About PAA Podcast

Deadhead Patriot is a host of the PAA Podcast, Political Activists Anonymous, and a man who once looked at American politics and thought, "You know what this needs? Me."

This was, in retrospect, a warning sign.

Before beginning his recovery, DHP ran for office five times, for positions ranging from the serious to the spiritually concerning. Congress. Assembly. Comptroller. Dogcatcher. Various other offices that may or may not exist, depending on how badly the republic was doing that week. Each campaign began with the same basic premise: the system was broken, the people were confused, and surely the solution was to put him somewhere near a microphone, a filing deadline, and a folding table at a county fair.

A libertarian by instinct and an absurdist by survival, DHP eventually came to understand the political process less as a noble contest of ideas and more as a municipal production of Waiting for Godot with yard signs. He had once imagined himself as Sisyphus pushing the boulder of liberty up the hill. Then, somewhere around the fifth campaign, he realized the boulder had no intention of staying put, the hill was zoned incorrectly, and Sisyphus may have been in it for himself the whole time.

He follows Camus religiously, which is exactly the kind of thing Camus would probably find irritating.

DHP's philosophy is rooted in liberty, skepticism, noncompliance, and the slow, painful execution of his own ego. He still believes power should be questioned, institutions should be mocked, and no one should be trusted simply because they own a flag pin. But he has also come to accept a harder truth: the desire to save everyone can become indistinguishable from the desire to be in charge of everyone.

That realization did not make him less political. It made him less recruitable.

On PAA, DHP brings the perspective of a recovering candidate, a liberty-minded absurdist, and a man who has finally begun to suspect that the healthiest response to political theater may not be another campaign, another movement, or another heroic speech into the void. It may be laughter. Bitter laughter, maybe. Enlightened laughter, on a good day. The kind of laughter that comes when the boulder rolls back down the hill and you finally stop pretending you were pushing it for purely selfless reasons.

The patriotism remains. The ego is under review.

Hi, I'm Deadhead Patriot. And I'm a recovering political activist.