War

So, the United States is at war… again. We are attempting regime change… again. Lives will be uselessly lost once more. It seems that when it comes to history and geopolitics, our so-called leaders never learn their lesson. Korean War. Cuban Missile Crisis. Vietnam War. Gulf War. Iraq War. War in Afghanistan. The list just keeps piling up like empty whiskey bottles after a long night. We haven’t successfully changed a regime since World War II, and even then it was a Herculean effort assisted by the Soviet Union, a nation we would almost immediately spend the next half century locked in a Cold War with once the dust settled.

I hate war. I really do. It gives me nightmares and anxiety, which is kind of weird when you consider that I’m also obsessed with dystopian and apocalyptic imagery. I love the aesthetics of it in music and film, the ruined skylines, the cold synths, the sense that civilization is hanging on by a thread. But there’s a huge difference between imagination and real life. In a movie or a song you can turn it off when it gets too heavy. In real life, people die, cities burn, and whole generations get fucked over for decades. Maybe that’s exactly why I’m drawn to those genres in the first place, because I hope those things never actually happen.

The fear-mongering over Iran is nothing new. I remember when I was embedded with the Republicans years ago and they simply could not shut the hell up about Iran. It was like the boogeyman they dragged out every time they needed to scare people into supporting another war. I remember attending an event in Pasadena where Barry Goldwater Jr. was the keynote speaker. He told the audience that Iran had the capability to launch an electromagnetic pulse, often called an EMP bomb, against the United States. According to him, they could fire one off, knock out the entire electrical grid, and basically send us back to the nineteenth century overnight. This was around 2008, and he said our only choice was to attack Iran before they could do it to us. Do unto others before they do unto you, I guess.

For anyone who doesn’t know, an electromagnetic pulse weapon, usually referred to as an EMP bomb, is a device designed to generate a massive burst of electromagnetic energy. That energy spreads through the atmosphere and fries electronic systems over a wide area. Think power grids, computers, cars, phones, satellites, hospital equipment, and basically anything with delicate circuitry. The most powerful EMPs come from nuclear detonations at very high altitude. When a nuclear warhead explodes dozens or even hundreds of miles above the Earth, it interacts with the planet’s magnetic field and creates a wave of energy that can knock out electronics across an entire continent.

The United States actually demonstrated the effect back in 1962 during a nuclear test called Starfish Prime nuclear test. The explosion occurred hundreds of miles above the Pacific Ocean but still knocked out streetlights and communications equipment in Hawaii nearly a thousand miles away. That test scared the hell out of military planners because it showed just how fragile modern electrical systems really are.

These days, several countries either possess or are suspected of possessing the capability to deploy EMP weapons. The obvious ones are nuclear powers such as the United States, Russia, and China. Any nation that can loft a nuclear warhead into the upper atmosphere technically has the ability to create a high-altitude EMP. Other nuclear-armed states like North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel are also frequently mentioned in strategic discussions. Some analysts speculate that even countries without large nuclear arsenals could theoretically attempt an EMP attack if they acquired a single warhead and a delivery system capable of reaching high altitude.

There are also non-nuclear EMP devices, sometimes called high-power microwave weapons, that can damage electronics in a much smaller radius. Those are believed to exist in several advanced militaries as tactical tools. But the nightmare scenario people talk about is the high-altitude nuclear EMP, because the scale of destruction could be enormous.

If a large EMP were detonated over the continental United States, the immediate blast would not kill people the way a ground-level nuclear explosion would. Instead, it would quietly annihilate infrastructure. Power transformers could burn out. Electrical grids might collapse. Water treatment plants would stop working. Fuel pipelines and refineries could shut down. Hospitals would lose critical equipment. Transportation systems would fail. Within days or weeks you would start seeing cascading humanitarian disasters, including food shortages, medical crises, and mass panic. It is the kind of slow-motion catastrophe that dystopian novels love to imagine, but in real life it would be absolute chaos.

Now, whether Iran actually has that capability is a completely different question. Intelligence agencies have debated it for years, and a lot of what gets said in political speeches is speculation wrapped in worst-case scenarios. Iran has missile technology and an active nuclear program that has worried Western governments for decades. But turning that into a reliable EMP strike against the United States would require several extremely complicated steps. They would need to develop or acquire a nuclear warhead, miniaturize it, and successfully deliver it to high altitude. That is not exactly a weekend science project.

And this is where things start to feel like déjà vu. We have heard these kinds of warnings before. Claims about weapons of mass destruction were used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and we all know how that turned out. Thousands of American lives lost, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives lost, trillions of dollars burned, and the entire region destabilized for decades. That war was sold to the public with a mix of fear, speculation, and outright bullshit.

So no, I do not pretend to know what the answer to the problem of Iran is. But I do know that every attempt at regime change in the modern era has landed us, and often the rest of the world, in a giant geopolitical quagmire. I do not support the current leadership of Iran. Their government has committed serious abuses against its own people, and that is putting it mildly. But I also do not trust people like Donald Trump and the various warhawks orbiting around him to guide us safely away from the edge of nuclear catastrophe.

I think the current leadership of this country has far too much of a love affair with Israel, and a lot of that relationship is tangled up in theology that I personally do not buy into. It has become such a toxic political environment that even the smallest criticism of Israel or of our foreign policy toward that country is immediately labeled antisemitic. That shuts down honest discussion before it can even start. I think it is absolutely disgusting how people use religion as a shield to deflect from their own misdeeds. When that happens, it starts to look an awful lot like the behavior of the very regimes we claim to oppose.

I do not have neat answers for any of this. My only consistent position is condemnation of violence no matter who it is coming from. I do not know what to do about the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons, assuming they are actually doing that. What I do know is that we have a president who promised no new wars. He is a proven liar, and people voted for him anyway based on that promise.

What I do know is that countries like ours, and Israel for that matter, should be peace-mongers instead of war profiteers. What I do know is that civilian life everywhere is in jeopardy whenever the drums of war start beating. And what I worry about, deep down, is some kind of second September 11 attacks that harms even more innocent people.

It is a rocky road ahead. I have a sinking feeling this is not going to be some quick, tidy, month-long military adventure. Those almost never exist outside of Pentagon press conferences. I hope peace somehow manages to conquer violence. And I hope that one day we are able to go to sleep at night without wondering whether we will be jolted awake by air-raid sirens or, worse yet, a mushroom cloud blooming on the horizon.

Conservative Cosplay Doubled Down: From Pasadena Pariah To Philly Partisan

[Some names and organizations have been changed. This entry reflects my personal memories and interpretations of events that occurred over a decade ago. Others involved may remember these events differently.]

…This entry is a personal reckoning with a period of my life I am not proud of. It contains honest accounts of harmful behavior, political extremism, and choices that caused real damage to other people and to myself. I am not sharing this to excuse those actions or to seek forgiveness, but to document how easily insecurity, anger, and the need for validation can curdle into something cruel. What follows is an attempt to tell the truth as clearly as I can, in the hope that naming it helps ensure it is never repeated…

I returned to the Philadelphia area after my disgrace in Pasadena at the tail end of 2008. You would think I had learned my lesson about selling out my principles and mouthing off for attention, but that was not the case. Instead of reflecting or slowing down, I doubled down on everything. I kept blogging, kept talking trash, and kept spewing the same recycled conservative talking points on my old mayoral campaign website, as if stubbornness alone could redeem me.

To this day, I cannot believe I once convinced myself that John McCain would have run this country better than Barack Obama. That belief now feels not just wrong, but embarrassing. At the same time, I was working a retail job at the Dollar Tree in Boothwyn while living in the basement of my parents’ house in Aston, Delaware County. It was a long way from my days managing content at LeisureLink or sitting down for pie with Huell Howser while writing for Pasadena Weekly. The contrast was brutal. Oh, how the nowhere near mighty had fallen.

My parents were now in their sixties and deeply frustrated with me. My father was working as a security guard and could not understand why I would not just follow him into that line of work. I could not imagine what it would have been like to work alongside him, especially knowing how often I disappointed him just by existing as I was.

Around the time the Phillies won the World Series in 2008, which was genuinely exciting to witness back home, I set up an online dating profile and met the woman who would eventually become my wife. Naturally, I almost ruined that relationship immediately. While working at Dollar Tree, a customer attempted to pay with a fifty dollar check. I processed it incorrectly, badly enough that I was fired on the spot. Suddenly I had no job, no desire to keep living with my parents, and no real plan. I was still collecting partial unemployment from California and used that money to rent a room in a house just a block away from where my girlfriend lived in the Port Richmond section of Philly. Looking back, it was a rash and impulsive decision, behavior that I later understood, with professional help, was influenced by untreated mental illness, though I had no idea at the time what was actually driving it.

I applied for another retail job at Penn Jersey Paper, only to have my background check explode in my face. It was gut wrenching to have an HR person on the telephone tell you point blank that they don’t want a guy with a charge of making decades-old terroristic threats working for them. That criminal record from Philadelphia that was supposedly expunged back in the day had never actually been removed. Someone had botched the paperwork. A public defender later told me this happened far more often than people realized. I spent an entire month filing forms, making calls, and navigating bureaucratic nonsense just to get my record properly cleared. Only after that ordeal ended did I begin applying for work again.

By 2009, I landed a job with a flag manufacturer. They believed my customer service background would translate well into sales. Around the same time, I let the domain for my old campaign website lapse and began writing for a site called the Philadelphia Examiner. The pay was abysmal, literally pennies per click, and I sank right back into my worst habits. I churned out hateful, reactionary garbage that leaned hard into bigotry and outrage, crossing lines purely for attention. It was clickbait with a mean streak.

All the while, I was selling flags, struggling with math my ADHD brain was never equipped to handle, and steadily disappointing my bosses, who ran the warehouse remotely from Tel Aviv. One day, after mounting frustrations and mutual resentment, I had a massive blowup with them and was promptly fired. Once again, I managed to collect unemployment, largely because they could not be bothered to fly over for the hearing.

As 2009 faded into the early 2010s, I became increasingly consumed by my own delusions, pouring them into bitter, venomous prose. I launched a website called Philly Decline, built on the belief that Philadelphia was “going the way of Detroit.” It was an unfair comparison, deliberately slanted, and intentionally slanderous. The site existed solely as a dumping ground for my acerbic rants. Predictably, it drew attention.

That attention brought me into contact with a group of local Republicans known as the Liberty Caucus. They found my website, saw my political background, and viewed me as a useful asset. By then, I had stripped away the eyeliner and goth regalia and presented myself as a more conventional version of who I once was. They invited me to a meeting at the Union League, one of Philadelphia’s most exclusive and historically conservative institutions, and asked me to join in hopes of attracting younger members. At the time, only about one in seven registered voters in Philadelphia was Republican, making the entire effort laughably futile from the start.

Getting involved with that group remains one of my deepest regrets. While the Pasadena Republicans had been mostly gadflies and neighborhood NIMBY types, the Liberty Caucus included people who were openly and unapologetically racist. Not coded, not subtle, but blunt and crude in their prejudices. The things they encouraged me to say and do were reprehensible. Targeting Muslims was practically a hobby for them, especially in the post 9/11 political climate they refused to let go of. This was during the height of the Tea Party movement, yet very few of their causes had anything to do with fiscal responsibility, limited government, or constitutional principles. What they really trafficked in was resentment, fear, and a thinly veiled hatred of anyone who did not look or believe like them.

And I went along with it. I told myself I was finally winning approval, finally earning respect, finally making all the people who had ever called me the f-slur proud. In reality, I was just participating in small, stupid battles that accomplished nothing but further damage.

One of the most absurd examples came when the city of Philadelphia proposed renaming Christmas Village to Holiday Village. I went on Fox News wearing a suit adorned with a crucifix and an American flag pin, ranting about how the change was supposedly anti-Christian. The truth was obvious even then. It was an attempt to make more people feel welcome. Still, I played my role. I soon became a regular talking head on my local Fox station, humiliating myself with my crooked teeth, and even more crooked takes, on morning shows and evening news segments alike.

That run ended abruptly when someone called the station and informed them about my 2001 arrest. At the time, I was furious. In hindsight, that person was absolutely right. They did me a favor. They saved me from continuing to destroy myself in public, one performance at a time.

The Caucus even hooked me up with a fledgling radio network where I hosted a right wing podcast. The only real highlights of that experience, aside from the ego stroke of having a microphone in front of me, were interviewing various shithead political “luminaries” like Curtis Sliwa and Bob Barr. The one genuinely surreal bright spot was getting to chat with actual professional wrestling legends like John Layfield and Bruno Sammartino. Those moments felt like borrowed credibility I absolutely did not deserve. Somehow and someway, during all those hectic times, in the midst of the fray, my girlfriend became my fiancee and then my wife and she put up with all my bullshit the entire time: even when she didn’t agree with what I was doing and tried to talk me out of doing stupid political things… and I wouldn’t listen.

And speaking of professional wrestling, I was still dragging around the same bad behaviors I should have left behind in my California squared circle days. I spent an embarrassing amount of time harassing fans on a popular wrestling message board. What started as trash talk spiraled into something far uglier. The fights got deeply personal and obsessive, a lot of times moving over into real life. I eventually tracked down where a few of the moderators worked and intentionally caused trouble for them at their real life jobs by sharing some of their controversial posts on the website. The fallout was so severe that the entire message board was shut down. I never admitted my role in that mess until right now, and I am genuinely ashamed of it and definitely sorry for it.

Surprise, surprise, I eventually could not take it anymore. I could not look at myself in the mirror without feeling sick. I no longer knew how much of what came out of my mouth was truth and how much was pure performance and bullshit. I was not some brave voice of a movement. I was the tomato can they threw into the ring to absorb the punches so others did not have to. On top of that, I was dealing with intense, unmanaged anger. Real anger. And eventually I turned that rage on the very hands that were feeding me.

In 2013, I finally ripped off the Republican disguise and walked away. I made sure I did not let the sun set without telling the entire Liberty Caucus exactly how I felt about them and the role they had played in turning me into someone I despised. It felt good to give them one final fuck you. But that rush faded quickly, replaced by a much heavier question. What damage had I already done?

I had alienated friends I had known for years. My name was now showing up in Google search results alongside hate speech and inflammatory garbage I had willingly put into the world. I could not find a job because of it. I was disgraced yet again, this time entirely by my own hand.

Professionally, I started going by my middle name, hoping I would be less Googleable. It was a cowardly move, but I was desperate. I landed a job in customer service and sales for a language instruction company. Of course, I eventually got fired from there too, which is another story for another time. I stopped blogging. I stopped all political activity except for doing my basic civic duty as a voter. I started listening to goth and industrial music again, music I had convinced myself I had outgrown or abandoned, and I started wearing makeup again. I returned to social media under an alias, hiding in plain sight. It was 2015, and even then I was still locked in a brutal fight with my mental health, a downward spiral that would not truly bottom out until 2020.

It is not just that I made a complete ass out of myself during this conservative cosplay. It is that I deeply regret the hateful words I spewed and the harm they caused. I do not know that there is any way to truly make that right beyond refusing to ever be that person again. So I try to do the work. I listen more than I speak. I support causes that protect people instead of punishing them. I donate when I can. I amplify voices that deserve to be heard instead of centering myself. I challenge bigotry when I see it, especially when it would be easier to stay quiet. I try to show up for people in small, practical ways, because changing the world is not just slogans, it is actions.

If you were one of the people or groups targeted by my vitriolic behavior, my screeds, or my so called manifestos, I offer my deepest and most sincere apologies. I am a fucking jackass for doing and saying those horrid things. I own that. I do not excuse it. I live with it.

Looking at the world right now, I am profoundly grateful that I jumped ship from conservatism and eventually got my head back on straight. I see ICE tearing families apart and murdering people. I see endless hate and cruelty from those who claim to care about the Constitution and the rights of Americans. This is not a “both sides” situation when one side is openly flirting with or outright advocating violence against entire groups of people.

I am just glad I am myself again. My true self. My authentic self. And, most importantly, through the hard work of therapy and medication, my best possible self. I cannot undo the damage I caused, but I can spend the rest of my life trying to be someone who adds a little less pain and a little more compassion to the world.

…Of all the things I have written over the years, this was one of the hardest to finish. Not because the facts were difficult to recall, but because sitting with them required a level of honesty I spent a long time avoiding. It is far easier to caricature a past self, to turn him into a villain or a punchline, than it is to acknowledge how recognizable his motivations still feel. Insecurity, ego, fear, and the hunger to be seen are not exotic flaws. They are painfully common ones, and left unchecked, they can take you places you swear you would never go.

I am not sharing this story because I believe confession equals absolution. It does not. Accountability is not a paragraph at the end of a blog post, and remorse is not proven by good intentions alone. What I can offer instead is transparency, consistency, and time. Time spent not repeating these behaviors. Time spent listening instead of performing. Time spent doing quieter work that does not come with applause or clicks or a microphone.

If there is any point to documenting this era of my life, it is as a warning. Not a warning about political parties in the abstract, but about what happens when you outsource your self worth to ideology, outrage, and attention. When being provocative becomes more important than being decent. When cruelty starts to feel like strength. None of that happens overnight. It happens in increments, justified step by step, until you look around and barely recognize the person you have become.

I know some readers will come away skeptical. Others will be angry. Some will decide this is too little, too late. I understand that reaction, and I am not here to argue with it. I forfeited the benefit of the doubt a long time ago. All I can do now is tell the truth as plainly as I know how, accept the discomfort that comes with it, and keep moving forward in a different direction.

If you take anything from this, I hope it is this: it is never just rhetoric. Words shape permission. They shape culture. They shape what people feel entitled to say and do to one another. I learned that lesson the hard way, and far too late. I intend to spend whatever time I have left proving that the lesson stuck.

Thank you for reading…

Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’07

I jumped into campaigning for mayor of Pasadena the same way I used to cut promos back in my independent wrestling days. I was not just full of hubris. I was having a full-on manic episode. I was also completely full of myself (and alcohol) and I figured people would love that about me. I believed that posting YouTube videos and MySpace memes and throwing names at the current mayor and all the other city council candidates would take me somewhere big. 

I said the Mayor was a 170 year old man. I made up nicknames for City Council people and candidates like “Stone Cold” Margaret McAustin, Sid “Vicious” Tyler, and “Sexy” Steve Haderlein. Who could have guessed that those same selfish tactics would one day put a man inside the White House for two non-consecutive terms?? That man just happens to have a pro wrestling background and happens to be a WWE Hall of Famer. Like I always tell my close, personal friend (shout out to “Mean” Gene Okerlund) and the managing editor at Pasadena Now, André Coleman, over and over again: Trump stole my whole gimmick but he left out the quixotic parts and the altruistic elements that I had attached to it. Some of those altruistic elements — like free buses and rent control — worked for other candidates of the future, however, like Zohran Mamdani.

There were no real debates between Mayor Bill Bogaard and me at all. That simply was not the Pasadena Way of doing things. Instead we had “candidate forum” after candidate forum after candidate forum. Those events were basically just panels set up for questions and answers with short opening speeches and closing speeches all held in a town hall format that everyone followed. We visited every single hot spot where people engaged with local politics showed up. That meant about a million different senior citizens centers with names that I cannot remember right now no matter how hard I try. Still, that did not mean those forums lacked any comedic moments at all. Especially when confused seniors started wondering out loud why some guy wearing eyeliner was standing there mocking the Crown City in front of everybody.

I remember one specific interaction with a voter like it happened yesterday morning. Bogaard and I sat on a panel alongside candidates running for the Pasadena school board. That group included the late, great, affable Bill Bibbiani. He might have been grizzled in appearance but he had a heart of gold. He was a man totally obsessed with motorcycles and going against the grain. Let’s say a hypothetical Measure A was on the ballot. He’d be against it while everyone else championed it. I thought to myself that he was pretty cool for going his own way and standing out. He and his wife lived down the street from me and always called themselves my Pasadena parents because they looked out for me and checked in on me. 

Anyway, there was this sweet, kind lady in her seventies sitting in a wheelchair all the way in the very back row of one of those senior citizens centers. When the time came for people to ask questions, she did not even bother to raise her hand or anything. She just started yelling out “Mayor Bogaard! Mayor Bogaard! When you win the election, what are you going to do about all the crime in Northwest Pasadena?”

That was a formidable question without a doubt and showed how much people in Pasadena care about the entire community, even about neighborhoods other than their own. But I could not help myself and I started laughing quietly to myself right there during the forum while sitting on the stage. “WHEN you win…” I kept thinking over and over in my head. That was the exact moment I knew my entire campaign was dead in the water and had no chance. This happened long before any surge of young people began caring about elections across the country. It was way before the AOCs of the world came along and energized young voters to maybe think about supporting more radical candidates or more fringe liberal candidates. I ended up as nothing more than an afterthought and a total joke to everyone. After Bogaard trounced me and took 89 percent of the vote, I still did not realize for about two whole decades later that maybe if I had taken things a little more seriously and stopped running a publicity stunt just to make myself famous, I could have cracked 15 percent or maybe even 20 percent of the vote.

That is the thing I find so hilarious: even now. People back then, and a lot of people, saw right through my facade without any trouble. I swear the 1,472 votes I received were mostly protest votes. I would get tons of voters coming up to me and asking if I was serious about this or if I was just doing it all for attention. I would always answer them with the former option even though deep down inside I was really just seeking acceptance and attention that I never received from my parents when I was younger or really anybody else growing up. I am not saying my goth aesthetic is the culprit or was the culprit back then, that’s me being myself. I am saying my motives were the real problem.

Still, that whole “WHEN you win” thing struck a deep chord inside me. On one hand, and a heavy hand it is, it’s fucking hilarious. I still regale people with that exact story to this very day whenever I get the chance. I even heard later that one of my old bosses, the guy I used to call The Bulldozer when I worked at LeisureLink, actually saw my face on the front page of the Pasadena Star-News. This is the same Bulldozer who fired me in 2005 after I threatened to beat him up, so yeah, small world. He later told a coworker he’d sat down to breakfast, seen me and my campaign staring back at him from the paper, and almost choked on his cereal. For one ridiculous, glorious second it felt like vindication: the kid the Bulldozer once dismissed was suddenly newsprint famous.

On the other hand, it reminds me of this one time my dad ran into my eighth grade art teacher, Miss Fenstermacher from Chichester Middle School, at the bank one afternoon. She saw him standing there and said “aren’t you Aaron Proctor’s father? I am his art teacher.” My dad responded right away with “Art teacher?! Aaron can’t draw!” Not that I could draw or anything like that but it was still mean and hurtful. So mean that when she told me about that interaction later she almost had tears in her eyes while recounting every word.

So while my campaign for mayor of Pasadena actually had a real platform and some altruistic intentions behind it, all it was was a big “look at me” statement to everyone around… not to mention the actions of an unhinged, undiagnosed bipolar basket case.

“Look at me, Dad! I am the new Mayor of Pasadena.” I just wanted someone to impress and someone to accept me through all of my horrible faults. It didn’t work in my pro wrestling career so maybe, I thought, it would work in the political arena. There was not a chance in hell winning the election was ever happening but I took a chance anyway and for a few solid months in 2006 and 2007, I became a local legend in my own mind and around town.

Conservative Cosplay (And Some Rants About Conservatives)

In the sweltering summer of 2008, I made what I selfishly deemed a triumphant return to Pasadena, California, a place I had once regarded as a stage for reinvention. I had just spent an unceremonious three-month exile in St. Louis, Missouri, holed up at my parents’ house after a swift and brutal collapse: the loss of both my job and my apartment in quick succession due to being more distracted with my drinking, clubbing, blogging and my post-mayoral campaign than doing any actual work. It was a humbling retreat, made all the more bitter by the oppressive Midwestern humidity and the sense of regression it brought. But California called to me again, with its sun-drenched boulevards and the illusion of opportunity.

Through a friend of a friend, I secured a modest living situation. I got a roommate willing to tolerate my eccentricities and I ended up back in the same apartment building I used to live in, just a different apartment. More importantly, I landed employment, however meager, at Pasadena Weekly, thanks to the generosity and friendship of author André Coleman, who was on the staff at the time. My role wasn’t glamorous. I wasn’t being paid to pontificate on civic life or deliver scathing columns.

No, I was assigned to the advertising department, making minimum wage as part of a small team dubbed, somewhat pitifully, the “tear sheets.” My primary duty? Tearing out printed advertisements from each issue of the paper and mailing them to the respective advertisers as proof of publication. It was rote, uncreative work, but it kept me tethered to the media world I so desperately wanted to be part of.

All the while, I maintained my blog which was originally a campaign mouthpiece for my brief foray into mayoral politics and now a pressure valve for my spiraling ego. Each post brimmed with increasingly incendiary rhetoric, sharpened vitriol, and an unmistakable hunger for attention. Still, amid my growing agitation, the late, great editor of the Weekly, Kevin Uhrich, saw something in me. Maybe it was potential, perhaps it was just entertainment value. Either way, he offered me a reprieve from my drudgery: a weekly column titled “5 Questions.”

It was a refreshing deviation from my usual firebrand persona. Each week, I was allowed to interview a local figure. Be it a restaurateur, a civic leader, or a small business owner whose ads graced our pages, I was allowed to send them some questions. The questions were deliberately lighthearted, often bordering on the absurd. It was, in essence, a harmless diversion, a humanizing touch in a paper otherwise immersed in local politics and culture. One of my most memorable pieces, and a personal dream realized, was a lunch interview with none other than California television legend Huell Howser. That article, modest as it was, still gets cited today as a snapshot of an improbable moment in my chaotic timeline.

Yet, while I smiled for photos and made small talk with local luminaries, darker currents swirled beneath the surface. In the smoky backrooms and hushed conversations of Pasadena’s conservative fringe, I was becoming a figure of interest. My penchant for sharp-tongued criticism and relentless self-promotion had caught the attention of local Republicans, an unlikely alliance, given my previous progressive leanings and theatrical persona.

One night, I was invited out for drinks at The 1881 Club, my favorite dive bar on Washington Boulevard. The drinks flowed freely, all courtesy of a local GOP operative who assured me I had a “bright future” in politics if I was willing to pivot. The promise? A potential City Council run, financial support, public recognition. The cost? Abandon everything that made me… me. The eyeliner, the unconventional wardrobe, the flamboyant defiance. All of it had to go.

I wish I could say I hesitated, but the intoxication, both literal and metaphorical, was overwhelming. I was seduced by the notion of relevance and influence. The transformation began subtly. Another handler-type took me to Ross and helped me select a wardrobe of khakis and ill-fitting polo shirts. I chopped off my hair, packed away my makeup in an unused suitcase, and started performing a sanitized, conservative version of myself. Within weeks, I was reborn… at least on the outside.
Friends expressed concern about “the new Aaron,” but I had no time for sentimentality. I was too enamored with my reinvention. I embraced the persona of a conservative blogger, launching attacks on Pasadena’s predominantly liberal establishment with the zeal of someone who had nothing left to lose. The Weekly humored me at first, perhaps thinking it was a harmless phase or a cynical publicity stunt. But my ego, ever ravenous, could not be contained.

I began to target people in my blog who were not only community figures but also friends and contributors to Pasadena Weekly. My criticisms grew more vicious, my commentary more unhinged. Meanwhile, my new political patrons showered me with symbolic gestures of appreciation like free meals, drinks, even a burger named after me at a local GOP-friendly joint. I was drunk on validation and blind to consequence.
Inevitably, the reckoning came. My invective had grown so poisonous, so disruptive, that the Weekly had no choice but to sever ties with me. I don’t blame them. I was a liability. I was both a walking contradiction and a ticking time bomb. Especially the latter when I started to literally threaten to fight people. And when the conservative benefactors who once courted me saw that I had become more trouble than I was worth, they faded into the background, retreating to their dusty corners of the “Crown City” and leaving me to implode on my own.

In a final fit of drunken rage and indignation, I threatened the Weekly’s publisher. The next morning, I found both the Pasadena Police Department and LAPD at my door. The message was unambiguous: I had outstayed my welcome. My friends, well, the ones I had left, said I had managed to orchestrate a “modern exile”, a digital-era self-destruction fueled by ideology and ego.

I was 27 years old, disillusioned, and done with California. My head now full of right-wing talking points about how the state was “going to hell,” I left for Pennsylvania. My parents had recently relocated from St. Louis back to the Philadelphia suburbs, and I followed them in October 2008 just in time to watch the Phillies win the World Series. For a fleeting moment, I felt the warmth of homecoming. But it wasn’t enough.

I was lost again, trapped in the facade of a persona I no longer recognized. The new me wore sweater vests over graphic tees and neckties emblazoned with GOP emblems. I looked like a parody of the very world I had once mocked. I thought it was how everyone who had criticized me, all those people, say, certain figures in the pro wrestling world, who publicly called me the “f” slur during my days around the squared circle, had wanted me to be. Maybe this is how my father and mother wanted me to be. And though the ideological shift was complete, the rhetoric didn’t die with my return to the outskirts of the City of Brotherly Love. There’s more to this story, a lot more. But that chapter comes later.

I can only look back with equal parts shame and astonishment. Mostly shame. The metamorphosis, the betrayal of self, the manic detour into political cosplay—it all reads like a fever dream. And yet, every bit of it was real.

I’d also like to take this time to submit my current opinions of conservative politics…

I watched “The Perfect Neighbor” on Netflix the other day. It was both heartbreaking and profoundly unsettling, yet it should also stand as a powerful call to action against systemic racism in the legal system, particularly within Florida’s so-called “Stand Your Ground” law.

Honestly, fuck Florida. That place is utterly broken due to conservative and MAGA takeovers. I’m just thankful I saw the light years ago and walked away from the conservative poison I once allowed myself to believe.

When I got drawn into conservative punditry, it was under the false banner of “libertarianism.” I’ll write more about it here someday, but the short version is that I became a mouthpiece for hateful people. I deeply regret the words I once spoke and the ideas I once promoted. These days, I try to make up for it by showing kindness, by being an ally, and by standing in solidarity with marginalized communities and even marginalized ideas.

One of the greatest lies conservatives ever told me was, “We just want a smaller government and for the government to stay out of your business.” Then why do they make exceptions when it comes to a woman’s right to choose or about a million other deeply personal matters? That’s how they lure people in.

And maybe they do want lower crime and lower taxes on the working class, which I want, too, but those viewpoints and ideological standards come with caveats. I don’t want to be associated with Evangelical Christian Stepford Wives lecturing me about “morality” and “masculinity” while simultaneously saying they care about the problems in my neighborhood from the gaze of their gated communities. And look at all the people’s lives they are hurting with the government shutdown.

Conservative policies protect the very rich and hurt everyone from the very poor to the middle class. They pretend to care about people who are struggling, but what they really care about is the stock market. The conservative powers that be are also afraid to voice their opinions because they know how unpopular they are, so they often use gullible mouthpieces like me to do their dirty work. I practically ruined my life selling out to those so-called luminaries.

Now there’s this absurd new line floating around: “Conservatism is the new punk rock.” That is completely delusional. What so-called “mainstream” are they rebelling against? It’s nothing more than a hollow attempt to hijack the spirit of rebellion for their own agenda. You can’t be “punk rock” and act like Charlie Kirk was Jesus. Selling out the true meaning of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness isn’t punk rock. It’s the opposite. Trust me, I know. I sold out once. It’s a disgusting feeling.. one I’ll never forget.

A Campaign to Remember: The Manic Episode That Was My 2007 Run for Mayor of Pasadena

I often joke that running for mayor was a bad idea but it wasn’t just any bad idea, it was my bad idea, a product of manic thinking, unchecked bipolar disorder, and, in retrospect, a healthy dose of misguided ambition. I look back on the 2007 Pasadena mayoral campaign with a strange mix of fondness and embarrassment, kind of like finding an old photo where you’re wearing a terrible haircut but are too caught up in the nostalgia to throw it away (I have those, too). But hey, not a lot of guys wearing eyeliner get to run for office in a city whose politics were as staid as Pasadena, and that alone is a badge of honor, right?

Let’s rewind a bit. You see, I’ve always had this peculiar dream of running for office, ever since I sat in Mr. McKnett’s AP Government class in high school. I was 17, all rebellious energy and half-baked idealism, and I promised myself that one day I’d run for mayor of a place I lived. It didn’t matter if that place was a town or a city… I’d put myself on a ballot and let the chips fall where they may. It felt like my destiny, a natural step for a guy who liked a good argument, idealized the democratic process, and was more than willing to wear a heavy dose of eyeliner in the middle of it all.

Fast forward to Pasadena in 2007. I was living in a small apartment, and at the time, I had this special lady friend. She’d been spending a lot of nights at my place. Every night she’d park on the street (I didn’t own a car so I didn’t get my own parking space at my building), only to get ticketed due to Pasadena’s parking permit rules. Every. Single. Time. I hated that my little slice of paradise was being soured by the city’s relentless bureaucracy. It was this unyielding injustice that pushed me to my decision. I needed to fix this. In my manic state, I thought: What better way to fix it than running for mayor? That way, I could not only challenge parking regulations but change the city for the better in general.

Now, let’s get something straight: when I talk about my mental state during this time, I’m not looking for sympathy. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was in the midst of an unchecked manic episode, part of a larger pattern I wouldn’t even begin to understand until later. My brain was a whirlwind of ideas and optimism, fueled by way too much caffeine, alcohol, and lack of sleep. I was convinced that if I could just get enough people to listen, they’d see I was the man to lead this city out of the darkness. But here’s the kicker… I was drinking heavily and only surrounded myself with people who enabled that behavior. The last thing I wanted was someone telling me how to better my life.

Enter the campaign. Turns out that when it started in late 2006, at 25, I was the youngest candidate to ever run for mayor of that town. I hit the streets, wearing my eyeliner and delivering speeches to anyone who would listen. People thought I was a joke. Some called me a socialist, a communist for some of my ideas, like the one where I proposed the idea of more free public transportation funded by a progressive tax. Yeah, that went over well. But then there were those who gave me respect for putting myself out there. After all, I was a young guy, probably not the right fit for city politics, but who could blame me for dreaming big?

Most people, though, were just kind. Mayor Bill Bogaard, my opponent, was one of those people. He could have easily brushed me off or dismissed me as a quirky oddity, but instead, he was kind to me. There’s even a story where, in the middle of a public debate, I got a little carried away and called him a “165-year-old man.” He didn’t blink, just laughed it off and kept his cool. That was a bit of a low point for me, but he took it with grace and I respect him for that. I wasn’t really in the right state of mind, but he treated me with decency, which, considering the circumstances, meant a lot.

The campaign was a whirlwind, and I had zero understanding of how it was affecting my job. I was so absorbed in my mayoral bid that I neglected my responsibilities at work, which led to me being fired. I spent my days answering emails, plotting my next campaign strategy, and telling anyone who would listen that I would fix Pasadena. Meanwhile, I ignored the bills piling up and the nagging feeling that maybe I was running out of time. The consequences hit me hard. Without a job and no clear direction, I lost my apartment. I ended up moving to St. Louis with my parents for a few months, hoping for some semblance of normalcy to help me regroup. And oh, by the way, I resigned from my post as Human Relations Commissioner after the election. That position was a strange gift Bill Bogaard had offered me after the race, but it felt like just another thing I couldn’t hold onto in my unraveling life.

By the time I was back in St. Louis, away from Pasadena and all the chaos, I had a moment to reflect. And the reflection was a mix of pride and regret. I had stepped out there. I had put myself on the line. But at what cost? I was dealing with so many mental health struggles that I couldn’t even begin to name them all. I was living in a haze of manic delusions, and yet I still believed I could change the world. Stupidly, I didn’t learn from my mistakes by that time and went back to Pasadena a few months later to do more stupid shit.

Looking back now, I can’t help but laugh a little. My 2007 campaign is part of my story, a weird, wild chapter I’ll never forget. I’ve come a long way since then, through therapy, medication, and a lot of self-reflection. There were no great triumphs in the mayoral race, but I like to think there was something to be said for the audacity of it all. Maybe it was just a manic episode playing out in real time, but damn, I went for it. In a weird way, I’m proud of that.

And hey, not a lot of guys get to run for office in Pasadena, especially while rocking eyeliner and a chip on their shoulder. So, for better or worse, I did it. It was a moment. A brief, shining, chaotic moment that I’ll always look back on, fondly, yet with a little shame. But that’s okay. It’s all part of the ride. The best part? I still wear makeup every day, I still listen to the same music that fueled me back then, and I still hold many of the same progressive views I did in 2007: human rights, rent control, and a belief that we can always strive for better. After all, I may have been a manic mess back then, but I still care deeply about the issues that matter.