One, Single Political Post
An Exception
We employ a rule during the fantasy Tour de France game that this Substack grew out of: No politics. I’d planned to adhere to this rule in writing these posts, but you know what they say about desperate times…*
The tattoo above does not mean what the artist who inked it on my bicep thought it meant: What would Jesus f***ing do? Rather, it stands for “What would Jim Fee do?”
I decided to get this tattoo — my first and only (thus far) — while speaking with fellow mourners at my father Jim Fee’s memorial service. I’d always looked up to my dad, and loved him deeply, but my regard for him climbed even higher on that sad day, when person after person told me about his kindness.
Mind you, these were not close friends; I hadn’t ever met several of them. These were out-of-the-woodwork types: younger coworkers who told me my dad had mentored them, and friends’ friends whom he had afforded the generosity of candid feedback, or an introduction, or simple encouragement.
I learned at my dad’s service that he’d been an even better person than I’d understood. We all knew about his career’s final act, founding Achon Uganda Children’s Fund during his bitterly brief retirement, but these smaller acts of altruism…He’d performed them quietly, never telling even his own family, and never expecting anything in return.
Learning about these small, but — to hear it from these friends — life-changing gestures was a revelation, yet entirely consistent with how we’d been raised: My parents taught us to work hard; to use our gifts to enrich others (and, sure, ourselves as well); and never to seek credit; credit, they told us, finds its rightful place when it’s earned, and claiming it, especially loudly, is unnecessary, even obnoxious.
Always a sports fan, my dad deplored “showboating” — his term — but appreciated athletes who celebrated modestly: Clyde Drexler. Steve Largent. Reaching back to his boyhood, Mickey Mantle. My dad loved that expression, “When you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.”
When Donald Trump oozed into our political consciousness in 2015, it took me months to take him seriously. Once I started paying attention, I was struck: This is a man who lives his life in stark contradiction to the way I was taught to live mine. He incessantly called attention to himself, to his deeds. Nothing was quiet; everything would be remarked upon, and everything would point back to Trump, Trump, Trump.
Typing this today, a decade into the Trump era, feels absurd: To suggest that Donald Trump is self-obsessed and perpetually claims credit is hardly revelatory. But in 2015, less than two years after my dad last imparted wisdom, and after I’d come to understand the depth of his selflessness at his memorial service, the contrast was as shocking as it was grating.
Most shocking of all has been “Christians’” willingness to bend to Trump’s odious will. My dad grew up Catholic, and considered himself a follower of Christ. Through his quiet, credit-shedding ethic he sought to live out the Beatitudes, Jesus’ profoundly challenging directive for living a life of selflessness. Blessed are not the alphas, the macho, the self-celebrating, or the rich and successful, but the meek, those who mourn, the peacemakers and those who are persecuted (and by implication, who don’t punch back). Had he lived to see Trump’s rise, my dad would have recognized that to be Trump-like is to be starkly un Christ-like
I’ve depicted my father as a saint. He surely wasn’t. But as his years passed, he sought to better himself, and he worked to raise up others. Selflessness is in gravely short supply today, and when we lost my dad, we lost a bright example of its value.
As with many Catholics, my dad’s politics were complicated. Fiscally he remained conservative his entire life; socially his views shifted, albeit slowly, from those of his upbringing in the Church. He voted Republican in every presidential election until 2008; he admired Obama’s intelligence and depth — yet continued to vote for Republicans in most down-ballot races.
I can’t know whether my dad’s views might have shifted further; he likely would have resisted today’s edgiest progressive views. But I’m deeply confident of one thing Jim Fee would not have done: vote for Donald Trump.
*Though if you squint, you’ll find the connection between this Substack’s ostensible topic and one of this election’s candidates.
Love this Mike. (I fear my shared self-reflection may appear self-congratulatory; it comes from a place of wanting to show workaholic women that we can take a different path. I admire the characteristics you admire in your dad.)