Twice Upon a Time

Twice upon a time, there lived a People…

A long time ago, these People had some complaints. Not peas under the mattress complaints, nor splinters in their paws complaints, but more like there’s a lady using candy to eat our children complaints. Except the lady was a man, but not like that. He was a king, which is also not what you’d expect, because that meant once upon a time he was a prince, and they’re supposed to save people in these kinds of stories.

Spoilers: He didn’t save anyone, any time. Because he was a prince, who became a king, and they never do that shit.

Anyhoo, the candy was called “salutary neglect.” It was this thing whereby the king did the best thing possible, which was to be lazy and ignore the People. This let the People grow up and take care of themselves, which sounds like bad parenting but the People were adults not children and analogies only go so far, okay? See the title of this newsletter if we’re unclear about that. The People created representative bodies for people who owned property to tell everyone else how to best govern things, which obviously meant whatever protected the property owners but regardless everyone felt good about it and really liked this whole self-governance thing. It became a point of pride and as these not-children People moved from societal threenagers into socieatal teenagers, the king did king shit and caused a bunch of problems.

See, he wanted more. More lands to make him more money.

So when his neighboring king buddy started a war, it gave the People’s king an excuse to fight in a bunch of places, including where the People lived. In fact, one of the very famousest of the People, young George Washington, got the privilege of kicking off the whole kerfluffle in an unlikely place called Fort Necessity, which really makes Necessity do a lot of heavy lifting, but this is a fairy tale so I guess we’ll allow it.

Anyway, the war happened and the People’s king won, but he’d used up almost all the money he could get away with using, so he took some steps to save up money almost like a responsible person would but remember he’s not really a responsible person he’s a king and they can find all sorts of ways to make up money when they need to. Sometimes a king will use that made up money for good stuff, but most of the time they’re just looking to kill people or take stuff from other people? I don’t want to overgeneralize and make this analogy even worse, but you know how it goes.

The king starts doing the money making stuff and it really frustrates the People, not just because they didn’t want to give him money but because they felt like if they were going to give him money they needed something in return. Some of the People started calling this the “social contract” and pointed out how illogical it was for one person to tell a whole People what to do, but also if you’d just ask the People for ways to help out with the situation the People could probably come up with some ideas that would make everyone happy, king included.

But that’s not how being king go, another famous Washington who coached a spoartsball team in the land of Texas might say.

So the People used People tools to make their opinions obvious. They boycotted finished goods from the king’s parental island. Yes, this meant they had to do without stuff, but it was worth it because what teenager hasn’t thrown a huff and gone without a meal because they really, really, really don’t want to eat that dusty pork chop and mushy broccoli crap you call dinner, am I right? Eventually the king’s people said okay fine we really need you to buy this crap so we’ll back off taking your money for a bit.

Then the king tried it again. A handful of the People got shot by the king’s soldiers because they were mad and mad people do stuff like throw snowballs and insults at representatives of the king. Usually insults don’t get you shot, let alone snowballs, so a lot of the People got BIG mad and the king backed down. The king still insisted on a smaller way to make money, as part of the backing down process, and the People were like, okay fine we’ll give you a little bit since you’re backing down and all. But we don’t like it, and we’re going to tell EVERYONE what kind of shit your soldiers got up to here.

And then the king’s closest buds were a little upset that after killing a bunch of folks from a far away land, a little company they’d invested in wasn’t making as much money for them anymore. So they asked the king for eensy weensy little bailout and the king said oh sure do it, and next thing you know that murdering company owned by a bunch of the king’s buds showed up on the People’s doorstep without having to pay the money all the people had to pay.

So they dumped that shit in the water.

THEN the king got big mad. He started canceling some of those representative bodies, and some of the laws those bodies made, and just generally was a dick about everything. And like the shitty “parent” he was, every time the People were like hey we’ll cooperate but stop fucking around with our stuff, the king was like, nah, I’m the king, I get to fuck around with your stuff whenever I want, that’s how being king go.

So the People got together and had this ginger kid and some others write up a formal announcement that they were done with the king. Out of politeness that they clearly had not learned from that dick the king, they even included a list of stuff they thought were pretty shitty and broke the “social contract.” They made it clear that as kids, the People would put up with all the stupid bullshit that was “the way it was” for along time, but this was too much and like, it was time.

And it turned out, in fact, to be the time. While the People did not all live happily ever after, over time some fought so that more of the People could live a little more happily. And then because it turns out that helping folks live more happily was extremely popular, a faction of the People decided you know what, can we find some of that candy the king used to use? We need to find a way to win popularity contests and it seems like maybe if we can get someone to start eating kids again, we could compete a little better. Sure, less happy People is bad, but we also don’t like to lose and it’s all about us, you see, so start mass producing that candy and blame all the dead kids on the popular stuff until enough folks believe the popular stuff is bad, right?

Unfortunately, it worked, and finally the unpopular candy makers had found someone who really, really, really liked the idea of being something like a king, just without the official title. He really had no problem ignoring how hurting folks made him popular, and that gave a bunch of other people permission to ignore it too, because winning was fun, right? So they made him their leader, and he surrounded himself only with his “friends” who cared for little other than winning.

This leads us to the twice upon a time part.

Some of the People still remembered that list they’d made hundreds of years ago about the old king when they were just little societal teenagers. Sometimes those lessons you learn when you’re young really stick with you, ya know? You just have to dig around the bedroom and stumble into them in the midst of an existential crisis to find them again.

Here’s what the People had written, those hundreds of years ago, that really felt too familiar:

After some time, many of the People decided they had no choice but to speak out, and as before, their leader ignored them, mocked them, posted magical videos that sure made it look like he actually hated the People and in fact really liked these other folks who the People had, at least in hindsight, for a while, decided were the worst people. And then the leader’s “friends” spoke very, very loudly about how awful it was to oppose the ideas and actions that the worst people were in favor of.

And as with every fairy tale, it was no prince who came to save them, but a frog.

Many frogs, in fact.

And unicorns sometimes.

Honestly, the coolest thing about the People were the infinite variety of People and their creative ways of standing against the leader and his unpopular friends who just wanted to win shit and didn’t care about anyone else.

But for a fairy tale to repeat itself, in much the same way as before, required a lot of the People to forget. And the leader knew this, and his “friends” knew this too. As we end this twice upon a time, remember, for a tale’s message to stick around, the tale must be told, stories must be read. And as the first tale proclaimed hundreds of years ago, when the time has come that a leader, and a government, becomes destructive of the People and their rights, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish such forms of leadership and government.

[Author’s note: The first draft and rough outline of this happened back in April of 2025. Hat tip to this post by Stephen Wolf for reminding me, and this post by Greg Pak for shoving me into actually finishing this post. Everything here is pretty accurate history, and the list in red is lifted directly from the Declaration of Independence.]