2-27-25

There is a line in the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie that I’ve always

liked…..it’s the scene where Captain Jack Sparrow and Will Turner are using an

upside down rowboat to walk under water to steal a ship and Will says to Jack,

“This is either madness or brilliance!” to which Jack responds, “It’s amazing how

often those attributes come together”…….its a great line….and its

true….sometimes the craziest ideas are the best ideas….they’re audacious,

pugnacious, contumacious…..but brilliant…..it’s about defying the norms and

breaking the status quo…..and that’s what we are watching right now as Trump

has hired Musk to be an outside consultant but granted him authority to dig, to

turn over every rock, to find things that have been hidden……its crazy, and

brilliant, all at the same time……

I was reminded of that attitude this morning as I came across a story that I had

forgotten about…..a story of absolute bananas behavior……something so

maddeningly risky and outright crazy that very few would ever think of doing

it…..but it worked…..and it was designed to save lives……and it happened back in

1960……when a man in a balloon parachuted from outer space……the US was in

the space race, but we were also in the race to the outer edges of the atmosphere

for military purposes as well…..experimental aircraft that could fly outside the

atmosphere and break the sound barrier…..wild stories were told of people like

Chuck Yeager who did amazing things flying by the seat of his pants as a test

pilot…..but as the late 50’s came around the research was still unavailable about

what would happen if one of those planes met an in-flight disaster at the edge of

space…..so the Air Force launched Project Excelsior in 1959 to determine whether

a manned flight could break up at high pressure altitude and the pilot safely

eject……the guy that was tapped to do the test was Air Force pilot Captain Joseph

Kittinger…..his first major jump was from 76,400 feet…..that’s 14 miles straight

up!.....it did not go well…..he barely survived when his chute malfunctioned, the

shroud lines wrapped around his neck and he went into a uncontrollable spin at

22 times the force of gravity…..he was knocked unconscious but his reserve chute

automatically deployed and saved his life…..they asked if he would jump

again…..madness, and brilliance…..he said yes……I don’t know that there was ever

a doubt….it was about something bigger than him….it was about the safety of

extreme flight pilots…..the brilliant idea had to be accompanied by some absolute

insanity to make it work…..I can tell you as a former Army Paratrooper that of my

dozens of jumps they were all static line from 1200 feet above ground level or

less…..generally less than a minute in the air…..when you exited the aircraft like I

did you could see the ground, the people on the ground, the obstacles to

avoid……when Joseph Kittinger jumped he could see the curvature of the

earth!.....and yes, he went back up two more times…..and on Aug. 16, 1960,

United States Air Force Capt. Joseph Kittinger launched in a massive balloon……he

ascended above New Mexico in an open gondola suspended from a basic helium

balloon…..on the step off point at the door of the gondola some joker had put a

sign that read, “this is the highest step in the world”…….Kittinger was just 32-

years-old and wore a fully pressurized suit, much like an astronaut…….because

without it, the extreme altitude would’ve caused his body fluids to boil…… When

he was 19 miles above the earth, ……that’s 102,800 feet!......Kittinger

jumped…..he went into an immediate uncontrolled descent, falling at speeds

exceeding 600 mph……. The free fall lasted over 4 ½ minutes…..but he remained

conscious and at 14,000 feet, Kittinger pulled the ripcord of his parachute and

safely landed……holy cow…..it was madness and brilliance……

Kittinger broke two world records that day: the highest ever parachute jump and

the longest free fall……. Two weeks later, an image of Kittinger falling through a

sea of white clouds appeared on the front page of Life magazine…..But the public

didn’t get all of the details of the record-setting jump for quite awhile…….but it

was crazye…..it was madness…..and it was also brilliance and done for the sake of

solving a real-world military problem…….

You can look back at some of the greatest innovations of history and find that

they often were deemed mad when they were first proposed…..you can find

stories like Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing revolutionizing the world of media

and building Daily Wire from their garage…..two guys who had an idea….and idea

that had no predecessor…..they saw a way to communicate conservative views to

the world using the internet, and social media, and radio all combined and they

were fired by their boss for dreaming it up…..so they went out on their own and

eight years later Daily Wire is the largest non-traditional media company in the

world with annual revenues of over $200 million…..that was crazy….that was

madness…..that was brilliant and it worked…..and the world will never be the

same……

There was a time when the New York Times announced to the world that the

automobile was impractical…..it was a fad they said…..there was no way to

achieve an inexpensive means of putting automobiles in the hands of the average

consumer….they said…..the price of cars, said the New York Times in 1902 was

such that they were an unattainable thing and would always be so…..they were

narrow minded…..they didn’t see the madness and brilliance of Henry Ford who

invented the mass production assembly line…..the price came down and the

automobile became part of the worlds normal everyday behavior and most folks

cannot imagine not having one……

I told you those stories knowing that it would make a bunch of you sit up straight

and listen…..some of you caught your breath and thought “no way I would do

that!”….Movies, and books, and magazine articles have been made on each one

of them and I could find you a dozen more…..great stories …about heroic

efforts….stories that inspire…. true stories about someone doing something that

was absolute madness and brilliance all at once…..and here’s the thing…..we have

to take that sense of things and turn it into the effort being made right now to fix

our government…….what we are watching right now with the advent of DOGE,

and executive orders, and the release of previously withheld information, and

setting free of political prisoners, and the termination of bad actors in

government, and the revoking of clearances for former intelligence officials, and

the investigation of the awful withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the cutting of

wasteful spending on frivolous projects, and the restoring of destroyed areas of

North Carolina, and the demand for accountability in the war in Ukraine, and the

end of DEI, and the restoration of military readiness…..I could go on and you know

I could……but what we are watching is an absolutely breakneck pace…..a pace

that no one ever thought possible in the realm of government…..the halls the

House and Congress and of every statehouse in America are playing catch up to

the day-to-day running of the righting of the American ship of state…..it is

madness and brilliance all at one time…..and I suspect we are going to see

more…..

I don’t want a government that settles for status quo…..this is the nation that won

the space race, invented atomic energy, manned space flight…..we survived our

own civil war and established the world premier civil rights…..we have solved

problems in our history that most thought were unsolveable…..we did it because

as a people, as a culture, we are mavericks…..we see problems and know that

solution is going to take madness and brilliance and we love that…..this is the by-

God United States of America…..where we break norms, tear down walls, and run

through obstacles just because we can……and the only way to keep that brilliant

craziness going is to take the leap off of the highest steps in the world…..and that

means not being bloated, or fat, or slow, or belligerent…..it means being lean,

and hungry for more……so yes, I’m loving the changes I see in government right

now…..I think it is madness and brilliance…..its amazing how often those

attributes come together……

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way!