An American Funeral?
Are our American ideals dead? Plus, the magical mystery of fishing superstitions
Editor’s Note: Have a question about when, exactly, democracy will die in darkness? Don’t ask Matt. He’s been watching it on its sickbed for years, so has no idea on which day, precisely, someone will finally kick the plug on the life-support machine. Maybe ask Lord Bezos, who seems to be killing it off one organ at a time, when he’s not busy taking his lady friend to get her lips inflated and/or doing his nerd workouts. (Nice pecs, Jeff!) For all other questions, ask Matt Labash at askmattlabash@gmail.com.
Second Editor’s Note: This piece was going to press immediately after Donald Trump and JD Vance’s unprovoked Oval Office tag-team attack on Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Matt’s very quick’n’dirty take here.
Dear Matt,
Should we have a funeral for what we believed America used to be?
Zen Mizu
Well, if we were to have one of those, we’re probably about nine years late. Because the America I knew and love passed in 2016 — when Chick-fil-A pulled their matchless coleslaw off the menu to make way for a “super side” of kale and broccolini. Which I’m pretty sure was a Chicom plot to destroy morale. (Good thinking, Xi, it worked!)
Otherwise, I’d say go ahead and have a funeral for our American ideals if you’re a committed pessimist/think you look fetching in slimming black. But as long as roughly half the country knows that the nutjobs have taken over the asylum – the former of which is a number I suspect will compound, the more erratically and irrationally the current regime governs – I believe our American ideals are very much alive. We were a country founded by extremely sane revolutionaries, trying to cast off the yoke of bad ideas. (Taxation without representation, overpriced tea, monarchy.)
In some ways, we’re back to square one, trying to cast off the yoke of bad ideas (tax breaks for the billionaire broligarchy, stupid tariffs that will hurt us all, monarchy.)
Try as they might to the contrary, the vandals of our republic are returning us to first principles, forcing us to remember everything we once held dear, but had the luxury for too many years of forgetting. Stability often breeds complacency.
Are roughly half of our countrymen willing to sell out their liberty/free press to a sociopath with a bleached-strawberry-blonde combover and his autistic baby-daddy sidekick, who seems to enjoy humiliating The People (by indiscriminately firing large swaths of them who work for the government that they pretend to want to make better)? The very same people that their faux-populist movement pledges phony allegiance to? Sure! All’s fair, so the thinking goes, in culture war. Which is all this is really about. I’m for eliminating government waste, too. But if you have a cancerous mole on your nose, you cut off the mole, not your entire nose. And you definitely wouldn’t want your nose/mole surgeon to be a 19-year-old named “Big Balls.”
And I’m forever disappointed in those – plenty of whom I know personally – who are such easy marks, when all of their cult-leader overlords are clearly in it to reward themselves and/or each other. Along with a lot of other rich guys, who don’t even truly believe in what the regime is doing (see Bezos, Mark Fuckerberg, etc.), who are now going along for the ride.
But there are still enough of us to make their ride a rough one. And we should. Every chance we get. I’ve never been anything close to a political activist. The only protests I’ve ever attended are as a journalist, usually to make sport of the protesters. But these days, I protest in some way, shape, or form just about every time I set pen to paper, like now. And I will do so again and again. Not because I’m spoiling for a fight. (I’d rather not fight at all – I’m a lover, not a fighter.) But because these jackasses need figuratively punched in the throat, every time we get a free shot. (Violence is an answer, but not The Answer.) Not because I hate them, personally. But because they are trying to undo this beautiful thing of ours — the American Experiment — for their own personal gain. I don’t consider too many sins unforgivable ones. (Maybe cutting in on a fishing hole while I’m standing in it. Maybe backing your truck into a parking space while I’m waiting to pass.) But that’s one of them.
So don’t put on your pallbearer’s suit just yet, when you can still don your fighting trunks. I suggest something tasteful and understated from the Hector “Macho” Camacho line:
Dear Matt,
Are you a superstitious fisherman? If so, how?
Nathan T.
You presumably know I’m an obsessive fly fisherman, and yet you ask me if I’m superstitious? Is a bear Catholic? Does a pope shit in the woods? Of course I’m superstitious. It’s practically in the job description. Nearly my entire fishing life is governed by superstitions, irrational though they may be. Anyone who spends as much time fishing as I do, hoping to pull unseen mysteries from the deep, can hardly afford not to believe in superstition. Fishermen might tend to be drunks, laggards, and ne’er-do-wells, but all of them tend to believe in the unseen.
While the number 13 might be lucky for Taylor Swift, it remains unlucky for me. Not just because I don’t write hit songs and pack stadiums — though Taylor shouldn’t make me come out from behind my keyboard, because I have some ideas on how to do so (hint: my Christian mime troupe). But I consider the number 13 so unlucky, that if I’m on a hot streak, and have caught 12 fish, I either have to stop on 12 if the catching is slowing, or stay an extra hour to press the daily total to 14 or higher. I never end a day on 13 fish, even if I have to swim into the river and catch number 14 by hand.
Similarly, for about a decade beyond its usefulness, I insisted on wearing the same vest. A $30 Cabela’s job that was no great shakes, it was just…… my trusty fishing vest….so it had to be worn. Long after it was covered in sweat stains and fish slime, me and Ol’ Rusty (my name for it, even if it was olive, not rust-colored) soldiered on. I finally gave it up when so many threadbare holes sprouted in its pockets, that I started losing valuable flies and other costly fishing implements. When I’d cast, using a vigorous double haul, totally dialed in to the fish that needed caught before me, I might hear a stray “kerplunk,” another pocket valuable dropping to its watery grave.
Finally, my family bought me a new vest. A stylish half-length number with so many zippers and mesh pockets that I’m still discovering its secret compartments. And I’ve had it for five years. But I utterly hate it. Partly because all the mesh is a good excuse to catch fly hooks that I have to snap off to get unstuck. Partly because it’s not Ol’ Trusty Rusty. Which still hangs on the family coatrack in the hallway, even in retirement. I eye him sometimes, and think, “All I need to do is take him to the nice Asian ladies at the local dry cleaner/tailor’s, and get them to stitch up those pockets, however Franken-vest it makes Rusty look. Then me and Russ are back in business! And I can shed my more stylish atrocity.”
Similarly, I used to have to catch 1,000 fish on a fly rod every year. A self-imposed number, admittedly. But I appealed it to the boss (myself), and the boss said it’s non-negotiable. This, I did for around 15 years, until a particularly busy 2021, and a health setback. (I was hospitalized after a lone-star tick bite I sustained while fishing in heavy cover gave me ehrlichiosis, causing me to go septic in the bargain). Once the streak was broken, so was the spell I was under. Which I still feel just sick about, as the streak animated so many of my waking moments for a decade-and-a-half. I will probably start it up again at some point. Or so the irrational part of my brain says. While the rational part says it will be just for show — pure futility. A bit like Cal Ripken Jr. trying to beat his consecutive games streak after ending his record run at 2,632 — which took about a span of 16 years. For him to match and beat that again would’ve meant playing an additional 17 years. He was 38 when his streak ended. Which to start it up again right afterwards, would’ve made him 55 or 56 to top himself. Not exactly an optimal professional athlete age. (Ripken retired at 41). If I re-started my at-least-1,000-fish-per-year streak this year, I’d be around 70-years-old by the time I beat it. Not impossible But not very likely. A lot of being at peace with life is accepting the natural limits it imposes upon you, but still living richly within those borders.
My long-enduring and-still-latest superstition is needing to catch at least one fish every month. Which I always do, even in coldest-and-most-unproductive winter. Not because I’m some genius fisherman, but because I spend a lot of time on the water, and generally know what fish want. (My comforting, manly touch — even if they’re male fish. I’m totally hetero, but pretty bi when it comes to platonic fish touching.)
Consequently, as the sands of February were running out, and I still hadn’t caught any fish, I needed to get back outside. So I did, two days ago. I drove two hours to Satan’s Creek in the Blue Ridge Mountains, for brook trout. A place I have written about before. And while summer bonanzas often have me catching 10 or 12 brookies there on dry flies, on this February day, me flogging the water for hour after hour not only failed to yield a fish, but I didn’t even see any underwater shadows that I spooked. The place felt utterly barren, not unlike my soul after needing to commune with God’s piscine perfection, and getting skunked by our Creator, who seemed to be saying, “Sorry not to grant your wish, dude, but I have bigger fish to fry, like bringing America to its knees.”
To add insult, on the way down the mountain’s gulch-and-pothole-riddled dirt road, after a particularly long and tough winter of ice and snow, I knocked the bottom out of my Honda, dragging my catalytic converter to the nearest general store to get in phone range, so I could call my insurance roadside assistance, which still assured me that the two-hour haul to my home mechanic would set me back $450. Which feels like a bargain when you’re stranded in the sticks, and have no good options. And so Mohammed, my life-saving Pakistani tow-truck driver, and I made the long trek home. I thought about swearing off all creature comforts and stupid superstitions, and joining a madrassa like some of his countrymen, until Mohammed asked me, “So, did you at least catch any fish?”
That cruel bastard! Why did he have to rub it in?
So even though my car was now in the shop, and my family was using their own, and in all the hubbub, I’d misplaced the key to my spare aged SUV (the dog truck) – and I had everything due from a piece to my taxes, none of which had been completed — when I did finally locate the key after hours of searching, I did what any conscientious, responsible citizen would do. I went fishing to try to get February on the fish-numbers board.
Whether I did or didn’t succeed isn’t even important. A cliffhanger for another time. (I didn’t succeed, or I would’ve told you. Though I still have a few February hours left after I publish this.) My larger point being that most people think they fish to set themselves free: from their cubicle cages, or life’s obligations, or other punishing burdens. Whereas, my superstitions – the artificial constructs and parameters that so often order my fishing life — don’t exactly set me free, but keep me bound. And yet, I still feel free in my boundness. For these ridiculous rituals somehow invest me much more deeply in what should be just a simple pleasure. They give me stakes. They make me feel not just gain, but loss, the latter of which compounds the former. The same way shadow always accentuates light. If I didn’t care so much — maybe too much — fishing would just be a simple-minded pastime. Instead, because I care too much, I don’t just have a hobby, but a way of life that requires actual commitment, making me love that life all the more, even if it has a greater capacity to disappoint when it goes sideways, and causes me to knock the bottom out of my car. A small price to pay.
Bonus Track: In this age of faux-populism, here’s a real populist song. At least I think it is. I can’t really understand the words. But it is one of the great hip hop performances of all time. Here’s Mos Def, doing “Close Edge” while riding shotgun as Dave Chappelle is driving. Good, clean fun, if you don’t mind a few dirty words.