Tag: fear

God, Glue-Guns, and Glory

This curated-and-updated post was originally published Oct. 29, 2009, and centers around a situation in which Home Depot terminated an employee named Trevor Keezer for refusing to remove a pin from his work uniform, while working, that read “One Nation, Under God, INDIVISIBLE.” You may recognize this as one of the many Islamophobic slogans that was flying around during the decade or so after 9-11 (and to some extent still are). The company’s policy was that employees may not wear anything on their uniform that wasn’t provided by the company. While a great deal of noise was made in right-wing media over the whole thing and indeed a lawsuit was filed, there’s no indication it ever went to court, and indeed it seems to have just been quietly dropped after a year of right-wing media outlets trying to drum out outrage over the “discrimination” against Christianity.

This essay is presented as originally written in the immediate aftermath of the event, with minor editorial corrections and edits. -jh

I’m definitely missing my camcorder today as this pointless, divisive kerfluffle over some redneck getting fired for pushing his religion on people on the workplace. What a great topic for a video rant…

I find it hilarious that so many people get all het up and whiny about BOYCOTT HOME DEPOT THOSE ATHEIST EVUL COMMIES, but boy wouldn’t they feel differently if the guy expressing his religious views on his work uniform was a Muslim, druid, or follower of Cthulhu? But no, it’s shove those noses in the air, start wringing your hands, and quick everybody get wrapped up in a my-god-is-better-than-your-god argument that solves nothing and distracts us from dealing with the very REAL and PRESENT and OBSERVABLE problems that we are wrapped up in.

A friend on Facebook linked to the Today show’s little fan page there, where one such conversation is taking place. it’s hilarious. “It’s not freedom FROM religion it’s freedom OF religion!” Uh…same thing, Captain Logic Freedom of religion by necessity includes the freedom to not participate in any religion at all without fear of persecution or discrimination. And then it’s the same tired old arguments that have been shot down time and time and time again over how this is a ‘Christian nation’ (it isn’t and it never was) or how anyone who doesn’t believe in Jethro Bodine’s particular concept of “God” is unpatriotic and evil and should LUV IT ER LEEV IT.

Now there’s a proud American sentiment, eh? You must worship according to our rules or be rejected from society. Oh, hey, waitaminnit, that’s the whole reason we (well, YOU. My people are native american, dutch, and black) left England in the first place, isn’t it?

What I can’t figure out is where all of these ‘good Christians’ get the fancy bibles that are missing the first part of Matthew 6. Especially verse five:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

This is one of the most important verses in the Christian canon, and one of the most overlooked. In short, it says “you keep your religion between you and your god, rather than displaying it openly so that you can make money or impress people with your piety. ‘God’ does not care if your friends are impressed with how holy you are, so STFU and keep it to yourself. Anything else is stagecraft and hypocrisy. I AM, that which I AM, and I do not need to pursue or convince my creatures of my power, nor need I for you to pursue or convince them on My behalf; they will choose to come to me.”

I’ve seen this behavior at many large companies I’ve been employed by over the years, people decorating their cubes with their little holier-than-thou displays of bible verse and self-aggrandizing piety. It made me terribly uncomfortable, afraid to express myself openly. I even had colleagues ask me what church I attended – love that assumption that I attend ANY church, let alone that it’s anyone else’s damn business which one.

(Sidebar: One of the precious, self-righteous jerks I observed made the remark that one of HD’s competitors offers a standard military discount, so they were a better store anyway. My first thought: WTF lady you sent your husband off to die so you could get a good price on f’n gutters?! How callous.)

I don’t have anything against believers, personally. I just don’t believe that your beliefs give you the right to force those beliefs on anyone else, particularly when you’re in a public-facing customer service role; it’s obnoxious, unwelcoming, and exclusionary to anyone who doesn’t share your beliefs – which, frankly, is the entire point of doing it so let’s not kid ourselves.

You want to blog about Jesus and pray in your facebook status, that’s no skin off my nose in the least. I don’t want to be prayed over at Home Depot or have my soul saved at McDonalds or get into a long discussion about my religious beliefs when I try to buy a slurpee.

I still can find no Christian principle is supported by wearing buttons and slogans on my clothing to push my views on other people when I’m at work. That guy wasn’t being paid to proselytize, he was being paid to stock shelves or run a cash register. When I’ve had corporate jobs I haven’t decorated my workspace with political or social or religious messages. Of course I have opinions, that much should be no secret by now, but I also have enough grace and respect for others to not make their work day uncomfortable by broadcasting them in that forum. That’s not where they belong.

Believe what you want. I won’t hold it against you, in and of itself. Do I have things to say about these issues? Of course…but not when I’m working for someone else. If I’m stocking shelves or building databases or whatever, I’m being paid to do that, and all of my time save that which is necessary to attend to the necessities of human body function – i.e. eating, drinking, restroom, and a short step-away every few hours to ‘cleanse the palate’ and clear the head for more effective work function – should be spent doing that.

But more than anything else, what really chaps my ass about this whole thing is the smug tyranny of the majority, that obnoxious and distinctly un-Christian attitude that so many self-proclaimed followers of Jesus display to the rest of the world. You know, that condescending crap they wrap around themselves that screams to the world, “I am a member of a special club, and if you don’t do things my way you can’t join my special club, and then I and all of my special friends will make fun of you and not rent apartments to you and not let you eat at our restaurants or date our daughters or work for us, because YOU are not one of US, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it because GAWD is on MY SIDE.”

This root and its derivatives are, and have always been, among the fundamental causes of human misery.

Isn’t it ironic that so many followers of the “Prince of Peace” will cheerfully do violence and wage war in his name? Isn’t it ironic, that so many followers of the man who said “Be ye kind one unto another, tenderhearted, forgiving…” (Ephesians 4:32) are so cruel and heartless in their dealings with one another. That the religion which gave us the concept of pride as sin should give rise to such pride-filled followers; that the religion which purports to teach us that judgment lies solely in the hands of the Almighty should generate so many adherents who incessantly judge others on their mode of worship, their sexual habits, or whatever else, rarely if ever exercising such strict judgment on themselves.

Every one of us – every one of us – has skeletons in our closet. We are all human, we are all fallible, and we are all in this together. Anything that separates us one from another in the greater sense, as religion unquestionably does, is by definition genocidal…if slowly.

The guy shouldn’t have had the pin on his uniform. When the whole story’s out, it’s likely that he was asked/told/warned about this several times, and further that his decision to start publicly practicing his religion at work was intended to get him fired and provoke just this kind of self-righteous indignance, once again warming the fires that keep us from coming together as one people to solve our common problems, face our common threats, and improve our common state of being. [Ed. note 2023 – the eventual playing out of this case in one brief announcement of a lawsuit a year later followed by dead silence from all sides bears this analysis out entirely. He was in fact asked, told, warned, and even offered a company approved pin reading “United We Stand,” which is the same sentiment minute the Islamophobia/Christian proseltyzing. -jh]

tl;dr: deer xtians more cheekturning plz

October 4, 2023
What Real Media Bias Looks Like (2010)
(Curated post originally published Apr 8 2010)

The subtle ways in which some media outlets will deliberately attempt to manipulate public opinion rather than just reporting the facts never ceases to amaze me. This article about the health care bill provides an excellent example of what real media bias looks like – the subtle manipulation of public opinion though the use of loaded words and phrases to play on existing fears or create new ones, which in turn feeds conflict and drives interest in the news, which creates profits for the news companies. A given organization or writer may also unwittingly wear their bias on their sleeve.

Such as this article from McClatchy today: Health care overhaul spawns mass confusion for public

In this case, a series of reasonably neutral facts are embedded in a story full of negative anecdotes, some of which make deliberate pretense to fact for the sake of adding negative tone. To wit:

“They’re saying, ‘Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?’ ” said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com

“Obama care” is a buzzphrase for all of the negative hype associated with the health care reform bill, used exclusively by conservative commentators and agitators. I’ve yet to see a credible news source, or a credible commenter on either side of the issue refer to the bill as “Obama care” (or “Obamacare”). Further, this is the third paragraph in the article – so one of the first evoked emotions is resentment by the conservative “base” against those evil greedy welfare leeches who want a free ride from ol’ Karl Adolph Obama. [ed. note 2023: this was long before Obama & the left began embracing the label]

So if you already lean conservative on the issue, by the end of paragraph three you’re already pissed.

It continues on with a claim that call centers have been “inundated” with requests from people who think that they have OMGRITENAOFREEDRUGS. This strikes me as a highly questionably assessment; I participate widely in conversation on this subject with a very diverse group of people and viewpoints, and I’m not sure I’ve heard anyone who thought that the recent health care bill created immediate free health care for everyone…although in an ideal world that’s what it would have effectively done via single-payer.

(Of course if we’re all healthy, then we can think about things other than needing medical care. Things like how to properly detect bias in ostensibly objective news articles, for instance. I can’t imagine anyone who would want to prevent THAT…)

Watch the REAL media bias:
- Consumers are cast as “frustrated” and “confused,” the article says, leveraging the power of suggestion to create confusion where there is none (the HCRB is actually pretty strarightforward, considering the scope and source of the thing) and further inflame negative opinion.
- A “new wave of inquiries” is coming; laid-off workers on COBRA are going to lose funding (cue a bunch of people on unemployment complaining about LOSING their socially subsidized health insurance for the unemployed while simultaneously railing against socialist health care policies).
- A breast cancer survivor (cue sympathy!) is “confused” (oh that poor dear, how could that rotten Obama and his socialist minions have done this!) as to whether she should “try to access private coverage again some day” (Of course she should, if that’s the best option available, and that’s so self-evident as a result of both media coverage and the broad availability of both bill and summaries that I’m forced to wonder if “Ann Wooten” even exists. Prior to te HCRB, of course, private coverage was the ONLY option other than abject poverty, and it wasn’t an available option at all and never would be to “Ann Wooten” due to her pre-existing condition.)
- The state employee whines about how long the reform will take; a Hollywood Librul AND Furrner shows up to gloat down his nose at the rabble because he has good insurance through his labor union; small business owners are cast as confused and lost and at risk of cost increases or fines, with vague suggestions of IRS entanglements and labor cuts to “contain costs” – and of course “containing costs” implies that there are new costs to be “contained,” costs that will of course be well in excess of current costs. The problem is there’s no data to support that implication.
  - One of my favorite passages:
    Dimarob said many small businesses wouldn’t be able to participate. First they must do research to see whether they qualify. “It requires them to understand the intricacies,” she said.
    
    What I love about this is that it’s completely meaningless, but it SOUNDS scary. “Many?” What is “many?” Is that a majority percentage? Or is it “five,” which is indeed many but sure isn’t much among the millions of small businesses in this country? The great thing is, I can’t find a provision anywhere that would prevent ANY small business from participating – indeed, one of the biggest complaints about this bill is that PARTICIPATION IS MANDATORY. So how the hell are small businesses going to “not be able to participate?” Uh-oh…look out, Joe, here come the INTRICACIES for you to have to sort through! OMG WHY DOES GOVERNMENT MAKE RUNNING A BUSINESS SO HARRRRRRD?
All of the above aspects of the article add to an overall negative tone – this health care bill is clearly confusing, expensive, and puts at risk the ability of small business (HI JOE THE PLUMBER!) to hire employees and pay their bills. It makes cancer patients exhaust themselves trying to run the maze of regulation; it leaves parents unable to cover their adult children all the way until SEPTEMBER!!! It forces small business owners to deal with more paperwork and “intricacies!” It’s so EVULLLL!

But it’s not just about accentuating the negative – you also have to negate the positive. Our intrepid reporter accomplishes this with aplomb, leaving no positive aspect of this legislation untouched by her blighted point of view:
- Rather than parents grateful for the ability to cover their kids an extra eight years, they’re parents who “have heard” that they can do this, “however” they have to wait until September.
- Every single positive statement about the new law or the administration is delivered with a qualifier. Every. Single. One.
  “The administration is launching a public education campaign, BUT…”
  ”Parents can cover currently ineligible children, HOWEVER…”
  “Those with good coverage aren’t worried, BUT…”
  “He explained many highlights…[h]owever..”
- The software engineer who defends the bill’s clarity – the only person quoted who had anything positive to say about it – still has his caveats about detail.
- Obama has been “touting” a tax credit for small business…note how nasty that sounds, as opposed to the actual objective fact: Obama has discussed small business tax credits along with the rest of the bill, because it’s now the law and people need to understand it and as President part of his job is to try to help people understand it because he’s the number one talking head in the country. But rather than that, let’s choose words and phrases that a) make this sound like it’s still one mans quixotic crusade rather than a matter of accomplished federal law and b) then make the president sound like a snake-oil salesman “touting” the latest nostrum.
- And of course, the president has been traveling to “talk to ordinary Americans.” Because of course he couldn’t be “explaining” or “meeting” with people – he’s got to be “talking to” them, like a professor or a judge…and let’s not forget that the President is anything but an “ordinary American,” shall we?
And then the same people who read this article as though it’s an example of objective, fact-based reporting sit and sneer at how dumb the people quoted in the article are for not realizing that their communist dreams of a free ride at the expense of us good, christian, white people who pay taxes are in vain.

This is what our political discourse has come to, and this is why. If we don’t start using our heads for something other than a place to put our iPod ear buds, we will continue getting the government, and the country, that we’ve earned.
October 2, 2023
Conspicuous Absence: My Thoughts On The Gun Debate
The Gorilla In The Living Room

Another day, another bunch of children and adults brutally murdered by handguns. The conspicuous absence of any ethics or conscience in this country related to gun control cannot continue.

Being a left-wing political writer you may wonder why you don’t see more from me about the “gun problem” in this country.

Classic WWF/WWE announce team Bobby “The Brain” Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon – probably the greatest unheralded comedy team in entertainment history, but that’s another article. Image: WWE.Com

In the pro-wrestling world there was a fella named Gorilla Monsoon, who went from being a pretty legendary “big man” wrestler in the 60’s and early 70’s to being one of the best known “straight man” voices in the business as an announcer for the then-WWF, most often with “color commentator” and “heel,” Bobby “The Brain” Heenan

I could and probably will write at least one and probably multiple articles about him in due time but what’s important here is that he was known for his little turns of phrase, like “they’re literally hanging from the rafters here in [venue/city] tonight!” when announcing live shows and pay-per-views, or “external occipital protuberance.” (Gorilla: “Looks like Big John Studd got the Hulkster right in the external occiptal protuberance…” Bobby “The Brain” Heenan: “Yeah and he got him right in the back of the head, too!”)

One phrase I’ve thought of as long as I can remember as a “Gorilla-ism” even though I’m quite certain it’s really not is the phrase “conspicuous by his/her/their absence.” “The Hulkster now in the ring with the Big Boss Man, and conspicuous by his absence is the big fella’s manager, Mouth of the South Jimmy Hart.”

One of the things that the careful observer might notice tends to be conspicuous by its absence in my work is a whole lot of talk about gun issues.

An Unspoken Agreement

I do talk about them. Just not often, relatively speaking. You’d think I would, huh? Being a leftie, quite the lil tree hugger and empath for looking all big and burly the way I do, you’d think that every time this happens I’d be right there, outraged and demanding to know why this keeps happening and why nobody’s fixing it.

Here’s why I’m not:

It’s a waste of time. I did it for decades, and I’m telling you: it’s a waste of time.

We know what needs to be done. A vast majority of Americans favor common-sense gun regulation to help mitigate two of the biggest sources of gun violence: impulse purchases made in the heat of anger or depression, and background checks to ensure we’re not selling guns to people who have shown in the past to be incompetent to be trusted with a deadly weapon one way or another.

We’ve been talking about it for my entire life and the pile of bodies just gets higher and younger. Enough talking.

We’ve been asking why for my entire life and the pile of bodies just gets higher and younger. Enough asking why.

Pictured: not a well-regulated militia. (Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com, with some artistic modification by JH)

We know why nothing’s being done: because the National Rifle Association, acting as the public relations and political lobbying arm of the gun manufacturing industry, has spent a hundred years deliberately warping the intent of the second amendment out of shape, stoking and helping to perpetuate all kinds of evil including racism, sexism, domestic violence, and especially toxic masculinity for their profit.

They pay politicians to write laws in their favor; they pay media companies to make movies that make guns look positive and strong and powerful.

None of this is a secret or a “conspiracy theory” or in any meaningful doubt; there’s a century of – ahem – smoking guns marking the trail.

Gun manufacturers have conspired for a century to constantly reinforce messaging that benefits their sales against the best interests of public safety and the operation of a truly free society.

They do enough of it directly and openly so they aren’t accused of being a secret cabal, mind you, but they do plenty of it in back-door style deals as well – think in terms of product placement in films, but this is as much “idea placement” as for any specific brand or item.

Sold, American!

Tie it to all the good old American values like rugged individualism and standing up for what’s right and of course subtextual racism and the reinforcement of paradigms and ways of thinking and behaving that benefit mostly exactly the kind of people who you’d think would definitely start pushing their way around if they had a gun in their hand. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do and so forth. (Jim Jeffries’ American accent in his bit about “protecting my family” is so perfectly the sound of that attitude…)

In this way they keep the general public from being too clear-eyed about where they got the idea that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” and other corrosive and demonstrably untrue ideas on which the industry has relied for their profit-making for over a century now…to the point that we literally have more guns than people.

I don’t talk about that much.

I don’t talk about it because I’m sick of talking about it. I’ve talked about it all my life, and we’ve spiraled into such madness with this I swear half the instapundits on the internet spend their days hoping for the next one so they can churn out some saccharine clickbait about the horror of it all and cash in on those dead bodies.

The staid speeches, the well-researched data, the well-rehearsed catchphrases and talking points…they don’t work. They don’t work because a lot of people are really not terribly bright…

It’s George Carlin, if I have to tell you the audio’s NSFW I genuinely have no idea how you found me to begin with.

…and fear is among the most basic and powerful human emotions there is. There’s always something to be afraid of, isn’t there? Wild animals, roving non-white people, the dark, your own shadow…it’s a terrifying world out there! Why a fella barely dares get a cup of coffee without being armed anymore!

We’re not going to change until we’re collectively more afraid of having guns than we are of not having them. That’s the bottom line.

Until then, all the talk is just traffic generation and marketing to appeal to various discernible groups of people and position one’s self as being among them. Another sorting chute in the never-ending corporate game of human Plinko.

It’s cheaper and more versatile than a sorting hat. Courtesy of CBS without endorsement or permission under 17 U.S. Code § 107

It’s talking heads making money for themselves, and for the most part I think fundamentally most of them don’t really care about any of it much beyond that.

Certainly nobody on the right does, but I have a hard time taking the left seriously on this too…and frankly, I’m just “American” enough myself that I’m not sure I’d want to see the levels of restriction that exist in some places, even knowing that due to mental illness including major depressive disorder and a long well-documented history of suicidal thoughts, if common-sense gun laws ever were enacted I’d likely be among the earliest groups of folks declared unfit to own one. I’m okay with that.

Getting To The Point

Frankly, though, I’m almost as sick of seeing the feeding frenzy of the pundit class every time a tragedy happens as I am of seeing tragedies related to guns on the news – more to the point, as sick as I am of gun tragedies happening.

There’s no reason for any of this madness to happen except that it’s profitable for the gun industry and we’ve ignored that for so long, in part because they convinced us to do so in ways we weren’t aware of, that we ended up letting them buy a significant portion of our government – in BOTH parties.

There’s no solution for it except us deciding that the lives of innocent people are worth more than the profits of gun manufacturers – yes, including the jobs they “create.”

We don’t want to face that honestly and deal with it honestly, and until we do rushing to be the first out of the gate with an overwrought think piece every time a school is shot up amounts to an attempt to pimp out the resulting pile of bodies just so you’ll take me seriously as a leftist or whatever. It’s gross and disgusting and it’s pandering to exactly the base and shallow human inclinations that we need to lose if we’re going to survive, and it’s nearly always done for profit.

No. If I’ve got something to say about it, I will – as I am here and now – and pandering is exactly the opposite of what I do so I don’t know why anyone would expect it on this issue. (NB: I’m burying it here so I can get an additional chuckle at the expense of people who don’t read the article, but I’ve shut all the ads off on this article precisely to avoid “making money off a tragedy.” I don’t think I can turn off the tip jar on a post-by-post basis.)

The Point

Look, I’m gonna make the point before I end up doing exactly what I said I wouldn’t.

I don’t see where there’s anything left to be said about any of this, except it’s all monstrous and horribly shameful, we created it ourselves because we let our thinking be guided by greed, fear, and selfishness, and the resulting ongoing trauma against our nation and especially our children will remain with us in the form of accumulating child corpses until we deal with that and start letting our thinking be guided by something better.

Either that or it’s time to just admit that we’re okay with a few thousand kids dying every year for our own “freedom.”

In 2022, according to the CDC, 3,597 children died by gunfire in the United States.

In 2023, those children and already probably a thousand more are conspicuous by their absence.

Since a little after Sandy Hook, when I realized that not even an elementary school full of corpses would be enough to slap the stupid out of the haploamorous contingent in this country, for the most part the gun debate has been conspicuous by its absence in my work.

Once in a while I get emotional and fire something off – to be clear, I’m not at all saying “I don’t care” – but generally I don’t talk about guns and gun control much – particularly in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting.

Students at memorial fence following shooting at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon May, 1998. Twenty-five years ago almost exactly from the date of this article. And it’s happening far more often now. Photo courtesy Ron Olsen (CC-BY-SA 4.0)

Until I see some evidence that anyone cares enough to do something REAL about it, the subject will remain largely conspicuous in my work by its absence because I won’t be part of the reason we’re secretly not doing as much as we could about it – I won’t partake in the “collateral benefit” by deliberately creating content to play to gun violence every time gun violence happens in this country. I won’t give myself a pathway to being in any way motivated in my thoughts on the matter and the expressions thereof by profit.

The reason for that – while acknowledging that I understand there are plenty of folks out there acting in good faith to do what they think is best to address the situation and I was right along with the crowd in this behavior for a long while before reconsidering my behavior – is that as far as I’m concerned the part of the cycle where everyone in my band of the spectrum lines up to spew impotent outrage is morally equivalent to ripping the bodies out of their coffins and dancing with them at the funerals, and I just can not find a reason to be involved in that.

Until I start seeing people care about all the conspicuous absences in their local elementary schools because of our negligence – Covid and guns, just in the last three and a half years, how many young lives have we just cast aside like so much used tissue in the relentless pursuit of gratifying our egos and turning a buck? and the evil bastards who do this are often the exact same people accusing women of “murdering children” when they terminate a pregnancy! – I feel strongly disinclined to take seriously any complaints about the absence of my voice in this debate.

There are enough voices in the debate for another thousand debates like it. Could stand a few conspicuous absences there.

I don’t need to add mine to the chorus, by and large – not in the least because when I do (as now) I want it to matter, and it won’t if it’s the same navel-gazing bullshit I and ten thousand other self-important twits have spewed out a thousand times each in the last ten years.

When the conscience of this nation is no longer conspicuous by its absence from gun control policy, when our children are no longer conspicuous by their absence from our lives after they’ve been stolen by the madness of unfettered capitalism and induced stupidity for profit in the form of a firearm, then perhaps we’ll have something worth talking about.

Until then, the discussion remains thus:
- we’re out of our minds on the gun thing in this country
- we don’t want to get in our minds about it because it’s profitable and the world is scary
- until we do, we’ll continue sacrificing roughly ten kids per day and climbing to the gods of profit and machismo.
Until we face that reality head on, there’s just not much to be said that will add anything of value to the conversation, no matter how well-researched, eloquent, or well-intended.

Until we face ourselves and admit that on the subject of gun control we’re absolutely off the rails and need serious re-evaluation, the most conspicuous absence in the arguments will remain our collective conscience.
May 8, 2023
Fear, Part 2
(This article originally appeared on my site in September 2013. It has been slightly updated for re-publication.)

Don’t be afraid.

Don’t be afraid to see where this is going.

Don’t be afraid to follow the trail to the end. It’ll be worth it.

As long as I have memories, I’ve had a “problem” with wearing my heart on my sleeve. I think that’s a universal metaphor, but in case anyone’s not familiar with it: that is to say I don’t hide what I think and feel. I’m very straightforward, blunt.

You might notice that I put that word problem in quotes, in the first paragraph above. Not because it’s a euphemism, but because I have never, ever understood – and never will – why so very many people are so embarrassed to be human in public. Why is “this is how I feel” ever a “problem?”

One of the reasons I think I developed this behavior – and if you think it’s something that only exists on Facebook you definitely haven’t been paying attention – is a simple matter of social self-defense: Why would I want to hang out with or be friends with or really want anything to do with someone who doesn’t care what I think or how I feel?

Part of it is also this: the most effective solution to evil and ignorance is to drag it out into the light and call it what it is. I “put myself out there.” And when someone turns their back, I know they weren’t really my kind of people in the first place.

When someone decides it’s “entertaining” that I’m angry or hurt or feeling in need of external validation or broke? To ridicule someone else’s difficulty or pain? That’s a giant red flag, to anyone: this person sucks. This person, the way this person thinks and acts, how this person treats other people when they believe there are no consequences…it is a Bad Thing.

But it’s not just a bad thing, It is the Bad Thing. Absolutely everything that is twisted up and broken in this world can be described by the same words, phrases, and concepts. From the schoolyard bully to the world’s most brutal dictators, there are unifying elements:
- lack of empathy
- lack of reason
- high degree of self-absorption; not “I think about myself a lot,” but “I think the world around me is mine, and if what I do has consequences in anybody else’s life, too bad for them.”
- low self-esteem expressed as a driving need to control every aspect of the world around them.
- absolute intolerance of criticism.
I’m sure there are others, but I’m writing off the top of my head. Whether it’s the neighborhood frotteur or the guy pushing the big red buttons, they all share those real “problems.”

So the problem is, right now the world is defined on those people’s terms – and make no mistake, those people are just as many “liberals” as “conservatives” as “independents” as “libertarians” as whatever. Your favorite social group is not exempt.

When you allow yourself to absorb the output of those people, you start to become like them. It spreads.

And it’s killing us.

In a trillion tiny cuts and a billion gaping wounds, it’s killing us off.

They have defined the rules of the game, those rules are designed to give them an exponentially increasing advantage in the game, and they have taught you that the only way to be happy and fulfilled in life is to play the game their way…knowing that you can never possibly win.

People wonder why I’m so adamant about not doing things like swiping other people’s original content, pretending to be a news site when you’re really a glorified RSS feed, being certain that when you present yourself as an information source you are an information source. Not a PR campaign for a political ideology or a ring toss on the back fairway of the political carnival for your own amusement and profit.

Because you see, it’s all the same thing. It’s all the same lack of empathy, the same lack of reason, the same self-centeredness, the same low core self-image, the same refusal to ever admit outwardly that they might be wrong about something; they might even be jerks.

They might be exactly the kind of jerks a lot of people reading them think they’re fighting against.

And they don’t care, and they make the rules.

And they’re wrong.

Those of you who read my Facebook page or blog regularly, or have for a while, know that I’ve had intermittent problems with various kinds of harassment from these sorts of people. My regular FB page readers will know what I mean – the “get a job,” “get a haircut,” post multi-terabyte screed examining my life crowd, the little group of trolls and the folks who run the BS “news” sites.

Those people control a big chunk of left-wing, progressive, and liberal conversation on Facebook, and by extension throughout the world. Millions of readers, millions of shares.

And they are no different from [insert your favorite “bad news” source here], no different from [pick a conspiracy theory about world domination you really like], no different from [your go-to example of an obviously bought and paid for politician].

They’re all the same, you see. Because it’s all the same behavior. Consistently. Every time.

They tell you what to think, they tell you why you should be angry or happy or sad. They tell you what constitutes success in life, and they ridicule you for failing to achieve it even as they do everything in their power to stop you. If you have something they want, they will take it. If they cannot take it they will destroy it. And if you don’t like it? Too bad.

They are in control of not just the US, but increasingly the rest of the world as well. To the point that many of the world’s most developed nations have taken undeniable, unquestionable turns back toward the tyranny and oppression that their very existence was dedicated to wiping off the face of this planet.

It’s all the same, you see.

And those of us whose eyes are open, those of us who have been those things and realized how wrong they were, understand the key method by which they hold their power:

They prevent you from communicating effectively.

To the very point of redefining truth so that only their version of reality is allowed. See, for instance, the Texas Board of Education attempting to teach mythology as science. See, for instance, the entire mentality that has led us to the point where facts themselves are no longer accepted as facts because we can no longer agree on what a fact is due to the deliberate erosion of our critical thinking skills over a period of generations.

To the extent that they not only teach us to be afraid to speak, but they teach us to make others afraid to speak.

Used to be politicians would blow smoke up our collective asses as a matter of routine, and we knew they didn’t believe their own lies and they knew they didn’t believe their own lies and the one that had enough things we liked (often lies, sometimes not) got to play Big Man In Charge. Sometimes, a politician could convince a lot of people to believe his or her lies, and they would gather more power and increasing ability to convince more people of their lies.

But now…they believe their own lies. There are really people on this planet, people who consider themselves intelligent and well-informed, people in leadership and decision-making roles that affect all our lives every minute of every day, who believe that deregulating business will empower individual liberty. There are people who believe a magical all-knowing and eternal creature imbues the zygote of human beings with a special quality that makes them separate and distinct from all other creatures the moment sperm meets egg. There are people who don’t believe global climate change is happening. There are people who believe the cure for diseases is to not be tested for them. One of those people is currently the President of the United States. There are people who believe that religious freedom means the freedom to force everyone else to respect and be indoctrinated by their religion. And these people will brook no dissent.

They’re all the same, where it counts.

The only way to stop them is to speak. Don’t be afraid to be wrong, and don’t be afraid to admit it. Don’t be afraid to admit you’ve made mistakes, to yourself or anyone else. Don’t be afraid to correct them. Don’t be afraid to let anyone else know you’ve been wrong or made a mistake. Don’t be afraid to need help, and don’t be afraid to ask for it. Don’t be afraid to not be good at everything or know everything, and don’t be afraid to seek knowledge and expertise wherever and whenever you can in whatever subject matter or pursuit interests you. Stop letting them make you afraid to be who you are.

But Speak.

Stand up and speak.

Get informed, but most importantly get real.

Get real.

Be who you are.

Stand up to those who tell you that because who you are isn’t a big money-maker, you’re a failure as a person and what you have to say or do in this world is unimportant. Stop thinking that because your job isn’t glamorous or cool, it’s not worth having even if you enjoy it.

Stop being a “what” and start being a “who.”

Don’t be a Democrat or Republican or liberal or conservative or libertarian. Stop worrying about whether you’re a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or a Taoist or a Buddhist or an atheist or agnostic or Jainist or Satanist or any other kind of –ist. Stop worrying about which direction you lean in, and which direction other people lean in.

Just be a decent human being.

There’s no excuse for looking at hungry people and going “well, do they deserve to eat? Did they earn their food according to the rules we set forth?”

There’s no excuse for a nation with 18 million empty homes to have three million homeless people. (And say, how’s the math work on that anyway? How do they figure those homes are going to be filled?)

There’s no excuse to ridicule people for having self-doubt or being misinformed (although one might fairly poke those who choose to be misinformed, one must also consider that most of us live every day of our lives being filled with misinformation).

Those aren’t decent things to do and every single person on this planet knows that in their heart. It’s not something I need to prove or support with argumentation and reason; you know it and I know it, and that’s just the truth. You might pretend you don’t know it. You might even have yourself allllllmost completely convinced. It’s not only self-evident, it’s reinforced consistently by every single important work of philosophy and religion in human history. It’s not just a nice thing to do; it is fundamental to the survival of our race. And we just love to tell ourselves that we are already doing everything right, it’s just the other people. The people who aren’t my -ism and don’t lean my direction.

But deep down, you know the way we treat each other sucks ass from top to bottom about 95% of the time, and you know that to some degree, that almost certainly includes you. It has certainly included me, although I like to think I’ve managed to get it down to maybe 60%. I’ve met people who got it down to maybe 20% or even 10.

But it’s always there, and it’s taking us over and dragging us back to the middle ages. If it continues, it’s a near-certainty that it will drag some parts of this planet back to pre-humanity while leaving the rest in prehistoric conditions supplemented by the junk our current attempt at evolution leaves behind.

The only way to change that is to stand up and speak out, and that includes within our own minds, to the bully inside ourselves. For many of us, from what I see when I look around this world, that’s got to be where it starts. That’s certainly where it had to start with me, and as the aphorism goes “we all fall short of the glory…” Pobody’s nerfect; not me, not you, not this religious figure or that deity or the other world leader. We must all, individually, cultivate the ability to accept that and not let it stop us from always seeking to improve our own treatment of others in thought and deed…but by no means can that be where it stops.

You must stand up, and you must speak.

Speak against the bullies, the liars, the tyrants.

Correct the misinformation and demand that those who propagate it stop doing so.

Admit your mistakes and share the lessons you’ve learned from them.

Stand up and speak out.

Don’t be afraid of being “infiltrated.”

Listen to your heart. I don’t care what religions you do or don’t belong to; I simply believe that each and every human being alive on this planet has a heart, and I believe those hearts tell us the same things. Call it instinct, call it learned behavior, call it whatever you want to call it; I’m a creative artsy-fartsy mofo and I choose to call it having a heart.

Listen to your heart and speak.

Stand up and refuse to be misled.

Stop hating, you know it’s a waste of time.

Stop getting wrapped up in ego-feeding internet arguments, you know it doesn’t solve anything.

Reject those who refuse to stop hating and stop fighting, and focus on how to retrain ourselves and, over time, make these things just as instinctive as procreation, and eventually those who refuse to stop hating and stop fighting will die off and we can get on with the business of evolving.

Focus on how to deprogram ourselves from the big lies we’ve been told throughout our recorded history.

That is how to “beat the one percent.” That is how to break the monopolies that exist on our information. That is how to turn back the rising tide of stupidity and distraction and misinformation. Start inside yourself. Get real. Stand up. Speak out. Be who you are. Do not submit to fear. That is the only freedom.

That’s the only way to bring humanity to a sane, sustainable condition.

If those of us who reject the tactics and confused mentality of the bullies and tyrants of the world just do that…they can’t win. It’s the only way they can’t win, because when it’s all said and done?

Well, when it’s all said and done…

You cannot be controlled if your mind is free.

Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.” – Robert Heinlein, “If This Goes On –“
June 17, 2020