The central theme of my new book, Normal Channels: Blocked or Compromised, is not a theory I invented, but an analytical framework I inherited—a recurring pattern across generations.
The book’s second chapter, which I am releasing this week, details the origin of this framework. It begins with my father’s story.
He was ready and willing to join the military during the Vietnam War. In fact, he attempted to join every branch. What happened next, in his own words, was “a chain of events so astounding, that had I not lived through them myself, I never would believe this story.”
He applied to the Air Force Academy, but an insurmountable scheduling obstacle (a case of the measles) blocked his final exam. He tried to join the Air Force ROTC, but the quartermaster was unable to procure his common shoe size. He applied for Officer Candidate School, and his application paperwork was inexplicably lost.
He then tried to enlist in the Army. The recruiter, in the middle of a war, looked him up and said, “We really don’t have any openings for physics majors right now.”
Finally, in a last attempt, he went to a Navy recruiting office. It was the middle of the day. The office was simply closed.
He would later say: “Every attempt I made to join the military was thwarted one way or another. Are these merely coincidences? It sure seems contrived to me.”
This concept of a “contrived” path—of an official system that seems to inexplicably block all “normal channels”—is the first pillar of the book. In Chapter 2, I trace this multi-generational theme from my family’s history in 19th-century America and the Holocaust to my own first encounters with contradictory and failed institutions.
Chapter 2 of Normal Channels: Blocked or Compromised is now live on my Substack.
Paid subscribers can read the full, multi-generational chapter right now.
For all other readers, I have posted a free preview on the Substack page. This preview includes my personal introduction to the chapter and the details of my first encounter with a significant institutional contradiction.
This is the story of how my analytical framework was forged.
Click Here to Read the Free Preview of Chapter 2 on my Substack
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