fuller had a similar theory of humanity, separating himself as the scientist of his life, observing the person living that life.

The point of both those mental models?

Taking yourself out of the feeling, making that quiet place for the self, and knowing that it’s a temporary thing, not who you are.

When you’re the guy trying to make Diet Mt. Dew the official drink of “Heritage, Not Hate”, you give off the kind of energy that makes people go, “Yeah, he might knows a couch or two. Biblically.”

It’s easy to make fun of JD Vance.

But he’s just like the rest of us: having to juggle time with our kids while taking calls from a guy we’re worried might be “America’s Hitler”.

It’s hard to be a good dad when you’ve got to make time for stalking presidential candidates on the tarmac and taking on Taylor Swift fans, all while talking yourself out of ducking into a Rooms-To-Go for just one quick peek at that Montecito.

But I’m worried about JD.

Maybe the cognitive decline isn’t just Trump’s.

All that standing for anything so long as it means votes has taken its toll: in the last eight years, Vance has forgotten what the word “never” means.

Doesn’t help that somewhere fellow critic-turned-sycophant Niki Haley is deciding whether Trump likes that she’s Indian now, and if that’s going to be her in to take Vance’s place as “guy Trump would be OK having a crowd murder” on the 2024 ticket.

He’s got 99 problems, but a chin ain’t one.

Like I said, easy to mock.

Putting down is easy, and under Trump, it’s become the only call in the GOP playbook.

Don’t like what someone has to say about you?

They’re dumb.

Can’t figure out a policy position?

Come up with nicknames.

Questions too hard?

You’re a nasty person.

Harder to do?

Build someone up.

Find common ground.

Come together to map a way forward.

Running for president, or just running a load of laundry, we’re all on the same blue marble hurtling through the void.

Maybe if we spent less time trying to kick each other, we’d find the time to hold each other up.

Even if you do look like a sentient Don Jr. piñata.

Hampton Morris just medaled in weightlifting, ending a 40 year drought in the event for the United States.

In Olympic weightlifting, it comes down to a few reps.

A handful of opportunities.

Bar goes up, or it doesn’t.

And that’s it.

Because we never see the thousands of times Morris picked that bar up and put it down.

And while the reps that won the medal keep us on the edge of our seats and gave him a memory for a lifetime, those other reps?

Tedious.

Irksome.

Boring, even.

There’s nothing exciting about The Work.

But without those thousands of moments, there’s no Moment.

Be bored, but be doing.

Better late than never.

I’ve told myself that a lot.

As the years ticked by.

As others did the expected.

Took the steps.

Collected the degrees, the paychecks, the accomplishments.

I’d tell you that I took my own path.

That I wandered, and returned enlightened.

Ready to shine my light into the abyss.

Fact: I just wandered.

Finding my way now.

But I’m not late.

I’m where I’m supposed to be.

And when.

Better now than never.

Met my doppelganger yesterday.

Maybe a year younger.

Nearly identical career paths.

At the same company.

Except.

He’s where he is.

And I’m where I’m at.

Which, is not where I thought I’d be.

Took the wind out of my sails a bit.

“A bit” falling under that broad category of “pathological understatement”.

Not his fault.

He’s just another boat, crossing through my wind.

Sailing his own path.

I made choices that got me here.

Now I’m making other ones.

Someone whose input I value deeply reminded me that “comparison is the thief of joy”.

It’s attributed to Teddy Roosevelt.

What I like about that quote is that it’s not their fault I feel inadequate.

He’s just living his life.

But I held myself up to his accomplishments, and found myself lacking.

That’s on me.

And so is choosing to look again at my own course.

Find the horizon again.

More sailing, less worrying about the other boats.

The rest area.

Icon of the road trip.

Or at least a necessity, with the stretches of American asphalt winding for miles, hours from the nearest bit of civilization.

They’re not as useful as they once were, overtaken by “travel plazas” full of fast food and slightly cleaner restrooms.

But when you need one, you need one.

Either that, or you’re going to have to go through contortions better left to a gymnast to answer the call of nature without doing anything obscene.

I hit a rest area this morning.

A pocket of de-motivation.

I started thinking of it as stalling.

The car off the side of the road, hood popped, not sure what to do because my skills have never run toward the automotive.

But it’s a rest area.

The road’s right there.

I’m headed back out on it soon enough.

It doesn’t have to be elaborate to be a break.

A pause in the forward motion.

Take a breath, turn the key, and start again.

I’ve rediscovered TikTok.

Don’t expect my influencing to bloom.

But.

Along with most of the world, I too am scrolling through videos of people feeding raccoons, politicians making points, and cats losing their minds.

And then there’s the raking guy.

I don’t think he’s a content creator.

Just some guy.

With a rake.

Facing a clogged drain.

It’s raining, he knows there’s a drain under the water somewhere.

Water that’s currently covering a sidewalk.

First few strokes, nothing happens.

Same with the following strokes.

Until finally, he clears whatever was clogging it.

Water rushes away.

Sidewalk: usable again.

When the plan isn’t going as planned, sometimes all we can do?

Is rake.

There’s a drain under there somewhere.

Manifest.

It’s a funny word.

Means a few different things, because language.

But thinking about it in terms of the universe.

Which, I believe is connected to every other part of the universe.

That’s science, thank you.

Quantum physics.

What can I say, I watch Marvel movies.

Growing up I believed in a few other things.

Manifest destiny was one of them.

I still believe in manifestation.

With a difference: I don’t think that’s up to Someone Else.

Not that I don’t believe in a Higher Power.

Because Something or Someone clearly had Ideas.

What I don’t believe in is waiting for Them to show me Their Plan.

Because They’re pretty fickle.

Petty, even.

Like all the rest of us sentient beings.

Instead?

Putting my energy into manifesting the life I deserve.

I cannot tell you how hard it was to finish that sentence as a child of religious trauma raised to believe that what I deserve is death because Adam and Eve got the munchies.

But as a child of a Universe that wants to see me realize my potential?

That’s a Universe I’d very much like to manifest.