Orville Baumgardner and Young Goodman Brown
written by: James Hanna
“Good scholars of the American Historical Society, thank you for inviting me to speak for an hour in this stately conference hall. I am honored beyond measure that you think that I might add to the chronicles depicting our Trumpian descent. But what can be said of a destiny where foragers are spared—a sunset where vultures gobble the spoils that eagles alone deserve? Were I not a Republican party castoff, a scavenger barred from the feast, I suspect I would not have acquired the status of Yeats’ timely beast. But although I was once a liar and a scoundrel beyond compare, abandoning my gluttonous flock has allowed me to put on airs. But do not think me a prophet, my friends, I remain a despicable man—a vagabond justly banished to a dark and dismal realm. Still, I shall attempt to stifle my unmerited vanity and try my best to imitate the voice of sanity.
“Ah, but before I offer my thoughts to your selective ears, I suspect I should first provide you with my personal history. After all, if my observations are something you might endorse, I suggest that you do not do so without first considering their source.
“I was born in Castleberg, Indiana, sixty-two years ago, and I spent my childhood collecting stamps and gathering butterflies. No childhood excesses for me—I was utterly content to sit in the back of my classrooms and peek at Playboy mags. I attended Butler University, where I in no way distinguished myself. Still, my gentleman’s Cs were sufficient to earn me a bachelor’s degree in economics. After graduating, I challenged the Democrat incumbent in State House District 54, and to my amazement, I won the seat with seventy percent of the vote. I do not attribute this to the power of my ideas but because I had the instinct to express no ideas at all. Ideas are invariably half-baked at their time of implementation, so I spent my time reading great books instead of proposed legislation. I daresay I have read over two hundred books, including all of Shakespeare’s plays, and the knowledge they have given me has put me at odds with the world. And of all the works I’ve ingested, all the epiphanies I’ve consumed, none has made me pricklier than the awakening of Young Goodman Brown.
“I see you have a question, young lady, a probe I should probably dread. You are swinging your foot like a pendulum blade descending to cut off my head. You wish to know why I’ve cited a tale of such unrelenting despair that even Hawthorne, its author, did not want to see it preserved.
“Young lady, you are nursing a pique with which I would wholly agree were it not for the fact that Young Goodman Brown’s journey is far more chilling to me. How fearlessly that pilgrim abandoned his village, how boldly he took his leave to enter a thickening forest and witness the darkest of revelries. How bravely he looked at his cohorts, Salem villagers one and all, giving their hearts to Satan at an altar of riveting fire. So shrill was the desperation with which they pledged the Devil their souls that Satan himself, perhaps in concession to his once angelic form, heard their supplications with pity and concern. Ah yes, Hawthorne’s tale is a chestnut, a relic appropriately scorned, and yet I’m unable to free myself from the specter of Young Goodman Brown.
“Good sir, you have a question—I can tell by your troubled frown. You wish to know why a scoundrel like me, a man known for his silvery tongue, has forsaken the fruits of loquacity to wander on his own. You say you recall how zealously I gilded the Republican party’s shams and how shamelessly I filled its coffers with ill-begotten coin.
“I would like to say that good conscience put an end to my rakish ties—that my fetish for truth resulted from a grand epiphany. But, alas, my turnabout was born from the merest of jealousies—from the fact that I, the most skillful of bounders, was not handed my fair share of the plunder my fibs and embellishments enabled our party to steal. After all, it was I who concocted the rumor that the merciful COVID vaccine was injecting socialist dogma into unsuspecting brains. It was I who claimed that kiddie soccer was coached by pedophiles—perverts whose calling was not to teach soccer and nurture good sportsmanship but to march our dear boys to drag shows and turn them into queens. I even improved on the rumor that school shootings are staged events—I did this by assuring my constituents that the deep state wanted their guns so that government surgeons could storm their homes and make women out of men. So ingenious were my fables, so infectious my deceits, that I blush to confess that my docile supporters all opened their wallets to me. How sad it is now to look back on myself as no more than a pickpocket’s shill, a raconteur whose gift for diversion and uninhibited tongue enabled the robber class to get away with its sleight of hand.
“But although my lies spurred millions to embrace their poverty, the corporate fat cats I profited did not seat me at their feast. Instead, I was paid just a few thousand dollars—a sum that hardly compared with the fortune Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio shared. Those three are too woefully shopworn to fetch such a price for their souls, yet they were invited to dine with tycoons while I supped from a bowl of gruel.
“And so, being unwilling to settle for such an insulting fee, I chose to take a pauper’s revenge on those who had overstepped of me. ‘Flatterers!’ I hollered. ‘Suckerfish! Eaters of broken meats! Shirkers of duty, soldiers of shams, corporate-indentured cheats! Since you do nothing but suck on the tit of Babylon’s Great Whore, an infamy has befallen you that I will no longer endure!’ And when they called me a miscreant and deemed me of no further use, I cried, ‘I am truly a turncoat, but I’m no longer a traitor to truth!’
“So now my ears are no longer attuned to the jingle of stolen coin—instead, I hear the moaning of the naked and forlorn. And my eyes are no longer hypnotized by the Devil’s seductive smoke—through its haze, I now see the inhibiting gaze of Jacob Marley’s ghost. And so, I salute Walt Whitman, who had the pluck to declare that a true and accurate history has never been written or shared.
“Good sir, you have a question. You are asking who am I to visualize our anthems and our sacred written lores as the crass solicitations of the gaudiest of whores. To this I reply that I once sold my lies with such ingenuity that I cannot be blind to the spell of a siren far more accomplished than me. But lest you call me a conjurer, I ask you to soften your tone and listen to the journey that has brought me to this end.
“Like Young Goodman Brown, I braved a terrain bereft of Banquo’s ghost—a shadowland where throngs were snatched from unsuspecting coasts—where souls, reduced to chattel, were bound with unyielding chains, although these savage innocents had not committed crimes. No white man’s burden here, no broad exhaustive rule where the captured had the option to weigh your gods and you, but a soulless subjugation, a criminal estate whose keepers offered nothing but toil and scars and rape. All this, so men with powdered wigs who labored not at all could strut about in parliaments and overrate their souls. Though history may build them shrines, I say to you, my friends, that these pedantic posers were little more than drones.
“What’s this? Another has raised his hand. Yes, state your piece, good man. You say that I should make amends to George and Jefferson. Very well, I offer them a cheery, heartfelt toast for mine is not to linger but to suffer purer ghosts.
“I hobbled on through twisted woods and darkened smokey plains, and when the fog began to clear, I saw I was not alone. No, I was marching lockstep with the legions of disowned—they were moving as though the River Styx was sweeping them along. No sins had they committed, no canons had they breached, yet they had been subjected to a lemmings’ fateful march. The Trail of Tears, you call it, but that does not describe the torn and swollen carcasses that littered every mile? Instead, why don’t we call it The Trail of Carrion? My friends, let me assure you this would be a truer name. There are some crimes the Lord might cloak to favor destiny, but that endless path of rotting flesh will never qualify.
“What’s that you say, young lady? You say you’re not inclined to bear the guilt and infamy of our forefathers’ crimes. I make no such suggestion, dear, but I cannot dispel the notion that our history is just a harlot’s veil. That said, I see no need for you to be reborn—that agony is mine to bear and mine to bear alone.
“With heavy heart and clearer eyes, I chose to lumber on, and the forests became jungles, and the air reeked of napalm. And here, the piles of bodies stretched as far as I could see, and they numbered in the millions if I might cite history. Bodies, bodies, bodies, there were bodies everywhere, and entrails, freshly spilled, were still smoking in the air, and that rancid devastation was only justified by the appetites of larvae and unrelenting flies. And above me droned the soulless planes, undaunted in their quest, although the air was now so rank I could not catch my breath. This was not the work of visionaries pledged to noble ends but a carnage wrought by moguls who saw foes where there were none.
“Good people, I believe that you’ve heard all you wish to hear. But I ask you not to scorn me while I say just one thing more. Although I fear the sunset, I’m fated to believe that our crimes to come will well exceed our darkest histories.
“And now I shall leave quietly and dissolve into the mist. But let us part fair foes, for we each must bear a cross. Yours is the sanctification of lies and the canonization of drones. Mine is to stumble through shadowlands in the footsteps of Young Goodman Brown.”
- Orville Baumgardner and Young Goodman Brown - March 21, 2026
