Blog: Interesting People

I really enjoy spending time with interesting people. When I say interesting people, I don’t mean people that make you grin when they talk or people that help you solve your problems with their wisdom.

I mean people that dominate conversations when they join them and steer the group in entirely different directions. I mean people that humiliate you in public due to their commanding nature to the point where you question their sanity. I mean people that force you to do a double take when you realize what they are doing.

Kris Kobach, John Brown and Alden Brownlee.

Yeah, I don’t know any of these people. Yeah, they all have Kansas connections. After years of searching, I have learned that these people are hard to come by. You can count these people in your life on one hand. That is why the only reason that the most interesting of these people are those I have read about or heard about. Can you imagine if these people came together? Say, for a dinner?

Kris Kobach serves as the Kansas Secretary of State, with his number one issues being illegal immigration and voter fraud. Many observers see Kobach’s actions as racist and unjust, basing many of their decisions off of the fact that Kobach authored the Arizona immigration law.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is John Brown, the abolitionist and first domestic American terrorist. Putting an abolitionist that killed for another race to gain rights in a room with a current politician that many say is doing the opposite would make for an interesting conversation.

When you throw in Alden Brownlee, my grandfather that I never had the pleasure of meeting, things would get interesting. I have been told by every person that knew him that Alden was a force to be reckoned with. He was always right, he would always voice his opinion and he was racist.

The way I see it, we wouldn’t manage to maintain a conversation. After being shut out from the conversation and being unable to accept the reality of the conversation, I would soon find myself running out of the restauraunt in shame because of my guests. After all, they are interesting people.