Facebook Nazis

Update: As of 11/26/16, my Facebook account has been restored.

Addendum at the end of the post

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I’ve been banned from Facebook.

My account has been suspended supposedly for violation of community standards.

My profile is still active, you can still access the page and comment on posts that haven’t been deleted by Facebook. But I myself am locked out.  I can’t post, comment, or access the Facebook messenger system.

 

The community standard I violated is apparently the one where you’re not allowed to criticize actual, no fooling, Nazis.

 

Yes, actual Nazis.

That’s right, I was banned for criticizing an actual Nazi.

This is the post that got me banned:

I don't envy Mike Godwin, his law is getting a hell of a workout

I've got hundreds of angry messages here telling me to stop calling Trump supporters fascists. And I would, except for the part where I keep running into ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS.

This guy for example. He's upset at my "brand of profanity" (I used the term "ball-gargling" in reference to Sean Hannity. My apologies, but as a retired military officer and professional writer when I see somebody gargling balls I'm required by law to use the technical term. I digress), but sees nothing profane about naming himself after an infamous French collaborator and member of the Waffen SS. Not to mention his "heroes" are literally a list of fascists, fascist murderers who became the actual Nazi party, and white supremacists.

And then there's "Jewry." Just right there, in a sentence, like you know that's something people who aren't Nazis do.

So again, you don't want to be called a Nazi?

Then stop hanging out with actual Nazis. Just stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

Stop hanging out with Nazis. Don't be polite to Nazis. Don't think that the First Amendment means you have to be respectful of Nazis. Don't pretend Nazis have a valid point of view. They're Nazis.

Stop standing next to Nazis.

Stop acting like Nazis.

Stop cheering Nazis.

Stop voting for the people Nazis vote for.

They're fucking NAZIS. You don't have to be polite to them. It's okay to hate them. They're fucking NAZIS.

And for the love of Dread Cthulhu, stop using the word "Jewry."

 

 

Now, nothing I posted violates Facebook’s community standards.

If you plug “Henri Fenet” into Facebook’s search function, you’ll find literally hundreds of neo-Nazis praising the ideology of Nazism on Facebook. Talking about Nazis is okay. Posting comments favorable to Nazis is okay.  Being an actual Nazi is okay with Facebook.

Nor is it use of profanity, in fact, if you type “fuck” into Facebook’s search function, you will literally find tens of thousands of results of that word posted to Facebook, including actual Facebook Communities and Groups that use the word in their titles. For example:

In fact, those who complained to Facebook about the post, flagged it as “spam” because they couldn’t find an actual violation of Facebook’s community standards – despite the fact that my post is obviously not spam by any definition including Facebook’s.

So Facebook removed the post and then banned me from the platform for the next 24 hours.

The people who do this sort of thing, do so specifically in order to silence people they don’t like, not because they are actually offended. This is targeted harassment specifically designed to suppress people like me.

In my case, I’ve been targeted by certain rabidly obnoxious members of the Science Fiction community and more recently by actual neo-Nazis and Trump supporters. These people spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over my Facebook page and scheming to find ways to have me shut down.

As I noted the last time this happened, unfortunately this is the risk you take when you sign on to Facebook and other social media sites.  You don’t control the platform. Hell, you can’t even talk to the those who run the platform. And the size of it makes any attempt at real-time moderation by the platform managers a complete joke. Neither Facebook nor Twitter has made any real effort to prevent harassment, bullying, or any of the other more unfortunate aspects of social media. And Facebook has made no effort whatsoever to prevent abuse of their system and they’ve made it impossible for the victims to do anything about it. They are in fact complicit and they are very likely to become more so in the future. 

My ban from the platform is the result of Facebook’s lousy architecture, which lets bullies and harassers abuse Facebook’s automated system – a system that was supposedly put in place to make Facebook safer – and I have absolutely no recourse for protest or appeal.

Despite the fact that I personally bring more than 90,000 people to the table on Facebook every single day, the people who profit from the content I create simply don’t care.

If Facebook was serious about their supposed commitment to free speech and the safety of their users, they would take immediate steps to publicly remove those who abuse the system. But not only do they not remove those who abuse the system, they actively protect those abusers and keep them anonymous.

 

I’d like to say that this won’t silence me, or keep me from posting to the community I’ve created on Facebook.

 

But the truth of the matter is that it very well could no matter what my determination might be.

If Facebook allows fascists, Nazis, Sad Puppies, racists, bigots, haters, and other assorted mal-adapted bilge to continue to abuse their system, then it’s likely I’ll be permanently banned from the platform. And I have no control over that – less I choose to knuckle under, raise my arm, and shout Sieg Heil with the raging mob.

Those who know me, know that I am a veteran who fought under the flag of the United States of America for more than 20 years, who fought for what that flag used to represent, can probably guess which way I’ll go.

Given America’s new acceptance of fascism, I suspect platforms like Facebook and Twitter will either have to become more accommodating of actual fascist ideology and less tolerant of people like me, or risk going to the wall themselves – especially given that our new president has made it very clear that he intends to directly control how the media, including social media, reports on his administration.

I guess we’ll find out.

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Addendum: Comments on this post are now well over 200. When that happens, if you want to see all of the comments, including those nested under other comments, then you have to scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “load more.” You may have to do this several times. // Jim

Fund Drive

Like anybody else, I have bills to pay.

I have a mortgage and a kid in college and the cat needs to eat.

As Stonekettle Station has increased in popularity, it takes up more and more of my time to do proper research and analysis, write the content you come here for, and manage the site, commenting, and the associated social media feeds.

And when I’m doing that, I’m not writing novels or short stories or paying copy.

That said, as a number of folks have noted, I’ve been a little light on posting here lately. This is for several reasons mostly having to do with travel and real world issues. I’ve got a number of things going on my life at present which require a significant amount of my time. It’s nothing horrible, don’t panic and please don’t write to ask. I appreciate your concern, but not everything I do is public domain. It’s simply that a number of things happened all at once which require my attention in priority over writing this blog, the mundane details of which don’t need to be shared publicly – though they will likely become fodder for future articles and projects. That’s the best part about being a writer, everything is grist for the mill (too bad it’s not likewise tax deductible). The situation should be resolved shortly and I’ll be back to publishing at least one in-depth essay each week along with some shorter pieces.

Now, based on my business model, every once in a while I need to run a donation drive. 

 

I don’t like this.

 

I don’t like asking for money.

Ideally, I write an article and if you like it enough, you’ll kick in.  And thankfully, you do so often enough that I can survive doing this. I’ll never get rich doing it, but it beats writing advertising jingles or flipping burgers. That is going to become even more important to me as my business model evolves. More on that later.

But as I said, every once in a while I have to run a donation campaign. I refuse to do it more than once a year. And it makes me very uncomfortable to say, hey, give me money and, you know, maybe I’ll write something you like later. Don’t get me wrong, you toss the coins and I’ll dance like a monkey in a shiny silver vest, sure, but I’ve been thinking about this and I’d like you to get more. So here’s what I’ve come up with:

As many of you know, I’m also an artist.

I turn trees into things, sometimes firewood but usually stuff more like this:

 

This is a beautiful piece of California redwood. When I acquired it, there were a number of naturally occurring cracks on one side caused by drying. Now, normally a turner (someone who works on a lathe) would cut the piece down to solid wood and throw the flawed part away. But redwood in this size is expensive and increasingly difficult to acquire and I really didn’t want to throw any of it away.

So the flaws became features.

The cracks were filled with resin and stabilized to hold the wood together while it was being worked on the lathe. Then after turning the bowl was hand carved with a variety of tools to highlight the natural features and give the piece character. It’s 12” in diameter and finished with walnut oil and soft wood wax which gives it a deep luster and complex finish.  It’s food safe, suitable for nuts or hard candies, but it is probably better suited as an art piece for display.

It is signed via laser-etch on the bottom:
 

Typically my artwork sells so fast I can’t keep up with it (how terrible right? Every artist should have such problems). This piece is different. I’ve had this piece available for sale for a while now on my Etsy store, but it hasn’t sold because it’s simply too expensive.

So here’s what I’m going to do:

- Donations of $50 or more:

Anybody who donates $50 or more during the month of September 2015 will be put in the running to win this piece.

- Donations of less than $50:

Anybody who donates between $1 and $49 during the month of September will be eligible to win a handmade customized laser-engraved pen in the same style I recently made for a number of famous writers at the World Science Fiction Convention (Sasquan) in Spokane, Washington.  I will randomly select TWO winners in this category. Winners will be able to specify what they want engraved on the pen within certain limitations (you can only fit so much on a pen barrel folks).

 

Additionally, the three winners will each (if they so desire) suggest a topic for an in-depth essay on current events and I will write it for publication here on Stonekettle Station.

Winners will be selected October 1st.

To donate, click on the “Donation” button on the upper right side of this screen and follow the directions.

Note: Those of you who already donate via an automatic monthly payment, you’ll be entered automatically in the drawing. 

 

Thank you.

 

_________________

Addendum: To be clear, this is not a lottery or a raffle.  Donations are voluntary subscription fees specifically in support of this blog, i.e. you’re paying for content not a chance to win something. I am not claiming any tax-exempt status or charity. Donations are considered business income and I pay all applicable state and federal taxes on that income and I have the records to prove it.

The bowl, the pens, those are my artwork, created and paid for by me.  As such I chose to randomly give them away to supporters, just as I gave away pens to writers and supporters at Worldcon last month. I’m simply using this month’s subscriptions as the pool to select from since I have no other way to determine who readers are. 

You are not paying for a chance to win a prize, you’re paying for the content of this blog and my associated social media feeds.  // Jim

Stonekettle Station Redesign

As I mentioned in previous posts, recent events have caused me to take a long hard look at what I do here. 

Circumstances and thieving bastards have forced me to take some long overdue steps to protect my intellectual property. Additionally, as has been noted by my family and many readers, it’s long past time that I get serious about transitioning to professional writing as a full time occupation.  And, again as noted by a number of readers, the design of Stonekettle Station was starting to look more than a bit outdated.

As such, I’ve been making some changes over the last month. One of those changes is a redesign of Stonekettle Station itself. If you haven’t noticed already, the appearance of the blog has been significantly overhauled (If you don’t notice a new look, try clearing your cache and refreshing your browser). Most of the obvious changes are cosmetic, I wanted to update Stonekettle Station to more reflect contemporary blog design and to better protect myself.

Since a number of folks asked, the background picture is Pioneer Peak in Palmer, Alaska – that is, it’s my backyard.  And yes, I took the picture. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a photographer in addition to being a writer and artist. Some of my photography will start appearing for sale via a link on this site in the near future.

Not all the changes to Stonekettle Station are cosmetic. I've changed how things work under the hood, streamlining the underlying structure of the website which should speed up load times and make things work better for both you and me. You’ll also note that I’ve updated the information appearing on the right sidebar, including my bio which now includes the occupation “freelance writer” because I’m now getting paid for some of my work.  Speaking of which, as I move towards becoming a full-time professional writer with a kid in college, it has become necessary for me to monetize the blog. Many of you asked if you could help keep me in cheese sandwiches (writers run on cheese sandwiches, coffee, and strong whiskey. That's a fact and you can look it up on the internet). The answer to that question is: yes, hell yes, and thank you. There is now a "donate" button displayed prominently on the right side of the main page. You may, if you think the content here is worth anything, give me money directly through PayPal or via whatever form of electronic tender you desire including credit/debit cards. You may give as much or as little as you like. You can even set up a reoccurring donation on a monthly or yearly basis. It’s entirely up to you.   

Additionally, within the next several days, Google ads will begin appearing on the blog. I will attempt to limit them and make them as unobtrusive as possible. But ads are how websites make real money, especially if they pull in the volume of traffic Stonekettle Station now does. And I'm not in a position where I can ignore that opportunity. If you're running an ad-blocker, you won't see them but I won't make anything from your visit either. And that's okay, I'm not asking you to turn off your ad-blocking plug-in. But you might consider a small donation if you don't want to be bothered with the ads when they begin to appear.  Note: this holds true for all blogs like Stonekettle Station and other small independent news sites. If you enjoy what you get there, you might consider turning off your ad-blocker or making a donation to help keep these places running. But again, that’s entirely up to you.

Let me be clear, I am not asking you to donate. I'm not asking you to suffer the ads. You are welcome to continue enjoying (or hating) Stonekettle Station for free.  But if you do choose to donate or allow ads then you will have a huge warm fuzzy feeling of awesome goodness, and I will personally put in a good word for you with the deity of your choice  –or–  I will raise a glass of good Irish whiskey in your honor, whichever tickles your fancy.

Expect continued changes and refinements over the next few weeks. Hopefully this will make your visit here better. Feel free to offer suggestions, I’ll probably ignore them, but hey, doesn’t hurt to try.

And thanks. Thanks for everything, thanks for coming by, thanks for reading, thanks for your interest, thanks for your kind words and constructive feedback. I sincerely appreciate it.

//Jim Wright, Stonekettle Station

Thieving Bastards

I wrote an essay.

It was called Absolutely Nothing, an answer to Edwin Star’s famous question: War, what is it good for?

That essay has been called a savage indictment of the Iraq War, and I suppose that it is. I was there. I lost friends there. I have strong opinions about that conflict and those who sent us into it and who now want us to go back.

That essay struck a nerve with people.

And it became widely popular.

And now it’s spread across the world, gone viral, millions have read it.

Those people, they turned me into a meme, an internet sensation. They took my face, my words, my life and slapped their URL on it and spread it across the world.

My essay was a hit.

Simple, right? Anybody could do it.  You just sit down, type some words, fifteen minutes maybe, hit publish, and boom! instant fame.

Easy, right?

Sure, anybody could do it. Anybody.

 

Except, of course that it is not easy.

 

And not just anybody can do it, very few can in point of fact.

I’m not blowing my own horn here, but I’m not going to pretend any false modesty either.

Not everybody can do it, but I can and that is a simple provable fact.

Don’t believe me? You try it. Go on start a blog. Write something. Put it out there. No tricks. No gimmicks. Just write something. Go on. I’ll wait. Just sit down, type some words, fifteen minutes maybe, hit publish and give me a call back when you achieve the level of notoriety my essay did.  Or the one before it. Or the one before that. Go on, I’ll wait. Let me know when they turn you into a meme.

Oh come on, give it a go. Because anybody can do it right?

You know what you’re going to discover?

You going to discover the same blunt truth every naïve newbie learns, and that is this: Writing is work. Hard work. Exhausting work. Frustrating work.

Blogging is work. Hard work. To do it right, takes skill and dedication and work. And yes, it is writing in every sense of the word.

The kind of writing that created my essay Absolutely Nothing? That kind of writing? Well, you see, there’s not one goddamned thing easy about it – because to write something like that takes your life.

It takes your life.

Your whole life.

Absolutely Nothing was two thousand, six hundred words long.  About six pages in any standard 12-point font, double-spaced with 1” margins on standard letter-sized paper. Six pages. You want to know what it took to put those twenty-six hundred words together?

Do you?

Because I’ll tell you.

Fifteen minutes? Hell. Writing that article took 30 years of my life.

You want to know why that essay resonated with so many people?

You want to know why you could feel the raw emotion and the rage and the pain?

You want to know why the words sing?

You want to know what that took? It took enlisting in the Navy at 21 years of age.  It took decades of service, working my way up through the ranks. It took sailing across tens of thousands of miles of ocean. It took walking on six continents. It took endless watches and days without sleep. It took being hungry and cold and being scared out of my mind. It took three wars and a dozen deployments short of war. It took making Chief Petty Officer, a rank only a small percentage of enlisted Sailors achieve, one which required years of dedicated effort and sustained superior performance, at sea, on land, thousands of hours of work and study, years of experience under conditions most civilians would never understand or be able to hack. It took learning how to lead, it took pain and setbacks, it took earning the trust and respect of those around me – men far bigger and far tougher than me. It took earning a college degree one credit at time, when I could find a few minutes to study between training and deployments and sixteen hour work days. It took making Chief Warrant Officer, a commissioned rank and a distinction that comes to only a very few of the very best of the Chief’s Ranks, one that cannot be given but must be earned through more than a decade of dedication and sacrifice. It took serving in war zones around the world. It took going to Iraq. It took volunteering for and leading hundreds of missions. It took spending months, years, away from my family and friends, twenty years of missed birthdays and Christmases. It took missing family funerals, and it took standing at attention while they buried my shipmates under the cold white marble. It took leading men and women into harm’s way over and over and getting them all home again. It took watching my comrades die, one hundred and twenty-eight as of today, of my friends and shipmates and comrades in arms who came home in boxes. It took dozens more, those who returned alive but not whole, shattered, broken, torn, and bloodied in body and spirit.  More, it took a decade of work, of writing every single fucking day. Working to improve my skill and craft, to find my voice, to create my unique style, to learn how to fit words together in a way that is distinctly mine, to figure out how to reach people and gather an audience one precious mind at a time. It took working far into the night. It took getting up early. It took hundreds of hours of dedication and frustration and sweat. It took time away from other things I should have been doing. It cost me money, thousands of dollars to build my site, buy the books, to take the classes, to learn the craft. It cost me time with my family, with my wife and son. And most of all, it took my experience, my hate and my pain and my rage and my love and my admiration for those who died and who were maimed and who served with steadfast loyalty under the most terrible of conditions.

That’s what it took.

That’s what it took to write those two thousand six hundred words. It took my service and my experience and my goddamned life.

And that, right there, is what syndicated talk radio host Mike Malloy stole from me.

That is what you steal from writers and artists and singers and musicians and painters and photographers and dancers and other creative people when you take our work without asking, without permission, without payment.

You, you thieving bastards, you steal our lives.

And you have the audacity to wonder at my anger? You have the unmitigated gall to question my outrage at your rape? You who sat here, safe and fat, you, you sons of bitches, you deserve nothing but contempt.

You’re stealing my life, you fucker.

Mr. Wright I have never been so disappointed with anyone as I am with you. Money? thats what your about? you say that Mike Malloy who works for free is a theive jus because he read your geat letter on his show? Mikes doesn’t make any money from your letter. Mike a real American who calls out merecenarie cowards like you .your letter is to important for you to want money it needs to be out their and should be free to all americans! but your mad because people read it and you didn’t “get paid”? you are not a writer you are a bloger and you need to learn that words on the internet are free for ALL. you need to stop whining and listens to Mike maybe you’ll learn something! [sic]
  – Stacy [M]

Mercenary cowards.

Mercenary coward.

I gave more than twenty years of my life to this country.

I served in a war I didn’t agree with for my country.

I watch my friends and brothers and sisters die, for my country.

I wrote an essay, a product of my skill and viewpoint and experience and that very service.

I published it on my own website, for my own readers.

Mike Malloy and others took my words, my life, without permission, but I’m the mercenary coward?

My “letter” is too important for me to want money.

Really?

My words are too important for me to want money. I guess I’ll just live on the fame and the glory then. I can’t wait to see my mortgage company’s face when I tell them that my words are too important for me to pay them in actual money – but hey, maybe I can offer them some exposure on my blog, eh? Maybe they’ll cut me some slack, because my words are so important. Yeah. Maybe Mike Malloy will pitch in and give them a little “free” coverage too.

My words are too important. Why is that you, suppose? Is it because I spent my life writing that essay?

But those “important” words, they’re not worth anything?

Funny, a few days ago those words and my authority to speak them were worth something to Mike Malloy. They were obviously worth something to his listeners, the hundreds who first wrote to offer praise and then wrote in disappointed sour condemnation, the people who pay Mike Malloy Radio Productions LLC $59.40 per year for a subscription to his podcasts, but call me a mercenary and a whore and a greedy coward.

Malloy works for free? He does? Really?

Given that he and his wife both make up Mike Malloy Radio Productions LLC, I have to wonder how they pay their mortgage, put food on the table, make their car payments, put clothes on their kids – if they don’t make any income from their radio show? 

How is it that Mike Malloy makes a living from his words, and that makes him a hero of progressive talk radio, but me? If I want to make a living from my words, my experience, my life, I’m just a greedy mercenary whore.

Mike Malloy is a great American. Me? I’m a coward.

You know what it took for me to write that essay while Mike Malloy, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Ann Coulter, and the rest of these thieving bastards were safe in their studios? I and those like me were out there in the dark and dangerous corners of the world fighting the wars these jackasses goaded America into. That’s what it took.

And that, right there, is why Mike Malloy lacks both the skill and the authority to write Absolutely Nothing.

Jim. Thank you for your letter sent to Mike Malloy. His reading of your letter on Monday night gave me the chills. Unfortunately, like most of us, my blood was already boiling. I wish I had been prepared to record it since I do not have access to the podcast. If you have the letter posted online, please share the link with me. I'll share it with my family and friends. Thank you for your service and your dedication to the truth.
   – Mark [T]

Access to Mike Malloy’s podcasts.

He wants me to give him my essay for free because he can’t afford to pay for Mike Malloy’s podcasts.

So I gave it to him and I wonder how ole Mikey feels about getting stiffed out of his money?

[… ]all he did was read your public blog aloud, and give you a bunch of free advertising.  And believe me, I am sure he is NOT making money off reading your blog.   In fact, he told everyone on his show about your site!  If anything, he brought YOU people going to your site.  I had never heard of it before. So,  I really don't get why you are so pissed off.   Why are you blogging if you don't want people to read it?   You sound really litigious.  If you are looking for deep pockets to sue, you are barking up the wrong tree.  Try Rush Limbaugh!   I'm sad and sorry I ever went to your site!
    - Susan [S], Malloy Chat Forum moderator

Except, of course, for that part where Malloy is in point of fact making money off my intellectual property. He makes money from advertising revenue and from subscriptions to his podcast – recordings that contain my material.

As to the “free” advertising. I didn’t ask for it. I don’t need it. I’m not interested in it.

This is no different than if a sign painter put up a billboard with your name on it unsolicited, and then stopped by your house to help himself to your property as compensation. In addition to writing, I’m an artist. I work at the lathe, I turn wood into very expensive artwork. Do you think I’d be grateful if Mike Malloy walked into my studio, took one of my pieces without paying and then showed it around town, and when I protested said, “Hey, whatcha bitchin’ about? I drummed you up some business, didn’t I, you greedy fucking whore.”

You have no idea what it took to create that artwork. My dad taught me how to turn when I was kid. My dad is dead now and that memory, those skills, the reflexes in my hands are all I have of him. More than 40 years of my life have been spent in developing the skills he gave me, I’ve invested tens of thousands of dollars into the tools it takes to make my artwork, and I’ve invested hundreds of hours into the piece you stole. I’m the artist, I decide what it’s worth. A deal goes two ways, you don’t just take it and give me something I don’t want or need, something that is worthless to me in return. You took my life, asshole, I decide what that’s worth, not you. Malloy’s “exposure” is worthless to me.

I don’t need Mike Malloy, he needs me. 

He didn’t serve, did he? He wasn’t sent into war on a lie, was he? His experience is what? Sitting on his flabby ass behind a microphone? No, he needed me, he needed my words, my experience, he needed me to lend validity and gravity to his message. And just like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and all those bastards the essay was about, Mike Malloy used my experience and that of my comrades to further his own agenda – and then discarded us when he was done.  To him veterans like me, we’re good for a few page hits, a bit of advertising revenue, but not worth actually paying for. Talk about a metaphor for this nation. It’s not enough we got fucked by our own government, and ass-raped by the system that was supposed to care for us when we got home, no, no, the Mike Malloys of the world see us and figure they can squeeze just few more drops of blood from our lives.

CWO Wright, thank you for saying like it is. Oooarah! Heard it on the Mike Malloy show. I posted it on my blog and I’m emailing the full text to everybody I know!
  - Gus [A] and he did, post the full text on his blog.

Hi Jim: Thanks for your awesome article I have sent around on facebook and my website because it speaks the truth so many want to deny. I will catch up with you later as I am on the run. View my website to see we agree on much. One Vietnam Vet to another from Iraq, and with a perspective that shines and blazes. Peace, Love and Joy.
  - Daniel C. [L], and he did, post the full text on his blog and his facebook page.

Heard it on the Mike Malloy show and if he can just use your words for nothing, guess we can too.

Peace and love, Brother, right in the ass.

Let me guess, you guys used to work for Colin Powell, didn’t you?

Mr. Wright. Heard your letter read on the Mike Malloy show. Perfect! Way to take down these criminals! I wanted you to know we printed out a thousand copies and we’re handing them out to every customer at [coffee shop] along with directions on how to get Mike’s podcast. Thank you and thanks to Mike Malloy!
  - Cindi [M]

Well, ain’t that just grand?

Yeah, why don’t you just hand my essay out for free with directions on how to buy a subscription to Mike Malloy’s radio show? Sure, that’s just fucking great.

Boy, tell me again how Mikey did it for me, because I just never get tired of hearing that story.

He [Jim Wright, me] puts his thoughts out there very well. Facebook is a marketplace of ideas, passed around and shared. His thoughts got picked up. Were they attributed to him? Then I don't understand the anger. If they were not, then... what? Sue? Pitch a hissy fit? I used to enjoy SKS. It's quickly losing its appeal. And, I'm a writer.
  - Nancy [R]

And I’m a writer.  Really? Well then, Nancy, why don’t you write for Mike? You can do it for the exposure, that and $59.40 a year will get you a subscription to his show.

Like they say, artists tend to die of exposure – they laugh when they say it, but they’re not kidding.

Sorry you're going so deep into this. Mike Malloy and Stephanie Miller are two of the best radio hosts around. You should have been happy to have them spreading the word about you. Oh well.
  - William [C]

Yeah, yeah. I'm the problem. I'm the enemy. Three days ago I was a happy Jim Wright fan, sharing his stuff and thrilled to see him get some much deserved attention. Now it's all going to go to shit. Now you folks are going to troll other people who share your views and wanted to help spread them. But I'm the problem. Enjoy!
  - William [C]

William was yelling at my Facebook audience.

And yes, Bill, you are the problem.

You’re perfectly happy to get hundreds of hours of free entertainment from me, to have a place that you can comment and like minded people to associate with, a safe place that I protect – built through my efforts and my work at no expense to you. And you think I should be grateful when people steal my life? You’re right, you and people like you, you’re the problem.  You’re a fucking vampire, Bill, sucking the blood out of people like me for your own nourishment and giving nothing back, expecting me to dance and caper for your entertainment without compensation.

You don’t give a damn about me, you selfish little parasite, you just want free blood and you don’t care where it comes from.

You are indeed the problem.

(William was unfriended. Friendship, at least with me, is a two way street)

I've been listening to Mike Malloy for years, off and on. Same with Stephanie Miller. I read your post, which has been everywhere, and thought it was fucking great. But to learn that you thought you should get something out of it... I've had my 15 minutes of fame. Now you've had yours, with a lot bigger splash than I had. Why I did, I was doing for my children and the children of everyone. Why did you do it? To get paid? Mike's not about the money, trust me on that. He gets fucking death threats, and he lives in Georgia to boot. Not easily scared. You took it way over the top. Say you're sorry and move on.
  - Steve [V]

Oh, right. You were doing it for the children, all the little children of the world.

What about my children?

What about my children? Is my son not worth anything?

Oh, and just for the record, Steve, I get death threats too – from selfish assholes just like you. And Georgia? Really? Don’t make me laugh, Jackass, put on your big boy pants and come try Alaska sometime. Alaska? Fuck, how about you try Iraq, asshole.

You really have to love this idiot. Mike Malloy steals my material, offers me something I find utterly worthless as compensation, and I, me, I should say I’m sorry? How much you want to bet that Steve beats his wife. Smack! Why do you keep making me hit you? It’s your fault! Smack! Say you’re sorry and move on! Smack!

Seriously, fuck you, Steve.

 

I have a thousand more messages just like those. Hell, two thousand, I don’t know, I stopped counting.

I think it would have been easier on folks like Mike Malloy and his fan club, not to mention Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, if people like me had just gotten ourselves killed in Iraq.

Sure, it’s a whole lot easier to ass-rape a dead veteran than a live one.

We make better symbols dead, you can put whatever words you like in our mouths and you don’t have the trouble of paying for our healthcare or our talent.

You want to know the really ironic part?

You want to see naked hypocrisy?

Check this out:

All materials contained in this Site are protected by international trademark and copyright laws and must only be used for personal, non-commercial purposes. This means that you may only view or download material from this Site for your own use and you must keep all copyright and other proprietary notices attached to the downloaded material.

The reproduction, duplication, distribution (including by way of email, facsimile or other electronic means), publication, modification, copying or transmission of material from this Site is STRICTLY PROHIBITED unless you have obtained the prior written consent of MIKE MALLOY RADIO PRODUCTIONS, LLC or unless it is expressly permitted by this Site. The material covered by this prohibition includes, without limitation, any text, graphics, logos, photographs, audio or video material or stills from audiovisual material available on this Site. The use of materials from this Site on any other web site or networked computer environment is similarly prohibited.

That’s a (fair use) excerpt from the Mike Malloy Radio Productions LLC website regarding use of his intellectual property.

You can read the whole thing here and ain’t that a peach? Malloy’s material is his protected property, but mine isn’t. You need written permission to use his material, but mine you can just take without permission or compensation. Malloy demands you respect his property rights, but me? I’m a greedy mercenary whore.

I wrote Malloy, he refused to answer.

I became angry, I said so on social media. He came snooping around (and don’t pretend he didn’t, he “liked” several comments left by his cronies on my Facebook page. I can prove he was there). Eventually Malloy responded:

Well, I'll be goddamned! I read your piece on the air because it appealed to me. I decided it might appeal to others. Big fucking mistake. I had no idea you are such a mercenary, greedy type. Wow. I had no idea you are such an amateur as to bitch when someone (me) gives you publicity. Make money off what you wrote? You have to be kidding. This is where your amateurishness is so apparent. In the first place, reading a piece on the air is considered "fair use." And, um, how would I "make money?" As far as your web site and what it says there about "using" your "stuff", sorry, but I've never been  to your site.  A friend emailed a link from Australia. Now, take your ugly, mercenary words and go back to wherever you came from. And, strong suggestion: Back off with your threats, especially on social media. You are leaving a very public and incriminating trail. Sue me? For reading  something you wrote on the air? Un-fucking-believable! Sorry I rattled your cage, JIm. My mistake. Big time. Trust me on this: you just disappeared. - MM

He took my material because it appealed to him.

Amateur bitch. Make money off what you wrote, you have to be kidding.

Funny thing about that, as the famous professional writer David Gerrold noted on my Facebook page – amateurs don’t get paid.

How would he make money? I’m guessing that would be the same way he makes money off of his broadcast every single goddamned day. Q.E.D.

Leaving aside that fact that I somehow doubt a man like this would have any friends, he claims he never heard of Stonekettle Station or what it says here about “using my stuff” (you know, exactly like it says on his site about using his stuff), he says a friend emailed him a “link.” So he read my essay and directed people to my site – now how did he do that if he didn’t know where it was? He expects others to adhere to his rules regarding his property, but doesn’t bother with finding out how I feel about my property even though he obviously knew where my site was.

Progressives like this? These are the people that give right wing extremists legitimacy – ironically the very people Mike Malloy rails against on a daily basis. 

When the Tea Party and the militiamen out at the Bundy Ranch threaten to shoot down Americans over collectivism, this right here is what they are talking about, i.e. liberals and progressives like Mike Malloy who think that products of work and ideas of intellect are community property and can be confiscated without agreeable compensation and distributed freely to others – except for their own property, of course.  This is exactly what the right fears, and correctly so it would seem. Quod erat demonstrandum.

When my own readers attempted to contact Malloy and complain, they received various responses:

Uh, do YOURSELF a BIG favor and get the fuck off my email. Oh, and your attempt to sound cool is way missing the bullseye. Thanks.

Are you serious? Or just another right wing head fuck? Don't answer. I don't care. Do this: Get the fuck off my email.

Mr. Malloy read and commented on some of Mr. Wright's brilliant blog post, which was forwarded to him from another listener, then praised Mr. Wright's comments on the show last night. He also urged his listeners to contact Mr. Wright at his StoneKettle site to tell him how much they appreciated his powerful, important work. Imagine the shock to then receive this response from Mr. Wright following the program last night:
"At the moment, I regard Mr. Malloy as a fucking thief and I'm considering suing his radio program into the poor house. I've sent him a message, but he hasn't responded. If any of you know this jackass personally, have him contact me. Otherwise I'm going to pull a Harlan Ellison and drop the flying monkeys on his head. I don't know Stephanie Miller either. I've never heard of her show. I never sent her a letter either. She also didn't get my permission to use my stuff. She's number two on my list. Same deal. These people are making money off of my material without so much as sending me a thank you card. This is NOT flattery, it's THEFT. Let me reiterate something here, my material is my intellectual property. This is clearly stated on my webpage. If you steal from me, I will hunt you the fuck down, flay your skin off, and wear your dead heart for a goddamned hat"
This is what provoked the email Mr. Malloy sent to Mr. Wright this morning (which was later, apparently, posted on his FB page). Was Mr. Malloy's email to Mr. Wright so outrageous, given this invective and threat he received from Mr. Wright?

Yeah, about that last one.

Notice anything funny about that?

“Imagine the shock to then receive this response from Mr. Wright following the program last night: … he hasn’t responded. If any of your know this jackass personally, have him contact me…”

Now ask yourself something, if I sent that to Malloy, then why would I say “he hasn’t responded. If any of your know this jackass…”

That quote was taken from my Facebook page, not from any message sent to Malloy.

Yes, that is correct, Malloy’s response to complaints that he stole material from me and then acted like a jackass … was to steal one of my Facebook posts as justification.

Make of that what you will.

As I said on Facebook, frankly it just doesn't leave me feeling very motivated.

 

This was never about the money.

I give away my stuff to my readers, to the community I have created, for my own reasons. But those words are still mine, no different than if I gifted my friends with the artwork from my woodshop.

The last three things I’ve written went viral, what if the next one does too?

Is this what I have to look forward to? Theft? Hate? Hypocrisy? It’s bad enough I get that from the rightwing nuts and the Tea Party cranks and the Sarah Palin worshippers. Now I have to watch out for the progressives and the liberals too?

It’s getting so that I can’t tell the right wing haters from the left.

I’m not welcome on the left. I for damned sure don’t belong on the right.  And I don’t fit into the middle. I have become an alien in my own land, a stranger to the country I fought for, and I look around and realize that I am not alone in this.

I wonder, you know, maybe I should have just stayed in the business of killing people, maybe I should have just stayed in Iraq.

At least there I knew who the enemy was.

Defensive Wounds

 

“I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”
   - J.B. Books, The Shootist, 1976

 

You ever date somebody who takes out every bad relationship they ever had on you?

Somebody, somewhere, done them wrong.

So they’ve decided to get even by making you pay?

You entered into a relationship with what you thought was a whole person, and then without warning, whammo, you get run over by the baggage train? Toot Toot POW! and you’re laying on the pavement dazed and bleeding and wondering, “what the hell?”

That ever happen to you?

It happened to me. Once or twice. Maybe three times.

Maybe four.

Okay, maybe I’m a slow learner.

Way, way back when, I dated this girl who, according to her, had been cheated on repeatedly, verbally abused, mentally abused, physically abused, disrespected, talked down to, unloving distant mom, absent dad, didn’t get a pony, yadda yadda and so on and so forth. 

According to her, all of her previous relationships were with cheating, lying scumbags.

And she was bound and determined to make me pay for each and every one of those jerks.

Needless to say, it didn’t last long, that relationship.

But it lasted way longer than it should have.

And that was my fault.

After repeatedly apologizing for all men everywhere and after pointing out, repeatedly and with greater and greater degrees of stridency, that I was not any of those guys, that I hadn’t treated her badly in any way whatsoever, I finally realized that it didn’t matter. It just didn’t matter what I said or did. It didn’t matter how many times I apologized for my gender, for all of us men, everywhere. There was no defense. Everything was an admission of guilt, because, well, I was a man and therefore guilty by association. There was no way I’d ever be anything but a punching bag for this woman. She was an emotional vampire, a voracious and insatiable taker, so committed to being miserable that she couldn’t be anything else. Misery had become a reflex with her. No amount of apologizing, no amount of patience, no amount of logic, no amount of nurture would ever be enough. She was angry and damaged and dripping pus from festering self-inflected mental wounds and she was determined to get revenge and it just didn’t matter who the target was so long as they were equipped with a penis.

She collected bad relationships like trophies in the Men Are Scum Derby and proudly displayed them to anybody who would validate her damaged worldview.

Defensive wounds. That’s what forensic pathologists call it when they find cuts and contusions on a stabbing victim’s forearms.  Defensive wounds, where they tried to ward off the blows while being hacked to death.  The emotional equivalent of that is when you find that your side of the relationship consists almost entirely of screaming, “Goddamnit! I’m not that guy! I didn’t do this to you, stop taking it out on me! I’m not that guy!” over and over.

At that point, you’ve got two options, bleed to death or walk away.

Now look, don’t get me wrong here. Some men are cheating lying scumbags and they deserve every bit of scorn and contempt heaped upon them. But I’m not that guy. Not now. Not ever.

And so I bluntly explained to her in clear and unambiguous terms that she was a fucking psycho.

I looked her in the eye and told her that it was not me, it was all her. All of it. Every damned bit of it. And that the one single constant throughout every one of her shitty terrible relationships was, wait for it, her. Her. Her. And Her. Goodbye and you’re welcome to slam the door on your way out.

Later I heard through the grapevine that I’d been added to the long, long, long list of guys who’d done her wrong – which makes me wonder about the other men on that list, and just how egregious were their offenses really?

I didn’t lose any sleep over it.

In fact, that incident changed my life.  Up to then I’d had my own string of bad relationships.  You name it, I dated it. A drunk, faithless cheaters (several), a pathological liar (no really, like clinically diagnosed and everything. And yeah, that was an adventure into crazyland), a raving hypochondriac (no, really, like clinically diagnosed by actual doctors), a nymphomaniac (not nearly as fun as it sounds, after the first week), a woman who stole my entire bank account on the way out the door, and I could go on but you get the idea.  But I stayed on, every time, until they tired of me and left.  Until that one day, that one day when the psycho women had torn me open yet again, when I’d finally had enough. When I’d finally been pushed as far as I would go and would go no further. When the light-bulb finally came on for me.

That, right there, is when I finally realized that the one constant in all of those lousy relationships was, wait for it, yep, me. 

And that, right there, is where I drew the line.

And, My God, talk about liberating. That’s what it is to achieve emotional maturity, liberating.

That was the moment I decided that I wouldn’t be held accountable for every jerk on the planet, that I was done with cleaning up their messes. That was the moment I stopped being an emotional punching bag for other people. That was the moment I stopped allowing myself to be held hostage to miserable damaged people bent on revenge.

And that changed everything. 

I finally, finally, understood what a healthy adult relationship was supposed to look like.

Now, I admit that I’ve only had one relationship since that moment … but so far it’s lasted more than 22 years.

 

You’ve heard me say this before, likely you’ll hear me say it again and again: You cannot, can not, reason with unreasonable people.

 

You cannot reason with people who are bound and determined to convict you of crimes somebody else committed.

You cannot reason with a lynch mob.

Saturday was my birthday.

It got me thinking about certain things, about my past, about all the people who encouraged me, but also about all of those sons of bitches who told me over and over who and what I could be, who attempted to force me into a box, who kept trying to slap a label on me and tell me who I was.

As always when I get to thinking about things, I write about it.

It’s nothing special, Saturday’s post, just your basic Hi, I’m 52 and I’m alright with that. No great insight, no pithy middle-aged wisdom, just: you get out of life what you put into it. If you let people label you, you’ll be their slave forever.

Somewhere in the middle of the post I returned to a common theme, that is: There is only one truly inalienable right and that is the right to define yourself.

Nobody can take the right to define yourself away from you, only you can decide to give it up. So don’t. And I believe that. I’m proof of it. And so are many, many others.

You can be beat on and beat down. They can take away your name. They can take away everything you own and everything you love. They can push your face into the toilet and rip out your guts day after day. They can take away your life, your liberty, and any chance at happiness, oh yes they can and there’s often not a damned thing you can do about it.  They can put you in chains. They can force their throbbing politics and their raging religion and their rampant jingoism down your throat. But inside, down where it counts, they can’t tell you who you are – unless you let them.

So don’t.

There is only one truly inalienable right that can’t be taken away by gods nor governments nor men, and that is the right to define yourself.

Gods nor government nor men.

I like that line.

As a writer, I like that line. I’m proud of it. It rings like a bell.

As a guy who spent his whole damned life ignoring those who kept trying to tell me who I am, I like that line.

Now, I often post lines from my essays, ones that I like and that I think stand well on their own, as pull-quotes on Twitter.

And that’s what I did this time, I posted:

There is only one truly inalienable right that can’t be taken away by gods or governments or men, and that is the right to define yourself.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that somebody, somewhere, will always find a way to be offended over something I said.  No matter what. I post a humorous story on Facebook, told from a male perspective (because, and try to keep up here, I’m male and that’s pretty much how I naturally see the goddamned world), and I am guaranteed to get comments about sexism because I didn’t keep it gender neutral.  I’m tired of having to unfriend people who are offended that I happen to be unapologetically endowed with a Y chromosome – and in fact, seem to think that I should have to apologize for my gender on a daily basis. I’m tired of having to unfriend these people, but I’ll keep right on doing so until they get the goddamned message that they don’t get to label me. 

Hell, it doesn’t matter what I post, it could be a picture of a fluffy kitten chasing after a butterfly among the petunias, and somebody, somewhere, will be offended.

And sure enough, somebody was.

@Stonekettle Didn't need the user icon to know you're white and male…

White and male.

Ah, yes. Of course. White and male.

Didn’t need to even look at my picture.

Because, obviously, no black woman, no Asian, no Latina, no Native American, would ever suggest that she has a right to define herself, see? Nope, just a white guy. Don’t even need to look at the picture.

We’ve never met. I don’t know this person, other than by her reputation. She for damned sure doesn’t know me. But yeah, why don’t you just lead with my race and sex? Sure, Lady, that’s not stereotyping what with your contemptuous little assumption of genderfail, oh no, not at all.

Only a white male would say something so racist and sexist as “You have the right to define yourself.”

Yes, obviously, I must be white and male. A member of the oppressor class. That’s me. Because, hey, you know what’s good for bigotry? Stereotyping!  So, on behalf of white men everywhere, allow me to apologize for every white male who ever did you wrong by being white and male.  And as a white male I hereby promise to only post pictures of fluffy kitties and selfies of me lighting myself on fire. You’re welcome.

What?

What’s that?  She didn’t really accuse me of being a misogynistic racist?

Wrong, that’s precisely what she accused me of. Didn’t need to see your picture to know you’re white and male. This woman happens to be a professional wordsmith, she knows exactly what she’s saying, it didn’t happen by accident. Oh, and just because she went with stereotyping and didn’t bother to actually read my comment in context doesn’t mean I engage in the same bad habit, I read her comments all the way back to the Super Bowl. She didn’t have a problem with the blatant in your face sexism, racism, and homophobia that flooded Twitter then. But me saying you have the right to define yourself? Yeah, that deserved a snide swipe from her majesty. 

Imagine if I’d posted a public response on Twitter that consisted of something, oh, say, like this:

Gee, I didn’t need to see your picture to know you’re an angry feminist with a chip on your shoulder.

That would be sexist, right? Just another nasty comment from misogynistic asshole.  But it’s okay for a woman to casually dismiss me as a sexist and a racist based solely on my race and gender. You can see the hypocrisy, the logical fallacy, right? I don’t have to spell it out for you.

This nonsense pisses me off.

No, wait, pissed off isn’t right, rather it immediately fills me with seething rage.

I don’t appreciate being called a racist and a sexist, particularly in public without a chance to defend myself.  And I said so in a particularly snarky comment, one that might not make much sense to the average reader but this particular woman should have no trouble understanding.

At which point a couple of folks pointed out in so many words that being white and male I have no right to be defensive about being labeled a sexist and a racist in a public forum.

Things went rapidly downhill after that and I ended up going to bed angry and pissed off and woke up angry and pissed off and today I’m still angry and pissed off about it. You goddamned right I’m pissed off about it.  [Edit] And I got more pissed off today when I started getting messages from people who got treated the same way by this very woman, and in fact by the time they’d gotten to this part of my post they’d already begun to suspect exactly who I was talking about.  Then I did some checking around, sure enough, this is her MO. Drive by, toss out a bigotry accusation. Drive on and never look back. [end edit]

So, yeah, I’m still angry about this.

And why shouldn’t I be?  Because there it is, right now, sitting there in public two days later like a turd in the punch bowl.

Two thousand people follow this woman on Twitter, and every one of them is now left with the impression that I’m just another hairy Neanderthal, grunting and scratching my ass and bonking women over the head with my club so’s I can drag them back to my cave.  Because the person who posted that comment is a famous science fiction editor for a famous science fiction publishing house who runs a famous science fiction blog, people noticed, and they retweeted her comment. But, of course, I shouldn’t be defensive about that either.

A couple of nice people offered to, what’s the word? Femsplain it to me – hopefully using simple one-syllable words and grunts so my dull ball-scratching hairy man-brain might understand.  Because, obviously, I don’t have access to, oh, say, a strong willed, confident, self-defined, professional woman who is employed at the executive level that I might, you know, have been married to for the last two decades. And who drops on me like a bag of hammers when I say something stupidly sexist.

I ended up on Twitter futilely shouting the equivalent of, “I’m not that guy! I’m not that guy!”

But, of course, you are that guy. Once somebody, especially somebody in a position of authority, accuses you of bigotry in public, even though they didn’t actually bother to read what you actually wrote in the context of where you wrote it, there’s nothing you can say to defend yourself.

And I’ve been here before. Right here.

Years ago, I used to hang out on a famous science fiction writer’s blog. He always seemed like a decent and reasonable fellow and he ran his blog much the same way I run this one – a bit more free wheeling in the comments section, but we’ll come back to that in a minute. This guy was, and still is, a force in the science fiction community, which if you’re not familiar with it, is a form of fanaticism you’d have to see to believe – usually it’s a benign nerdy fanaticism, but not always. Now, I really, really, enjoyed that place. I admired that writer, I thought he had character and integrity.  And the science fiction community, well, they’re mostly a bunch of friendly harmless geeks who spent a lot of their early lives getting beat up for being bad at sports and for liking “that Buck Rogers stuff,” so they make this big deal of being open and diverse and accepting of anybody – only that’s a lie, they’re as vile and vicious as any other mob, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

One day, this writer, he posted a short bit about a group of science fiction nerds, pudgy little dweebs in ill-fitting Starfleet uniforms tucked away in some basement somewhere cranking out a fan-magazine wherein they’d expressed their opinion that smelly girls were “destroying” the science fiction genre (I’m not sure if this particular bunch were Chuck Lorre’s actual inspiration for The Big Bang Theory or not, you’d have to ask him).  This outfit actually suggested that girls be banned from science fiction conventions like Comic-Con – where it’s common practice for attractive women to dress up in comic book costumes (also, turns out there are a lot of female types who just like comic books and scifi, go figure, right?). 

Now, naturally this famous science fiction writer, being all morally superior and a force for Truth, Justice, and the American way, he was appalled and set to snarking about the situation. The gist of his post was, hey, look at how stupid these girl-hating little Klingon-heads are, let’s us point and laugh at them until they crawl away and die of shame hah hah ah hah hah ha. Which, personally, I thought was an entirely appropriate idea.

So, in the comments of this place where I felt welcome and comfortable, I made a joke.  Because, you know, the host said, hey, let’s make jokes about this nonsense. Because one of the ways to fight ignorance and intolerance is with, you know, humor.

Look, the people on that forum were supposed to be smart people. Smart people well versed in popular culture – it’s sort of their thing. These are people who carry on entire conversations in cartoon quotes.  Who speak fluent Klingon. Who pride themselves on being a cut above the knuckle-draggers, socially and intellectually. 

So, I made a joke. 

I couched it in the voice of Foghorn Leghorn, you know, the pompous loud-mouthed self-involved misogynist Rooster from the Looney Tunes cartoons:

Wait, if they ban girls from Science Fiction conventions, who, I say who, will wear the Leia Bikini? 

Now honestly, how can you not get the joke? It’s not exactly subtle. How could you possibly be offended? Especially in the context of a forum specifically about making fun of clueless jerks? It’s cartoon sexism, obvious cartoon sexism. It’s cartoon bigotry for the same reason Foghorn Leghorn is a  clueless cartoon bigot, because that kind of idiotic bigotry is so damned stupid that even a fucking child can see it. 

But not getting the joke is a habit with certain people who are reflexively offended by anything and everything and it wasn’t long before I was accused of sexism, i.e. how dare I suggest that women were only good for eye-candy at science fiction conventions?

No, no, ha ha, you’re not getting the sarcasm, I replied, see Foghorn is …

At which point other folks, mostly women, but some men whom I can only assume were trying to get laid, began to shrilly chime in that I, as a man, was not allowed to make jokes about sexism – on a forum, started by a man, that joked about sexism in science fiction. Because I was a man and thereby guilty of “male privilege.” And I was apparently attempting to “man ‘splain” my joke to a woman, which is condescending see, because, well, I’m a man.

So, to recap, apparently it’s okay to limit another’s participation based on gender in a conversation about gender, so long as that gender is male.  Which is, of course, not at all like how women were excluded from congressional conversations on reproductive rights by a roundtable of male religious leaders. It’s totally different so long as you toss in an angry contemptuous reference to my supposed privilege. See, because attacking exclusion with more exclusion isn’t a logical fallacy at all (if you’re missing the sarcasm in that last bit, I say, I say try rereading it in Foghorn Leghorn’s voice).

I watched this happen with an increasing degree of amazement and horrified frustration.

And then – and then, because the situation wasn’t already ridiculous enough – somebody decided that I must be homophobic.

Yes, that’s correct.

Homophobic.

Because, you see, apparently some men, supposedly of the gay persuasion, wear Leia Bikinis to Science Fiction conventions.

Oh, you didn’t know that?

Yeah, me neither.

You don’t see how that makes a difference anyway?

Yeah, me neither.

I protested that I hadn’t been to a convention in years and I wasn’t aware that men, supposedly gay, were wearing Star Wars bikinis at Science Fiction conventions, and that’s when I was told my ignorance was, of course, Straight White Male Privilege.

Naturally because I was white, straight, and male I was ipso facto, a racist, a sexist, and homophobic. You only had to look at my picture to see evidence of that. It’s obvious (Sort of how if you look at a picture of Trayvon Martin, you just know he’s a thug, right? Because, well, of course, you can judge a book by its cover, so long as you shout “privilege!” first). Apparently White Male Privilege is that thing where as a white male if you are unaware of something that you couldn’t possibly have any knowledge of and that has absolutely nothing to do with race or sex or any of the other bullshit labels we like to slap on each other, you’re still held to account for it anyway. Sort of like dating a crazy person. If they could have worked in anti-Semitic they could have yelled Gin! and declared victory.

Look, just to be absolutely clear here, I am not saying that privilege and inequality doesn’t exist, hell, far from it. I’m not even attempting to suggest that I, as a straight white American male, don’t benefit from that privilege, because I most certainly do. And I’ve written about it endlessly, about how it’s bullshit, about how we won’t any of us be free until we are all equal and that, right there, that was the entire point of Saturday’s post and my statement on Twitter:

There is only one truly inalienable right that can’t be taken away by gods nor governments nor men, and that is the right to define yourself.

People like Rosa Parks, she got tired of being defined by other people, so instead she chose to define herself on her own terms – no matter that it was goddamned hard. And that, that one act, changed everything. That, right there, is how the world changes.

The blog host, that famous science fiction writer, who I expected to shut this nonsense down and who spares no chance to brag about how he went to some elite fancy debating school and how he knows a logical fallacy when he sees one, instead pulled a John Boehner Birther Denial Non-Denial on me: Well, Jim, I don’t really know you and I don’t have any reason to believe you’re a sexist pig and a gay-hater, but…” and that’s all it took for his fanatical minions to pile on. Eventually the comments reached more than four hundred and it was decided that I was a sexist, a racist, a homophobe, and just an all around asshole. I gave up, there was no defense possible. Every single thing I said was proof of my bigotry. Defensive wounds. It was like being tried by the religious fanatics of the Inquisition, no matter what you say, you’re going to get burnt at the stake. I quit the forum then and there, but that wasn’t enough for them, they followed me home and continued to rain bile and vitriol on me for weeks afterward. I haven’t been back since and the only time I wouldn’t piss on this famous science fiction writer is if he was fully engulfed in flames. If we’re ever in the same room together I’m very, very likely to loosen a couple of his teeth for him.

The editor in question, the one that snidely drove past my Twitter feed on Saturday and lobbed in the bigotry bomb from her little baggage train? She’s cut right out the same self-righteous cloth. She and the famous writer are pals. These people soured me on the entire science fiction community. They are damaged people who toss about casual accusations of racism and sexism and homophobia. They have no idea whatsoever of the carnage they leave in their respective wakes, the people they casually damage and toss aside in order that they can puff up their chests and feel smugly superior, so that they can take revenge on the rest of us because somebody somewhere who happens to look like me treated them poorly.

But I learned something from them, I did.

That incident is why I won’t, will not under any circumstances, allow that kind of nonsense to go on here.  I will not allow any commenter, even the trolls, to be set upon. I’ll deal with them myself if necessary, because it’s my responsibility as your host, but I won’t allow lynch mobs. Period. This is non-negotiable. This, this incident, is the primary reason I enforce my commenting rules with an iron fist, because I’ve been on the receiving end of the torches and pitchforks and I know exactly what it feels like when the host lacks the moral courage to live up to his or her responsibilities. 

You have my word that while I might boot you off the forum for acting like a jerk, I won’t allow you to be set upon by the blood maddened mob.

And I will not, under any circumstances allow somebody else to define who and what I am.

They can choose to wallow in their own victimhood if they’re so inclined, but I refuse to accept the role of their abuser.

I am not that guy. 

I will not be shamed into apologizing for who I am. I won’t be made to feel defensive because I was born white and straight and male and in America. I won’t be lectured on it. I won’t be bullied or badgered. I won’t be made to hate myself so you can feel better about yourself. I know that I unfairly benefit from this society, I don’t need you to lecture me on it. I’ve written about equality and diversity endlessly. More I’ve busted my ass out in the real world to make it a better place. I don’t claim to be perfect, far from it in point of fact, or without bias or up on some goddamned pedestal, but I’m doing the best I can and you’re not going to get any more than that.

My post Saturday was about labels, about defining yourself, about not allowing others to define who you are and I meant what I said – which is why I will not allow this woman’s comment to go by unchallenged.

There is only one truly inalienable right that can’t be taken away by gods nor governments nor men, and that is the right to define yourself.

And yes, it’s unfairly tougher for some than for others. No kidding it’s unfair, you damned right it is. That was my entire point.

It’s tough, it is that. But, if you choose not to exercise your right, well, then that’s on you.

And you’re not going to pin it on me.

I. Am. Not. That. Guy.

 

---

Note: Now, I know exactly what kind of shitstorm this essay will attract. So, comment moderation is on and will remain so. I’m not going to bother to issue the usual warning. You want your comment to post? Then act like a rational adult. You mention privilege in any fashion, tread lightly. // Jim

Christmas Hiatus

About the lack of posting: I’m traveling over the holiday season.

I thought I’d have some time to write during this trip. I was wrong, between snow storms and ice storms and endless airline delays and a flight divert due to a medical emergency and a dozen reroutes and a sprint through Denver and all the Christmas stuff and the fact that I’m now entrenched at a farm in rural Michigan with internet connectivity straight out of 1985 and no cell phone service whatsoever, well, there’s not going to be much in the way of posting on Stonekettle Station.

That’s okay, I needed a break anyway.

I’ll be in Florida on Friday for a week in the banjo playing swamps of the Panhandle. I may find some time then.

Happy Holidays, folks, Stonekettle Station will be back online shortly.

Sanity Check

I haven’t posted much here lately.

Some of you noticed. Quite a few of you.

A number of you wrote asking if everything was okay.

I appreciate that. 

I appreciate that you wrote to ask about my wellbeing. I appreciate that you noticed the lack of posting on Stonekettle Station.

I suppose a word of explanation is in order.

In short, I’ve been busy.

First, as some of you know, I do consulting work for the US government. The ongoing sequestration and the government shutdown affected me directly and significantly and I’m still working through some of the consequences. I do not, under any circumstance, discuss what my work involves, so don’t bother to ask. I maintain a strict firewall between my consulting work (which pays the bills) and my online writing (which emphatically does not). Suffice it to say that at the moment, I’m out of paid work. It won’t be for long, I’ll be back to work in a couple of weeks, but the process of looking around for a new gig has sucked up some of my time. You’ll understand, I hope, why I’d put a higher priority on that, than on writing blog posts. I have a pretty high opinion of myself, true, but I’m quite sure that the world will get along just fine without my pithy observations for a few weeks.

Second, speaking of writing, I’m in the process of writing a book. Two actually. The first project is a novel, which is currently in outline form. This is not the novel I was working on previously, that dead-ended in an unsalvageable mess that even I wasn’t interested in reading and I certainly wouldn’t attempt to foist off on anybody else. But I learned a tremendous amount from that effort (like the writing part is easy, I can string words together with the best of them. Witty dialog? No problem. Character development? Easy. It’s the plotting part that’s hard. Some writers can go assbackward into the unknown and produce masterpieces, but me? I need to start with a detailed and fully developed outline. If I learned nothing else, I learned that).  I consider that failed novel a learning experience and not at all wasted effort (and large parts of it are salvageable for other projects).  I’m a much better and more experienced writer now, hopefully the current project will make it through to completion. I have high hopes for it. The other project is a collection of some of my humorous essays and stories that have appeared here on Stonekettle Station and on other social media sites over the last couple of years.  About 40% percent of the book is stuff I’ve already published online for free, the rest will be shiny new material linking it all together into a some kind of coherent whole. I’m taking advantage of the time I’m out of paid consulting work to push ahead hard on these projects. As such I made a promise to myself that I’d take a specified amount of time each day to work on them – at the specific expense of writing blog posts on Stonekettle Station. Writing is my passion, it’s what I’ve wanted to do my entire life, since the first time I picked up my first book (The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of Cabin Island. I was 8). I love to write, even if it’s just for myself. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of mastering the online form, I think I’m reasonable successful at it. I’ve been kicking around the idea of becoming a professional writer my entire life, now seems like a damned fine opportunity to advance that idea into a longer (and paying) format.

Third, I also promised myself I’d use my suddenly free time to get a number of projects done around the house. Stuff I’ve been putting off for a long time, things that if I’m going to do them need to be completed before the Alaskan winter sets in – which could now happen at any time.  As some of you know, in addition to writing and consulting work, I’m also an artist and woodworker. Over the last three weeks I’ve completely ripped my very large shop/studio apart. I pulled most of the equipment out, and rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up. I did a thorough cleaning after demolition and salvage of the old storage systems. I built new shelving and storage from the (mostly) salvaged material. I reconfigured the shop into a new equipment layout and workflow. I added new power systems and dust collection equipment. It’s been a lot of work. A lot. I’ve moved tons of material and equipment by myself.  I’ve made a dozen trips to the landfill, and twice that many to the hardware and lumber stores. Since my wife was out of town for a couple of weeks, travelling on business, I worked out there in the shop eight to twelve hours a day until midnight or later for the last few weeks, coming in bruised and sore and filthy dirty barely able to make it up the stairs to the shower.  I’d get up in the morning, put in my requisite writing work and business time, and go back out to the shop.  I’m well satisfied with the effort. I’ve got a few small projects to complete this week, but my shop/studio is now vastly improved and I can get back to making artwork instead of spending all of my time moving crap around and cursing while looking for tools and materials I know I have but can’t seem to find.

And fourth, well, yeah, fourth: I really needed a break from the internet, from politics, and from the ongoing assholery of the world in general.

This has been a stressful year, and would have been even if my father hadn’t also passed-away on top of it.  I’m used to stress, I tend to thrive on it, but when I get to the point where I find myself starting a new blog post … and then erasing it a paragraph in because I know that every comment will sound like the screeching of crazed monkeys flinging shit at me from Monkey Island, I know it’s time to take a break. For my sake as well as yours.

Don’t worry, I’m in no danger of burnout. 

I’m not really the kind of guy who burns out. 

But I do need a vacation from time to time, even if it’s only a mental one out in my shop cleaning up the accumulated sawdust and grime of years.

I’ve got half a dozen articles in draft, you may shortly expect a post with some thoughts on the recent LAX Shooting, another on the ongoing shitfest that is the fight over the Affordable Care Act, and long examination of some ideas that I think could permanently fix our government so that it works for all of us.  I’m waiting to see how a couple of things shake out first, rather than just shooting from the hip. I’m also waiting to hear back from a few experts on certain ideas for the government article. In the mean time, the LAX Shooter post will likely be up tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest. 

Hope that answers the basic questions. Thanks for asking.

Thanks for your patience // Jim

Stonekettle Station Commenting Problems

I’ve had some problems with Stonekettle Station’s domain management system today.

I was away from my main system all day and only recently returned.

The issues are now resolved, however, there was some information loss.

Because comment moderation is enabled for all but today’s posts (and due to the level of hairy-palmed drooling trollage on certain older posts, it’s going to stay that way), all comments are processed through my private domain email system so that I can manage comment moderation from anywhere via phone. Because the problem was in the domain email system, a chunk of comments were accidently deleted. I’m not sure exactly which ones or how many. Most of the comments pertained to the Idiot Nation essay, but some were attached to other posts. I’ve rescued what comments I could. The rest have gone to the Great Google Graveyard Of Lost Bits in the Sky.

If you made a comment, and it didn’t appear, sorry about that, but there’s not much I can do about it. 

Changes to Email

Because my email has increased to unmanageable levels over the last year or so, I’ve started missing things that I really can’t afford to miss – e.g. one such recent event led to Stonekettle Station being offline for the better part of a week.

As such, I’ve implemented my own email domain and established a number of accounts under it to handle various personal and professional communications.

My previous general purpose email address, Stonekettlestation@gmail.com, will be phased out over the next few weeks. I will continue to respond to your missives at this address until the end of this month, or until my attention wanders, whichever comes first and, eventually, I will deactivate this account. Basically what I’m saying here is that if you’ve got something you really want me to see, don’t use this email address anymore.

From now on, if you wish to contact me regarding Stonekettle Station in order to render awe, advice, suggestions, criticism, general asshatery, or to inform me that you’re honoring my awesome self by naming your newborn child in my honor (the highest percentage of correspondence I receive, by orders of magnitude. True story), or to pledge undying minionship to me, your future Ultimate Emperor of the Universe, you may reach me at: jim@stonekettle.com.

The address on the sidebar has been updated appropriately.

Holy Crap! What Happened?

Late last week this blog vanished from the web.

Some people cheered.

Some people wept.

The earth shifted slightly in its orbit.

And a great wailing and gnashing of teeth swept the globe.  The seas rose, the sky rained fire and death and poisoned toads, and the Four Horsemen rode the land upon their undead steeds.

True story.

 

What?

 

Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a wee bit, but for the last week folks attempting to reach www.stonekettle.com got a variety of weirdness, from links to various stones and kettles to a generic busty blonde Hot Chick™ who sadly explained how Stonekettle Station didn’t exist on the web but how about these other, nifty, sites?

Given the volume of email and instant messages I received, apparently more than a few of you noticed the huge gaping hole in the Internet where Stonekettle Station used to be. Which, to be admittedly smug, was a more than a bit self-validating for me – i.e. the fact that so many of you would write expressing massive dismay at the sudden and unexpected disappearance of Stonekettle Station made me feel all warm and happy inside.

Which was nice, considering the volume of unpleasant surprises I’ve gotten lately – the least of which was the implosion of my blog.

Thanks for missing me, I sincerely appreciate it.

At first, I tried to respond personally to the messages, but eventually I just had to give up. So, if you wrote and I didn’t respond, consider this an acknowledgement of my sincere appreciation. Thanks for caring. Really.

So, what happened?

The short answer is that I didn’t pay the bill and Google turned off the lights.

It really was just that simple.

In my defense, it wasn’t my fault.

OK, actually, it was entirely my fault. But, I’ve got an excuse.

The longer answer is that I own the internet domain www.stonekettle.com along with a number of other domains (a domain is a specific site somewhere on the internet).

This isn’t anything unusual, for the price of a couple of large lattes anybody can own a domain.

And there’s a whole industry, in fact, of unsavory jerks who go around buying up likely names and then attempting to charge people for the use of their own name or business and so on. It’s called Domain Squatting and it’s an asshole thing to do. 

But anyway, as I said, anybody can own an internet domain.

Here’s how it works: basically you brainstorm up a super-cool keeno incantation, then you contact a wizard service and the sorcerers check to see if anybody else is using that same name-of-power, if not then there’s usually an exchange of money and/or sexual favors and then geeky computer types in strange robes and pointy hats sacrifice small animals in certain highly dangerous blood rituals and engage in other various powerful arcane magics to insert your domain name into the bowels of the internet. Then you can lay a website over the top of it and add subdomains and perform various witchy juju of your own. There’s a bunch of technobabble mumbo-jumbo that describes the process in sleep-inducing detail and the only people who care about the actual specifics are those who already know how it works.  So, I’ll spare you the grisly details and we’ll just say you hire a wizard and magic happens. 

The long and short of it is that periodically you have to renew your registration.  In other words nobody really owns a domain, you just sort of rent it.  If you don’t pay the rent, the registration service turns off your domain and for all practical purposes, your website simply ceases to exist. 

That’s what happened to Stonekettle Station.

When you went looking for www.stonekettle.com last week, it didn’t exist. Depending on the service you used to look for me, Google or Yahoo or directly via a DNS address (like a bookmark) or by typing in the actual numeric IP address or by performing some form of animal sacrifice and beseeching the gods, you got a variety of errors – some of which looked a lot like somebody had hijacked my domain. They hadn’t, it just looked that way, which is an artifact of whatever software logic you employed to find me.  In other words, you typed in “stonekettle” and the internet said, “I can’t find stonekettle, so here’s a hot chick with some nice kettles.”

So how come I didn’t pay the rent? What am I? Some kind of internet deadbeat?

Yes. Sort of.

I’ve owned stonekettle.com for a number of years now, and right from the first day I set up an automatic payment process and basically forgot about it.  Every year Goggle bills me for my various domains, my computer talks to their computer, various arcane magics occur in various banking computers, and I get an email receipt and everybody is happy.  If there’s any problem, say an expired credit card, I get an email notification and I wave my arms and curse a lot and that generally fixes things, and again, everybody is happy. 

Except that this year I missed the email warning.

In my defense, one of my family members is gravely ill and I was somewhat distracted.

Also, I get a lot of email.  Now, knowing that, I should have moved this particular process to a dedicated email notification account instead of my general purpose one (and given that domains generally allow for their own email process, creating dedicated email addresses specifically for certain transactions is pretty simple), but again, I was distracted and somehow never got around to it (that’s since been corrected).

So, I missed the deadline.

There’s a grace period, but I missed that too – but again, as I mentioned, I’ve been distracted.

Google therefor assumed I didn’t want the domain anymore, so they reset my admin controls and notified their contracted registration service to shut down the domain.

Which is all perfectly normal and aboveboard and automatic.

First I knew about it was when I got up Sunday morning and my email and Facebook Messages were overflowing with “Holy Crap! What Happened?” and “Dude! You’ve been hijacked! Call Homeland Security!”

It didn’t take me long to figure out what had happened, and it should have been a simple matter of logging into my administrator account to update the billing information and then requesting an automatic reinstatement of the domain.

Except I couldn’t log into the administrator account.

Because there’s some kind of weird bug, which I won’t go into because you don’t really care about such arcane magics and technobabble mumbo-jumbo. Suffice it to say that it took many phone calls and emails between myself and a nice lady somewhere in Kowloon or Bangladesh or wherever Google’s tech support is located, plus help from a number of folks on Google’s tech support forum, to sort it out and give me the various required incantations to mollify the various moat monsters of Google’s patchwork kingdom. 

Also, in the middle of this, I suddenly had to drop everything and jump on an airplane and fly to Michigan. 

No, really.

I literally got a phone call from my brother telling me to come, NOW. It was 10PM Alaska time. My wife called the airline, my son packed my electronics (and did a damned fine job of it), I stuffed whatever was handy into a travel bag, in less than ten minutes from the call we were in the jeep and my wife drove me sixty miles to Anchorage while I explained to my son that this was an emergency so it was okay if mom was speeding like a maniac but I’d better never catch him driving that fast or else, I waded shamelessly through a hundred Chinese tourists in front of the Alaskan Airlines desk shoving left and right and using my elbows mercilessly, claimed my ticket, sprinted through security with the grateful help some really awesome TSA agents, and ran the length of Ted Stevens International Airport to make my plane just as the door was closing.  Total elapsed time from notification to strapping in, 90 minutes – and that included a 60 mile drive, I’m pretty sure that’s some kind of record.

Once in the air, I was able to connect to my wife via Skype.  She got me a rental car in Grand Rapids and texted me the confirmation number. 

Then I had nothing to do but worry for the next six hours as we flew south over Canada, headed for O’Hare. 

So naturally, I thought of you, Gentle Readers, and used my time and the magic of WiFi in the Sky to finish sorting out the domain problem – because I damned sure wasn’t going to get any sleep and worrying about what was waiting for me on the other end wasn’t going to do anybody any good. 

Frankly, if the the sheer ridiculousness of attempting to fix the internet by squinting at a small phone screen while reading tech data off my slightly larger tablet transmitted by a nice lady in Kowloon or Bangladesh or wherever speaking arcane technobabble in fractured English while onboard an airplane hurtling though turbulence at 500 miles an hour somewhere over remote Canada had actually hit me, I might have quit right there and availed myself heartily of the drink cart. 

But it worked. 

By the time I landed in Grand Rapids, Google’s accounting department had been mollified and the various arcane magics of the internet worked their spells and the computers did the proper handshaking, sexual favors were exchanged, and somewhere between the time I roared out of the rental lot at the Jerry Ford International Airport and arrived at the Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital (a massive modern complex of interlocking advanced medical facilities built around the old brownstone Butterworth hospital that I was born in 50 odd years ago) Stonekettle Station was back online.

And that wasn’t the only good news.

It’s been a rough couple of days, but it appears that my dad is going to make it. 

You’ll forgive me if I don’t go into the details, and I’d really appreciate it if you don’t pry, but things are looking up and that wasn’t even in the cards two days ago.  We’ve still got a long haul ahead of us, but if Stonekettle Station can come back from oblivion, anything is possible.

Those of you who follow me on Facebook had some idea of what was going on, and I truly appreciate all the offers of support and goodwill. Thank you. All of you, who wrote or left messages on my Facebook page. I am truly grateful.

I’m currently camped out at my folks’ house in rural Michigan. 

I have no cell connectivity here, let alone high speed 4G.  I’m tethered to a very low speed DSL connection, and between the hospital and fixing things around the farm, I doubt there’ll be much time for blog posts, but you never know.

We’ll just have to take it as it comes.

Thanks for hanging in there.