About

Background and story

I am the proud father of a son who is in the first grade. Like many of our kids, he struggled with a year of remote learning. Like so many parents during that year, I watched him struggle daily with the conditions that accompanied his situation. It was a very formative year, lost in many ways. As a kindergarten student trying to learn at home, he had no contact with his teachers or the ability to interact or play with other kids. I suspect those of you in a similar situation are as concerned as I am, if our children were robbed of experiences that will impact them throughout their lives.

I have lived in my home in Las Vegas since the summer of 2009. Before then, I lived in several places around the valley as my work locations changed over time. Initially, I moved to Las Vegas in the winter of 1998 to be close to my family who had also moved here, tired of shoveling snow.

I migrated to Las Vegas from a small town, technically a village in North Eastern Ohio. I was a child of the late 70’s and early 80’s. It was then that I developed my first interest in technology. I started programming on a Commodore VIC20 while a student in the fifth grade. By the time I was in the seventh grade, I moved on to an Apple II/c at a time when there was only one computer in the entire school. It was passed around from classroom to classroom on one of those clunky industrial grade black steel carts. I was fascinated by electronics. I used to build radios and other little “kit” projects from schematics from the library, and with parts purchased at the local Radio Shack.
I did not complete my education in a conventional sense, if one could ever think of education as something to “complete.” 

Growing up with a single mom, my sister and I had to bear the social stigma of being “welfare” kids. My mom worked hard wherever she could find a job; but the income from being a janitor at the police and paramedic facility still didn’t cover enough to make ends meet. I wanted to be invisible, to just get through school and eventually escape my small town to better opportunities. I was never particularly interested in athletics. I kept my head down and did the minimum I was forced to do. It was an unwelcome surprise when it was discovered that I had a useful talent in basketball. As I understand it, it was some statistical anomaly in rebounds and assists during a forced school-wide ladder competition. It never made sense to me because I never scored an actual point, so I dismissed it.

Though I was on the college track, I dropped out of school part way through my senior year, carrying A’s in most of my classes…chemistry, pre-calculus, English, and the required classes. I decided to drop out because, in order to graduate, I was required to complete a project that I had left incomplete two years prior. As a shy, self-conscious, and very private person, the project I was required to complete was an insurmountable intrusion into that part of myself that I felt would be “put on public display” were I to complete it. No matter how good my marks were, I could not move forward or backward.

I decided to complete my GED; and I began taking classes at the local state university prior to my class’ graduation date. Before long, the same issues that caused my withdrawal from high school became issues in college. Much later in life, I learned that I had some undiagnosed learning challenges that drove my educational success, or lack thereof. One, which is still struggling to get recognition, is known as dyscalculia. Whereas dyslexia affects reading, dyscalculia affects numbers and calculations. Strings of numbers, or strings of letters and numbers, still challenge me to this day. However, there isn’t a password I can’t forget. In spite of these circumstances, I have continued learning without teachers or a curriculum.

I was an avid reader, thanks to a great teacher who took the time to see why I hated reading in the seventh grade. Decades later, I can still tear through a paperback novel in about two hours. I recently finished “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” by Dr. Thomas Sowell. It was absolutely fascinating, though it took about twelve hours to complete. I found so many parallels to the culture I grew up with in a small town that was a half and half split between liberals and farmers.

I still love to learn. Though my self-taught career path has lead me to work directly with programming enterprise level software within our local school system, I have become as well-versed as can be expected from home study in the fields of theoretical physics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, psychology, emergent systems, and political theory. I have game theory and set theory on my list of future topics to deep dive into. Admittedly, my mathematics is still severely lacking; I approach these subjects as related logical abstracts.

I began to hear the political alarms in 2017, and thus started to wake from my “centrist dream.” In order, I voted for Obama, Obama, and Hillary Clinton, though I was a Bernie supporter at the time. I suffered two years of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) starting with the nomination in 2015. I had never really understood politics nor did I care to at the time. It was forced upon me because something in my subconscious started screaming that something just wasn’t right. I started my political education on the left, believing that CNN and other mainstream news outlets were the bedrock of truth. I found myself gravitating toward academics that were outcasts; and I began to piece together the threat that has haunted me ever since. Dr. Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist and author from the University of Toronto, started my path of learning about ideologies and their place in history. Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, the brothers’ Weinstein, and many Joe Rogan guests followed. Dave Rubin introduced me to Larry Elder, and then to Thomas Sowell.

I started thinking about thinking, and in 2020 I voted for Trump. What finally brought me over firmly to the right, was the out of control spiral we endured from 2019 onward. When the lies became so egregious that I couldn’t sit and take it any longer, I had to stand! We had to stand! I knew in my heart and in my head that if I did not, I was giving my child’s future over to misery and depredation. I asked myself where I could be most effective and how could I get there. For decades, the reinforcement provided by the U.S. Army to “stay in the back unnoticed and unbothered,” remained with me. “Don’t be first, don’t be last and never let them have cause to learn your name” was the advice given to me when I enlisted. I had to let that go to free myself. 

So, here I stand, asking you to stand with me.  Asking you to help me save our state. For ourselves, for our future, for our children and for their future.

It’s time to stand!

Will you stand with US?