On Mike Adams

“Did you hear about Mike Adams?” That was the text I sent to two of my college friends tonight. One texted back. We both agreed that, while we didn’t like Adams' portrayal of conservatism (my friend stating that he had essentially become a “male Ann Coulter”), it was still incredibly sad.

I had decided to go to a political event tonight, the first I’ve attended in… I can’t actually remember. I enjoyed it. I was challenged to support good candidates and be less passive about pursuing the change I want to see in government. It was interesting to be back in that kind of environment, even if it was quite different in the era of social distancing. 

During a lull in activity, I picked up my phone, clicked open Facebook, and saw the news: Mike Adams was dead. It’s hard to describe the heaviness that we all feel when met with moments like that. We all know it. It is that feeling that a life has passed out of this world, and most likely in a way that should not be. It is that feeling of the loss of potential for good and for restoration that could have been, if there had just been another course and more time.

I first learned about Mike Adams when I was a fairly new college student. His name was thrown around every now and then by my College Republican friends, not necessarily because they agreed with him wholeheartedly, but because he dared to speak his mind as a conservative college professor, seemingly without fear. He didn’t let “them” silence him.

It’s hard to explain how it feels when someone who is willing to wear the same label as you is given a place of authority. If you have ever been a conservative on a college campus you probably know the sense of being a political orphan with many siblings, but seemingly no intellectual parents. We were hungry for someone in academic leadership who represented “us.” It was the age when our then hero, George W. Bush was mercilessly ridiculed and reviled while never fighting back. We were ready for a fighter. 

There was a Republican in the Political Science Department of our own school, but many were wary of him. I didn’t know him yet, and heard the uneasiness in people’s voices when they said things like, “We think he’s a moderate.” I have since learned that anyone who carries themselves with poise and civility is in danger of being labeled a “moderate” regardless of their actual stance on political issues. I can’t help but think we missed out on the very mentoring we craved because of our own ignorance and immaturity.

“Mike Adams” was trending on Twitter tonight, so I read through some of what people had to say. It was fairly brutal, but Adams himself was a defender of free speech and often failed to season his own “truth” with “love.” Regardless, it was hard to believe that people would be so cruel to the dead. I tried to think about how I felt when some of my own political “enemies” had left this world.

I thought about the movie Chappaquiddick and the emotions I felt as I watched it. I felt anger at the fate of Mary Jo Kopechne, whose life was sacrificed for Ted Kennedy’s political career, a woman who reminded me of myself in the days when I worked to help elect politicians. I felt the sting of injustice that he was able to go on and have a long career in congress after acting so despicably and placing his own political career seemingly above everything else. But I didn’t just feel anger. I felt compassion at the portrayal of his need to please his insatiable father who made him feel like he would never amount to anything. Overall, I felt sadness for Ted Kennedy. I felt sadness for a life marked by happenings that could have been prevented. I felt sadness for the moral loss that led a man with much potential to disregard another human life in such a striking way.

I don’t know much about Mike Adams’ story other than a little of his tumultuous relationship with his academic institution, his outspokenness about free speech, and his (in my mind) unfortunate use of his platform to demean people instead of engage them in useful philosophical debate. I have no doubt that there are many (who actually knew him) who found him to be a wonderful mentor, as people’s real lives are rarely as “exciting” as their online personas, and that those people are experiencing a grief far different from and deeper than mine at this moment. 

But I am left with a sadness - that same kind of sadness that hits me when I think of the unresolved guilt with which Ted Kennedy died. I don’t know what kinds of demons Mike Adams was facing down in his last moments. His life was marked with controversy for almost two decades. But I do know that it always makes me sad when people leave this world before it feels like they should, and when it seems that they have so much unfinished business that could have been taken care of, that could have brought them and the ones they loved real peace.

Thumbnail Image from CNN.com