March 2020

It all started in March 2020. Here. On Medium. I began blogging to pass time as I had just been sent home from college for the rest of the semester. There was a virus going around.

“18 & Bored” was my Medium bio. It had a nice, carefree, “can’t lose because I’m only doing this because I’m bored” feel to it. I enjoyed the writing that I did. Most of my previous writing was subject to a letter grade and critique from teachers, so it was fun to write on my own.

Many of my old posts are still on here. Some are funny, some are cringey, but all are how I felt when writing them. A lot of satire, philosophical stuff, and sports.

I haven’t looked back much on them because of the cringe, but the piece that I’m most proud of is one where I correctly predicted, during the peak of Covid fear, that like the wars on poverty, drugs, and terrorism, a war on disease would do a better job of exploiting people than conquering the enemy. If only there was a crypto coin tied to that take.

The recognition that I was getting for some of my posts was cool. People that I had never met were commenting on posts. My high school gave me a shoutout for a couple of my articles. One day, I got a notification from Medium that Gary Richied “clapped” for one of my posts. I thought that was funny. I hadn’t spoken to Richied since having him as my U.S. History teacher during my junior year of high school.

I posted another article after a funny idea I previously had. The idea was to imagine Twitter being used throughout history. This thread was popular with my followers and friends:

My personal future was very uncertain during quarantine. My experience in college classrooms was hellish and I did not want to return. So I tried a bunch of stuff out to see what I like more: podcasting, audio editing, writing, whiteboard animation videos, a Google IT Support class (anyone who knows me just let out a big “wtf?”), and the most relevant in this story, coding.

I was taking basic classes on Codecademy. In the HTML course, I learned how to manipulate the text of web pages. So, I tried manipulating pages on Twitter. I came out with a piece called “Twitter During the Revolutionary War” which used the new fake tweets that I made. This one is my favorite:

This post was right up Gary Richied’s alley. One of our mutual friends gave me his contact info and relayed a message that Gary wanted to text about this.

Richied complimented the creativity and satire in the post. Quickly after, I proposed: “Why don’t we write a freaking book?” I felt that it was a great opportunity for each of us. Richied’s great knowledge of history and economics mixed with an innovative and artistic way of making the subjects attractive was a great pair. Richied agreed. Let’s write a book.

I never finished learning how to code. I learned everything that I needed to know from Codecademy. I think it’s fair to consider me a bit of a nerd, but I’m not THAT big of a nerd.

Gary Richied and the genesis of the book

Gary Richied was the first teacher I had who made it clear to the class that we did not have to ask him for permission before going to the bathroom. A freeing moment I think about almost every day. Quite the tardy milestone for someone who was already tasked with driving a potentially deadly vehicle to and from the school.

Besides his non-authoritarian piss policy, Gary Richied’s teaching style was engaging and the class was eye-opening. At 16, I didn’t have an understanding of the term “Libertarian”, let alone a teacher who considered themself one, or opened up about their political beliefs and how those beliefs may color their own understanding of the subject. Refreshing honesty from the start.

I would look forward to the class each day due to its unpredictability. I remember anticipating what new thing I was going to learn that was going to blow my mind. Usually, it’d be something that I was shocked that I hadn’t already learned. Something that had been hidden, covered up, brushed to the side, etc.

I also found Richied’s knowledge of economics to be sound and valuable. From an early age, I understood what people meant when they said, “Money makes the world go ‘round.”

Contrary to what one may think from the previous paragraphs, I was no teacher’s pet in school. I was very much the kid in class with questions and an overall skeptical intake for new information.

Even though I found Richied’s teaching and arguments for libertarianism intriguing, I never considered myself libertarian.

At college two years later, I would consider myself “apolitical” with a healthy distrust for government (I do worship a man killed by the government after all.).

“I don’t care about politics,” became a favorite phrase of mine. It gave me a feeling of detachment from arguments that I found to be shallow. I felt that I could solely focus on myself and the rest would figure itself out.

In university classes, the tone of the professors was much different than that of my former history teacher. I found many of the arguments that professors made regarding politics to be rather weak, overly emotional, or incomplete. Even worse, in broader society, the arguments for libertarianism/anarcho-capitalism were being dismissed, unfairly ridiculed without consideration, and sometimes outright censored.

Nothing could make that last point more evident to me than when Gary Richied was fired in February 2020 from both of his former teaching institutions for his open libertarian/anarcho-capitalist views as well as his open criticism of Pope Francis and other bad actors within the Catholic Church.

The original plan for the book was to create “the best damn supplement to a standard United States History curriculum.” Although the book would inevitably be biased towards libertarianism because of Richied, which I had no problem with because I felt that his side needed more of a voice, the original target audience was simply students preparing for the AP US History exam.

The target audience eventually changed because something crazy happened next.

What Happened Next

What happened next was the greatest international government overreach in human history. Governments from around the world were willing to sacrifice nearly all else to attempt to stop an unstoppable disease. A disease, nonetheless, where the actual disease is the sole cause of death in about 5% of deaths. In those deaths with additional conditions, there is an average of FOUR (4) other conditions. (CDC)

The popularity contest winners who we ironically call our “leaders” divided their workforces into those deemed “essential” and those deemed “non-essential”. Policies regarding the disease were almost always influenced by the fact that there was a national election later in the year. Businesses tanked. Suicides and overdoses skyrocketed. People with significantly more serious health issues had medical visits delayed and canceled. Kids couldn’t develop socially. While all of this was happening, several of those “leaders” ended up getting caught breaking THEIR OWN orders. Tyranny for thee, not for me.

If only Marcellus could see the state of Denmark now. Something rotten indeed.

The orders never made much sense at all to me. In Illinois, one thing I found weird from the jump was that we had a morbidly obese guy mandating us with regard to public health (see: J.B. Pritkzer, especially in street clothes). While fear and later cowardice infected the general population far greater than something that most people need a test for could, there was one group who stood up to the nonsense from the jump: the liberty movement.

The third party. The Libertarians. The “crazy” An-Caps. The only ones consistently with a spine from the start.

I happened to be writing a book with one of these people. I had a lot of time during quarantine, so I went down the rabbit hole.

What I found were works from some of the greatest minds that we have today: Jeff Deist, Tom Woods, Michael Malice, T.K. Coleman, Dave Smith, Robbie “The Fire” Bernstein, Jerry Bowyer, Maj Toure, Scott Horton, Isaac Morehouse, @Rothmus, Zuby, Bob Murphy, Thaddeus Russell, and others.

I was absolutely stunned by the level of intellect of all of those guys. Do look into them if you have not already. If they were politicians we would suppose they were aliens. Their ability to live out their principles and to speak and act like actual humans is nowhere in the political world today.

I also found it fascinating how philosophically deep their arguments are. Much of the current movement is credited to Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises.

Gap Year and Writing

I was eventually able to convince my parents to let me take a “gap year” from university in May 2020 for the 2020–2021 school year. A “gap year” is just a college dropout’s way of buying themselves more time from judgment.

In a weird way, the virus helped me get out of college due to the obvious decrease in the quality of “the college experience”. My full take on college and the educational system as a whole might be reserved for another book one day, but let’s just say I was happy to get out.

I would later get some valuable work experience, but with the newfound time on my hands, I explored what I found interesting (see: Google IT Support Class) and worked on the book.

For at least the first year of working on the book, I didn’t tell any of my friends about it. It was “the underground project” to them. I was not ready to be answering questions about a project that I had no idea was going to be completed. Writing a book is an enormous amount of work.

To outsiders, my life looked like a bit of a mess. If you ever want to receive a funny look, tell people that you’re leaving college and working on “an underground project.” Some funny stories with that one. I never let any discouragement get the best of me, though. Even when I had my own doubts about the future and the book, I never felt that I was down and out.

One aspect of my life that improved and helped keep me upbeat during a chaotic exterior world and a questionable interior world was my faith. I began going to Saint Mary of Perpetual Help in Bridgeport on the south side of Chicago due to process of elimination (the only church nearby that didn’t force masks to be worn).

At the time, you had me at “masks optional”. However, I stuck around even after the masks were lifted elsewhere. The weekly mass experience and Fr. Thomas Aschenbrener’s preaching make the 30-minute drive each way into the city worth it. I’m cradle Catholic, but I’ve joked before that Aschenbrener and Richied converted me to Catholicism.

Writing a book and becoming friends with a former teacher is awkward at first. When we’re in the schooling mindset we are prone to forgetting that our teachers are human as well. Some of my friends would eventually be surprised when I referred to Gary Richied as “Gary Richied” and not “Mr. Richied”.

For the first months of the book, Richied and I didn’t meet in person. We would work only remotely on the book. Looking back, this was a mistake that pushed the release date down the road. However, we eventually developed a close friendship.

In July 2021, I went to FreedomFest in Rapid City, South Dakota (a way better time than it looks written out, I swear). There, Richied thrashed atheist Doug Casey in the debate “The Catholic Church: Pro vs Con”.

Also at Freedomfest were some of the great minds that I mentioned before. Watching them speak live was incredible.

However, the gold from the trip was meeting T.K. Coleman, Cameron Sorsby, and being introduced to Praxis. Praxis is a business apprenticeship program that is an alternative to college. They combine self-directed education with real work experience to help people land jobs. I would later join the program and land my current job because of it.

In Praxis, a big piece of advice they give is to follow your interests because you never know what will be granted your way along the pursuit. You never know what like-minded people you’ll come across, new ideas, opportunities, etc. Oddly enough, I found Praxis by following their advice before knowing them.

Motivation to finish the book

As I mentioned earlier, creating a book is exhausting. There were a lot of long nights, debates, and changes that went into this. I have never worked harder on anything in my life.

There’s so much that goes into a book besides the text. Richied and I didn’t know anything about self-publishing a book either. We were fortunate enough to connect with “Bookmaker” Brett Hoffstadt. We brought Bookmaker Brett on to be our producer for the book. He is the reason that our readers are reading this in 2022 and not 2024. Without him, we would be lost.

I became more motivated to finish the book as the exterior world got even crazier. On January 3, 2022, Cook County enforced a vaccine mandate for most indoor facilities. This was done after it was already proven that the vaccine did not prevent the spread of Covid.

I refused the vaccine as a healthy 20-year-old because I believed that the risk of a new vaccine with no long-term studies was a greater risk to me than that of a disease that kills mostly sick old people. So radical, I know.

The mandates divided people. Friends and families. The people who can go to the gym and local restaurants and those who can’t.

“Pandemic of the unvaccinated” was the propaganda at the time. Hilarious hearing that from a guy who emphasized “unity” in his campaign.

On that point: the government, the state, benefits from the arbitrary divides between those who they govern. When we, the populace, are too busy at each other’s throats, we lose sight of who’s taking our money, where it’s going, and if it’s being used efficiently. As Charles Barkley once said, “They divide and conquer.”

The bottom line is if there were no government mandates, most if not all Cook County restaurants, gyms, and bars would NOT voluntarily make people show proof of vaccination to get into their facility. Those places that did want people to show proof of vaccination could do that if they wanted to, and those that didn’t want to wouldn’t have to. And everyone would carry on with their lives with their own risk tolerance.

Dave Smith foreshadowed this point at FreedomFest last year:

“The problem is not that we have differences, it’s that we have political differences. Politics is poison. That’s why you want to reduce the size of government.”

“Everything is so political these days” is a popular complaint among Americans. There’s a solution to this.

As I saw this play out in real-time here in Cook County, I realized I wasn’t apolitical after all. To be apolitical is to not care. To not care how much you are taxed, where the tax money goes, or what powers another person has over you is a luxury only afforded to the mega-privileged, those with contempt for the poor, or both.

When I was saying “I don’t care about politics,” I should have been saying “I don’t believe in the state’s ability to improve my life.”

Before we were defending corrupt politicians and zillion-dollar pharmaceutical companies, college-aged kids historically had a healthy rebellious spirit amongst them. It was the time in one’s life to “stick it to the man”. It was college students on campus who were leaders in the protests against the Vietnam War.

Those college kids pointed out something that is apparent now. Today, our enemies are not in Vietnam, Germany, Japan, Korea, Russia, Iraq, or Afghanistan, and for many of those, perhaps they never were.

It was this spirit that got us to push through to finish the book.

On history

History is important because we forget important events. We can’t remember everything. We’re too limited in our memory and too distracted by the new argument: Russia vs Ukraine, to gun or not to gun, Roe v Wade, etc.

People will eventually forget how crazy Covid was. High school basketball players wearing masks as chinstraps, the propaganda campaigns, the theatre, etc. The details fade away.

History at its best uses the past to give us an understanding of the present. Most history books give us an image of the past that doesn’t represent the present experience at all. “The America of today shouldn’t exist if what our teachers and overseers taught us about the country’s history were true.”

This is why A Twisted History of the United States was created.

A Twisted History of the United States, 1450–1945

A Twisted History of the United States was originally designed to be the best damn supplement to a standard United States History curriculum. Although we still believe it is that, the target audience got much broader over these last couple of years.

This book is now for all the people who think Marcellus had a point — something is rotten in the state of Denmark. For all of the people who look around today confused and want more understanding. For all of the people who droned on every day at school “…with liberty and justice for all” and can’t say that with a straight face anymore.

Our tank of gas costs more than it ever has. Our dollar continues to be worth less and less. Our culture expects the state to solve our problems instead of helping each other. Nobody seems to agree politically yet most of our interactions in real life are pleasant. It just doesn’t make sense, right?

We believe this book has answers.

To Conclude

In April 2022, Covid cases in Shanghai increased which sparked their government to go into full Covid-Zero mode.

Parents and their children were forced to be separated if they were infected. The infected were to spend time in a “quarantine center”. Besides that, rampant lockdowns, mask policies, social distancing, etc.

As the people protested, or opened their building windows, the police sent out drones to play messages asking for people’s compliance.

In a message, one of the phrases that the police drone announced to the masses: “Control your soul’s desire for freedom.”

I’m 21 years old now. I’m a little less bored than I was when I first typed away on Medium. The future is clearer, too.

As I’ve been on this journey, a common question asked to me by friends and family is why I care so much. Why spend all the time? Do you really think that anything is going to change? My answer:

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is one of the greatest men to ever live. In his book, The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn shares horrifying accounts of his life in the Soviet prison camps. He was in the prison camps for criticizing Stalin in a private letter to a friend. He stayed for nearly a decade. The book exposed the horrors of communism and is one of the most influential books of all time.

One of the most famous quotes:

“If this… if that… No. We didn’t love freedom enough. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Generations later, in a similar way in which we know without question where Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn stood when it came to the atrocities of the Soviet Union, I want it to be known unequivocally where I stood when it came to loving freedom.

I also plan on having kids one day. Rather not have them grow up in a season of Black Mirror.

The most divisive institution in human history, the government, the state, the institution that is strongest when the rest of humanity is at its weakest, was unable to get me to despise any of my neighbors more than them.

As we slowly divide between those who want to live a life and those who are content being a part of some mass existence, it seems as though the price of disengaging in the intellectual battle is too grave, and perhaps our fear of argument or “saying the wrong thing” is more sinister than being “politically correct.”

This was true in Solzhenitsyn’s life, and it remains true in ours.

Let’s not control our soul’s desire for freedom this July 4th. Or any day. Our rights are not granted to us by any earthly being. They are granted to us from a place much greater than this one. Until we reach that great place, let us live with the self-respect and dignity to tell the truth, to battle for what has always been ours, and to find the places in our lives where we are not bothered by those who extract.

To live like this is to be truly free.

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A Twisted History of the United States, 1450–1945 is now available wherever you get your books online.

A special shoutout to all who donated. Your support got us through those long nights of work. What a fun and special campaign!

Let us know what you think. We’re excited to hear people’s feedback. Leave a review, message us on Twitter or LinkedIn, or go to hotwaterhistory.com