Another Et Cetera on Trolling

Why do some bloggers give certain trolls free rein? Sometimes they do so out of a misguided conviction that ALL free speech is equally important. The problem with this is that if the trolls express opinions with which they disagree, those folks are either banned or spiritedly disagreed with by the freedom-loving bloggers. When they let a troll rampage freely without ever challenging what is said, I can only conclude it's because they agree with them.

"American Elephant" is so dishonest that he twists people's words around to mean something completely different than what they said. I remarked, on one commentary thread, that I did not believe gays and lesbians should pay high legal fees in order to safeguard relationships that the State protects for straights. He then turned around and tried to claim I'd said that he should pay my legal fees! There was simply no way any honest (or sane) person could have gotten that from what I said. "American Elephant" is, himself, a liar.

I also repeatedly -- REPEATEDLY -- stated that I don't believe the State should subsidize ANYONE'S relationship by taking more in taxes from singles, gay or straight, so that married people (gay or straight) can get tax breaks because of their status. There was absolutely no way any reasonable, or even rational, person could have mistaken my meaning. "Elephant" responded by repeatedly mischaracterizing what I said. He kept trying to claim that I wanted straight taxpayers to "subsidize" gay relationships.

Again, this guy is a liar. He is exactly what he keeps calling me. He is slandering me, and this is a legally actionable offense. In another age, he would have been called out for it in a fistfight or a duel. When I pointed this out to him, of course he resorted to the standard troll trick of claiming I was threatening violence against him.

He knew very well what I was saying. Again and again, "American Elephant" is a lying son of a bitch. It is far more likely that (if he had the gumption) he is the one who would stalk me than the other way around.

I called attention to the fact that I was using my own, full name in my posts. I told him I live in Phoenix, Arizona, and that I'm well known in the local GLBT Christian community. I assured him that if he wanted to take the matter up with me face-to-face, he would have no trouble doing so. Of course, being the lily-livered coward that he is, he then backed down and went into whine-mode about how I was supposedly threatening him. This is what liars and cowards do.

I have since informed him that I believe him to be a phony, and that I'm not the only person in the blogosphere with an incentive to expose his real identity and who he is working for. That, indeed, WAS a threat -- and I fully intend to make good on it if he persists in harassing me.

It's entirely up to the bloggers at Gay Patriot to determine whether they will ban him. He must express a lot of opinions with which they agree, since they never seem to challenge him on anything he says.

The only issue on which even "Elephant" and I seem to disagree is that of same-sex marriage. I don't believe that the State should be in the business of regulating private relationships or using the tax-code to manipulate individuals' behavior. He seems to feel the need to mischaracterize my viewpoint as "progressive" liberal, rather than libertarian, because he knows how to argue with the former and cannot intelligently deal with the latter. His own views on same-sex marriage are actually socialist, which I have also pointed out many times, and of course all he can do is go on lying about what I've said and impotently spluttering that he is not a socialist.

I intend to return to commenting on posts at Gay Patriot. Sooner or later, I will probably be banned, but I will never submit to censorship. Cynthia Yockey of A Conservative Lesbian seems to have declared war on Gay Patriot, but I am not interested in doing that. As I have stated in a previous post, my only real quarrel with that blog is that it permits one particular troll to indulge in blatant lying while he hurls the charge of "liar!" at others. It's up to each blogger to determine what he or she will allow, and that's not a choice I can make for any other blogger.

But again, if you permit that sort of crap, it makes you look as if you agree with it. Unless you state otherwise, which -- to my knowledge -- Gay Patriot doesn't. When one of your commenters baldly lies, and then calls others liars in a particularly stupid and childish attempt to obfuscate his own lying, it makes your blog look bad if you allow it.

It isn't going to be tolerated here. I still hope to build up readership for this Blog, and when I do, the same basic standard of common decency, and common sense, that applies to every other form of discourse will apply here. You will not be permitted to hide behind an alias and indulge in behavior that would get you horsewhipped, shot or sued in the real world. Nor, if anyone points this out, will you be permitted to wet your panties and squeal about how they are, supposedly, threatening you.

You need to be housebroken here. I don't ask much, but at the very least I demand that.

Further Thoughts on Trolling

I must reiterate that trolling is one of the biggest threats to continuing freedom of speech on the Internet. As regular users of the Net, we need to understand how to deal with it. From time to time, on this Blog, I will post my ideas on how we might do this.

One of the most common epithets hurled by trolls, at those with whom they disagree, is "liar." They don't seem to understand what the word means, but that doesn't stop them from using it, and the reason is obvious. It's nasty, and it smears their targets. The fact that they often misuse the word, and that simple recourse to a dictionary would clear that problem up, does not seem to concern them. Their very purpose is not to illuminate the truth, but to obfuscate it -- which, of course, makes THEM the actual liars.

A "liar" is not merely someone who says something you believe to be untrue. The standard required to meet the definition of "liar" is higher than that. A "liar" is someone who KNOWS that what they're saying is untrue, and who is therefore saying it with the purpose of misleading.

If you disagree with someone because he or she has said something you regard as false, the only way you can know for sure if this person is a liar is if you can read their mind. If this person sincerely believes whatever he or she is saying -- regardless of the fact that you consider their statement untrue -- that does not make him or her a "liar." People who say things that aren't true, but that they believe to be true, are mistaken, and in some cases perhaps even stupid -- but they are not liars.

I suppose there is a second way of knowing if people who say untrue things are liars, and that would be if you can show they indicated elsewhere that they knew better. You would then provide the quote, or preferrably the link, that demonstrated this. This is by no means an impossible task, but most of those who scream "liar!" in every quarrel are too lazy (or too dishonest themselves) to attempt it.

Small children often holler "liar!" at other kids in their playground quarrels. This is because they don't yet know the meaning of the word. It may also be because it sounds really bad, thereby making them feel better. Children can be excused for doing this, because they just don't know any better. Those on the Internet, who are supposed to be adults, have no excuse for not knowing better.

What the shouters of "liar!" are really revealing about themselves is that they are too insecure in their own convictions to risk a real debate. Not only are they very likely liars themselves, but they are also cowards. Next time somebody screams "liar!" at you on a blog commentary thread, remember that the best way to counter their idiocy is to call them out on it.

Slaying Trolls

I am still trying to free up enough time out of the process of establishing myself as a professional freelance writer to perfect this Blog and bring in more readers. Please bear with me, you dear and gentle few, as I do that.

One problem I have not had much of, yet, on this Blog -- simply because I do not post enough to keep a large regular readership -- is that of trolling. When the happy day arrives that I have enough regular readers to be assailed by trolls, I intend to deal with the problem differently than many bloggers do. I think a lot of them are too tolerant of this nuisance, which is really worse than merely a nuisance.

I will insist that persistent trolls identify themselves by their real names, as well as by location. Does this place them in danger? I must say that I don't care. The odds that anyone would track them down and go postal on them are significantly less than the near-certainty that cowardly trolling will destroy the freedom of the blogosphere.

If you feel you must hide your identity, you are actually aiding and abetting the very sort of people who might track commenters down and try to harm them. It is by standing up to these people that you can defeat them -- and there is no other way it can be done. A common troll trick is to claim those who confront them are threatening violence against them -- but as my identity is right out there front and center, that is obviously the last thing I could or would be dumb enough to do. They are the ones in the position of tracking people down with the intent to do violence -- which they well know, may indeed be part of the reason they hide their identity as they do, and even may be why the notion of doing such a thing comes so readily into their minds.

I use my own name when I comment on blogs. Just as it is visible -- along with my home city of Phoenix, Arizona -- on this Blog. Why do I do this? Because I believe it is important to be accountable for the remarks I make. If people don't agree with me, they know where to find me.

You don't need to remain anonymous in order to express yourself. As a matter of fact, by hiding behind a cyberspace alias, you cheapen and devalue every view you express. If nobody knows who you really are, for whom you may be working, or where you're located, then why the hell should they really care what you think? You're a nobody, floating around in the flotsam of nothingness.

Over at Gay Patriot right now, there is a very obnoxious and persistent troll calling himself "American Elephant." He has a blog, which my fellow-blogger Cynthia Yockey of A Conservative Lesbian believes to be nothing but a fake. It certainly seems, to me, that even if it expresses his real views (and I have no reason to believe it doesn't), he compromises the credibility of everything he has to say by hiding his real identity when he comments on blogs.

I think he's working for some fundamentalist church or far-Right social conservative organization, probably for pay. Unlike those of us who must toil every day for a living, he certainly seems to have a lot of free time to post his bilge. Unless he's still living in his parents' basement (I suppose, a distinct possibility with this type), he is on somebody's payroll. Those who read Gay Patriot have a right to know whose it is.

Generally speaking, I disagree with those who say Gay Patriot is a "self-hating" blog. We ought to be careful applying that label to others on the gay Right, because there will be those who will also use it on us. I have found much on that blog that is very worthwhile, and have enjoyed both reading and commenting there. But skulkers and back-shooters like the cowardly "Elephant" are poisoning the discourse there.

Those of us he keeps attacking are beginning to unite against this sort of crap, and sooner or later we will find out who he is and for whom he is working. Then we will expose him. This may take some time and effort, but it must be done for the sake of honest discourse. It is crucial that the blogosphere remain dedicated to freedom of expression. But when that freedom is abused by cowards who sneak around lying and attacking others, it sets the stage for the busybodies who have already started coming out of the woodwork with proposals to regulate Internet speech. If free speech in the blogosphere is regulated, the blame must largely be borne by people like "Elephant."

Perhaps that's exactly what they want. If so, shouldn't the rest of us know it?

Learning Our Lesson

We definitely need to learn a lesson from the last nine years. But neither the statist Right nor Left seems to be learning it.

I should say that SOME on the Right do seem to be learning it, but nobody on the Left gives any indication that they've learned anything.

How hypocritical are conservatives to have suddenly rediscovered the Constitution and limited government after eight years of having given Boy Bush and his thugs free rein? Not as hypocritical as "progressives" remain for chiding them for that, while having learned nothing themselves.

At least the Right has a history of belief in limited government to which it may return. The modern Left has NEVER believed in anything but big government.

If conservatives try to return to fascism when they again get the upper electoral hand (and they will -- sooner than the Democrats want to think), will "progressives" be able to hold them accountable? Of course not. And after the way so many of them swooned over Obama, no one will believe them if they try.

Those on the Left who are critical of Doctor Utopia are angry because he's not statist ENOUGH to suit them.

The Tea Partiers have a tradition to which they now want to return. Lovers of liberty, like myself, are going to hold them to that.

Corporate piggishness will NOT be ended by the Obamabots, who only advocate even more of it. Nor can the way out of our economic nightmare be found in destroying the last, gasping vestiges of free enterprise.

The only way forward is freedom. The only way forward is ending government aggression against its own people. The only way forward is ending the civil war in which each faction of petty tyrants fights for the "right" to oppress the other.

A pox on both their statist houses.

Recently I read a book that changed my life. It didn't exactly transform my whole outlook, since I already believed many of the things it had to say. But it articulated these principles in a way so especially sharp and clear that the light-bulb really clicked on for me at last. Dr. Mary Ruwart is a libertarian's libertarian. And her book, Healing Our World In an Age of Aggression brought it all home for me as never before:

"We don't notice how our fear of selfish others creates the very world that we want to avoid. Our minds are trained by the education monopoly...We can hardly expect to learn the follies of aggression from an institution built on it." (Pg. 185)

"Even when government spends 'for a good cause,' society becomes poorer...Rich nations like Sweden can lose their ability to create wealth simply by increasing government spending. Freedom from aggression is not something that countries can 'afford' only after they become wealthy. Freedom from aggression is a necessary precondition for wealth." (Pg. 186)

Dr. Ruwart also explains why it is that companies like the one that unjustly dumped me from my position, then criminally slandered me, get away with their unconscionable deeds.

"Clearly, the high cost of counteracting aggression leads to its use as a tool of the rich. Only the well-to-do can afford to lobby, bribe, or threaten our elected representatives effectively." (Pg. 186)

"The illusion that this aggression benefits the poor at the expense of the rich is just that -- an illusion." (Pg. 187)

I was so angry at my former employer because of how it treated me that I began to believe the Leftist line that big government could or would crack down on corporations like it to protect "little people" like me. I forgot what I had once known -- which is that government tyranny only begets more corporate tyranny. Nothing the government can do will put a halt to the bastardy of big corporations. On the contrary, it can only make the problem worse -- and, indeed, caused it in the first place.

As long as it's made more and more difficult for businesspeople to make it, the "shit" will continue to flow "downhill" from them to us. All we can do, through government intervention, is pour more "shit" on them -- which also, inevitably, lands on us.

"Aggression, undertaken individually or undertaken collectively through government, can never create its opposite -- harmony and abundance." (Pg. 188)

"Once we accept this premise [that we can gain justice through aggression], we willingly defer to the authority figures who attack those selfish others on our behalf." (ibid.) -- Who then exploit our anger by seizing even more power, and more of our taxed wealth, for themselves.

Got it now. Won't forget it ever again.

"The loss that we experience because of our aggression is staggering." (Pg. 190)

It's exactly what's gone so wrong with our country, and our whole world, now. And we can't hope to achieve a different result by continuing the same methods. I'm not sure who said that to attempt such a thing is insanity, but he or she is as wise as Solomon.

We are, truly, now in the middle of another civil war. The statist Left and Right are tearing this country apart. The only way out of it is to depose both visions of government control. We do NOT have to choose between communism and fascism. Neither choice is acceptable for the land of the free and the home of the brave. The legions who died in our first Civil War -- and in so many foreign wars to protect our freedom -- did not give their lives to leave open to us nothing more than a "choice" like this.

This time, I have learned my lesson. I will do all I can to help other Americans learn it, too.

"Between a Rock and a Hard Place"

Around the blogosphere, I still hear lots of weeping and gnashing of teeth about President Obama's inaction on LGBT issues. Lots of people seem surprised, though I don't know why.

As I've said before on this Blog, President Obama is going to disappoint us. He is a politician, and he's already thinking about reelection. All Democratic officeholders are politicians. Again, where is the surprise here?

One of gay conservatives' favorite games of obfuscation is to conflate "Democrat" with "progressive" and vice versa. As if all Democrats were progressives, and all progressives Democrats. No one familiar with the American Left and Center is dumb enough to believe this. In fact, a good many progressives will have nothing to do with the Democratic Party, and all too many Democrats are anything but progressives -- as they themselves would be the first to tell you.

It is not President Obama's job to lead on LGBT issues. That's right; you heard me. That isn't his job, it's ours.

He will do whatever we make him do. Progressives elected him. We couldn't have done it without the centrists, or the moderates, or whatever they're calling themselves these days. But right-wing Republican "culture warriors" had virtually nothing to do with his election -- that is, besides disgusting the rest of the country into turning toward Obama and away from right-wing "culture wars."

President Obama knows that. He will not cave in to that crowd. Like most Democrats, he seems to be enamored by the notion that "the center" is where it's at. How will he know better if we don't show him?

Again, that's OUR job.

All too many Americans are stuck between the "rock" of timidity and the "hard place" of despair. Both of these are passive, helpless, whiny, cowardly positions. Neither is a place of strength, much less of the hope for which we voted.

The "conventional wisdom" says we must be careful not to upset "the center." But the "center" does not determine itself; its position is determined, almost entirely, by the movers and shakers on the Right and the Left. WE are the ones who will decide where the center is. The Right has so completely lost all credibility that we have the rare opportunity to determine this practically by ourselves.

We do need for there to be some sort of a "center," to keep us from sliding too far to the Left. If we scare the hell out of everybody and make nuisances of ourselves, we will empower the Right to make a resurgence. It is, in fact, the only hope they've got. But the "center" can function only as a brake; it can never, ever be an engine. We on the Left must be the engine.

To passively sit by and expect Obama to do everything for us will lead to nothing but more of the sort of whining we now hear. It will get us nowhere. Engines don't whine unless they're broken.

On the other hand, to give up and despair of ever accomplishing anything because Obama hasn't waved his magic wand and automatically transformed the country into exactly what we want it to be won't help either. This is a representative democracy. Obama's job is to follow OUR lead.

We need to dig ourselves out from between the "rock" and the "hard place." And we need to get busy. We now have an unprecedented opportunity to get the country moving -- once again -- in a progressive direction. If we fail at it, we'll have nobody to whine at about it but ourselves.

"Workin' for da Man"

Over the past week, I have gotten at least three more "phishing" emails. In this Great Recession, it's quite clear that instead of robbing rich bankers, the desperate are turning on their fellow commoners. And posing, ironically, as bankers themselves. They now completely identify with the oppressors. In the most literal sense, they are "workin' for da Man."

It is probably lost on these lost souls exactly what they have done. They have betrayed all solidarity with their own kind -- have, in a very real way, betrayed themselves. They can slap all the bank logos they want on their phony emails. They will never be a part of that world. And they have exiled themselves from the only world in which they ever could belong.

The beneficiaries of this trickery are not those who may eke out a few hundred, here or there, defrauding suckers online. They are the criminals in the big corporations these small-time hustlers so long to emulate. It suits the bigshots just fine when we turn against one another and steal from each other. It means we have totally given up on the very concept of justice.

The "phishers" are utterly hopeless. They are absolutely whipped.

Instead of stealing from each other, we should be standing up and demanding justice. There are vastly more of "us" than there are of "them." Indeed, the only way they can defeat us is to turn us against one another. They can escape our justice by getting us to give up on the very possibility of justice. If we really, persistently, undyingly believe in justice, then we will settle for nothing less.

I refuse to give up on justice. Not only will I not be victimized, but I will stand up and do all I can to demand justice -- to work for it. To devote myself to the fight for it. I know who my enemies are, and I will never turn on my friends.

"Phishers" and other crooks who prey upon innocent, law-abiding, hard-working people are nothing but pathetic losers. And they have sold their shrivelled little souls for nothing.

No ballads will ever be sung for them, no movies made about them. They are "workin' for da Man." Very likely, they will end up going to prison for him, too.

Phishin' With Bonnie and Clyde

We keep being told that we're in the worst hole we've been in since the Thirties. Though it's too early to tell if this is a bona fide depression, it's being widely hailed (by those media minions who still have jobs) as "The Great Recession."

Gotta have a catchy name for it. Not that it makes the whole thing any easier to take. But hey, at least we know what to call it!

Among the many parallels between This One and That One, nearly eighty years ago, there's the surge in desperate crime. Not as violent, perhaps, as the gangland gunbattles of yore, but certainly just as banjo-twangingly, depravedly, folksily bold. For sure. No big names are likely to come out of these. Our Bonnies and Clydes are all anonymous.

I don't suppose what happened to me yesterday morning, when I checked my emails, was exactly the same as having a gun stuck in my face and my wallet demanded of me, but it was only slightly less bothersome. I got one bearing the Bank of America logo and informing me that there had been three unsuccessful log-in attempts to my online banking account. They said, therefore, that they "needed" my personal information verified (i.e. given to them), so they'd know that I was really me. If they did not receive this, they threatened, my account would be closed.

"Stick 'em up! Your money or your life! Don't talk back, and you won't get hurt!"

I called Bank of America, understandably mystified, since I don't do any online banking. (And this is probably why.)

When I read the email to the lady from the bank, she had a good laugh. This missive was the product of a mind bereft of even an eighth-grade education. "It's all about your security," it concluded. The education of the author seems to have come almost entirely from TV commercials.

"Yo, dude...it's all good!"

The bank lady advised me to forward the email to their fraud department so they could check it out. I did, and an impressively short time later, they sent a message telling me that this was, indeed, an attempt at "phishing." They were polite about it, but they basically said they hoped I hadn't been dumb enough to give those creeps the information they were seeking.

Nice to know Bank of America is looking out for us. Especially since, thanks to our tax money, they are now wholly a subsidiary of us.

Thank you, no, I gave the creeps nothing. Usually, when I get something like this, I shoot back a reply wishing them "Happy phishing!" This time, I restrained myself from such small satisfactions.

I could almost hear those banjos dueling. This has been happening more and more often to me lately. An indication, I imagine, of desperate times.

The question that must be asked, of course, is the same one people probably used to ask the bandits of the Thirties: "Wouldn't it just be easier to look for a real job?"

Easier, maybe, but I guess not as much fun.

I don't think the corporate bigshots who've been robbing us all are having very much fun right now, because we have figured out their racket. More than a few of us are even trying -- on a much smaller scale -- to copy it. Too many of the small-fry will get away with it. But I don't guess too many more of the big phishies will.

At least in the old days, the gang-bangers robbed the people who were robbing everyone else. This is a part of what I'm getting at when I compare the morality of our response "now" to the people's response "then." The Bonnies and Clydes of today had just better remain anonymous. Were they to come out and proclaim themselves, We the People would tear them limb from limb.

The crooks aren't the only people getting desperate. And there are mega-many more of "us" than there are of "them."

We'll get all this sorted out together. The Great American Kleptocracy is going down, and it's going down hard. If we're able to bring this about soon enough, perhaps our "Great Recession" will lead not to another depression, but to a new, better and fairer prosperity.

Let's do some "phishing" of our own. Let's catch these crooks and nail 'em to the wall. All of 'em, of every size. We all know what happened to Bonnie and Clyde. May the big-time looters meet justice in an only slightly less bothersome way.

Ship of Fools

As happens whenever the Religious Right's rampages flare to supernova magnitude, a major backlash is boiling. Many, many people at the Left and Center are angry -- VERY angry. The predictable cries now ring loudly again for religion's total, surgical removal from the public square.

Of course we don't study history anymore, so many of us seem unable to put what's going on in any intelligent perspective.

This is a regular cycle: the fundamentalist zealots get too big for their britches, they manage to convince the majority in society that they are the only "real" people of faith and their version of faith its sole legitimate form, everybody else gets good and heartily sick of them, there is a large-scale strangle-the-last-priest-with-his-own-entrails revolt against all things religious, and we enter another period of sterile secularity. Then, when people realize how -- well -- sterile this overreaction really is, in rush the fundamentalist zealots again to convince us how much we really need to get religion. Their brand of it, of course.

This is like keeping an ocean liner afloat by rushing madly, pell mell, back and forth from starboard to port. Just as the ship is ready to capsize in one direction, we ALL have to run over to the other side -- until it's about to flip over that way -- when we all head back over to the side opposite.

My grandfather was a deep-water diver in the Coast Guard, stationed on the Great Lakes, in 1915 when just such an event happened for real. The Eastland, a big pleasure cruiser, was on its way out of the harbor for a holiday jaunt. Everybody ran over to the side closest to the crowds on shore to wave at them. But they didn't get the chance to switch sides before the boat capsized. My grandfather pulled hundreds of dead people out of the water.

If we keep this nonsense up, that may eventually happen to our entire society. In part of the Middle East, it may be happening already.

Spiritual aridity always -- ALWAYS -- leads to spiritual excess. Human beings are incurably spiritual. This can be suppressed for a while, but it always, and inevitably, comes roaring back with a vengeance.

The progressive religious movement (Christian, Jewish, Muslim and whatever other tradition may be capable of progress) is an attempt to end this cycle and bring lasting spiritual health. It tries to spread us all out over the ship so we're more equitably distributed and the vessel can proceed in stability and safety. Not as exciting, perhaps -- but a lot less traumatic.

The antidote for bad religion just may be better religion, instead of none at all.

It seems that those at either extreme view religion only in stark terms of either/or. You're either a red-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth fanatic, convinced that God is telling you to set the whole world afire, or else you're so sane and reasonable you allow yourself to believe in nothing.

The hardcore skeptics have the same attitude toward progressives that the fundies do. They are violently allergic to reasoned restraint, mutual respect or thoughtful, tolerant faith. We progressives are "flaky" or "wishy-washy," they scream. And we are, for the most part, too polite to tell these lunatics to calm down and stop screaming. To just stop scrambling back and forth from one side of the ship to the other and making us all pitch and roll along with it.

Do we really need all this drama? Must we allow extremists to shout past us and shove us around?

Again, folks, PLEASE try to evolve. We're supposed to be intelligent beings. Whether we all want to admit it or not, we are spiritual beings, too. We don't all have to believe the same things. But we also don't have to drown ourselves and everybody else.

Corporate Kabuki

I can now totally understand how Nazi Germany happened. Not to mention the Salem Witch Trials, the Spanish Inquisition, the Stalinist Purges and every other noted instance of mass insanity. Over a decade of having worked for major corporations has taught me all I need to know. Like these other eruptions of evil, our corporate age has brought out human nature's very worst.

Job-hunting, in these troubled times, heavily embroils us in a ritual I can only call Corporate Kabuki. It is an elaborate mummery, totally removed from reality: the domain of pisspot tyrants. And it demands, from those dependend upon it, nothing less than mindless and degrading fealty.

When you apply for a corporate job, the stupid grows like fungus on the process from the start.

"What are your aspirations for a career in Acme Enterprises?" you are asked. And of course, you are expected to tell them something grand. "I just need a damn job," would be the real answer. But that's the one you're not allowed to give.

You are expected to grovel. And certainly, when you play along with their little game of debase-ball and enthuse, with manufactured excitement, about your glorious potential future in widgetry, that is exactly what you are doing.

They know that, even if you're foolish enough to actually dream of climbing the widget ladder, they're only going to keep you 'til the next downsize and then dump you back on the street -- cheating you out of even a minimally-decent severance and, if at all possible, with absolutely no advance warning.

Either that, or -- and this is infinitely worse -- they will keep you for twenty-nine years, eleven months and three days, cutting you loose a matter of weeks before you were set to retire and collect whatever insultingly piddly pension they'd have condescended to give you.

Why do they do this? Why, simply because they can. They're frightened, cruel little people, and their only joy in life comes from lording their petty power over their underlings. The only difference between these soul-dead droids and the Nazis, or the Inquisitors, is one of opportunity.

They think they're frightened because the world is such a cold, hard place. But they have, by their own consent, become part of the problem instead of the solution. They are working to make the world even colder and harder than it has to be. They delude themselves into thinking "that's just the way it is" and that they have no choice. But of course they have a choice -- and of course they've made it.

That people like these continue to get hired and promoted -- just by playing the game -- when they have not a spark of originality, or even real humanity, to offer their employers, speaks volumes about how this situation got to be the way it is in the first place. If these are the sort of people they hire, then no wonder corporate executives hold their workers in such contempt.

The fakery goes on and on throughout the process, from the initial job-search on through to the Big Dump -- whenever it comes. And why? Because they want to get all they can out of us, giving as little as possible in exchange.

It is this that MUST be changed. And the only way we can change it is by WISING UP.

We don't need to devote ourselves to our corporate overlords the way medieval monks and nuns devoted themselves to the Church. We can hire out for a time -- as long as the arrangement remains mutually beneficial -- and then say "sayonara" when we've found something better. We know good and well we don't have any glorious future in widgets. But then again, why the hell would we even WANT one?

They've lost us. They no longer deserve our loyalty, and they never did deserve our dreams, our identities or our very lives. At one time they did deserve our loyalty, and it is entirely by their own treachery that they have lost it.

Wouldn't it be better if we COULD simply be honest with them, and they with us? Then we'd all know pretty much what to count on and what not to. The kabuki routine serves nobody. It has turned corporations and their workers into mortal enemies.

When the kabuki finally comes to an end, we will be able to work out a system that is fairer and more honest for both sides. Dishonesty brings out nothing but evil. It can never truly serve the good.

They've got to stop punishing those who tell them the truth. They've got to stop rewarding mindless conformity and moral cowardice. In the end, they're punishing themselves far more than they are us.

The curtain is coming down on the kabuki. But real life will go on.

Only Victims Need Apply

It seems the Left only likes you when you're a victim. Why is that?

If gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians start attending churches that don't know quite where they stand on the issue of gay inclusion, is that too boring for the taste of our "activists?" Is changing hearts and minds one individual at a time by quietly living a good, solid Christian life -- instead of having endless marches and candlelight vigils in the most hostile territory possible and getting our heads bashed in -- simply not exciting enough?

Granted, it isn't regarded by the MSM as nearly as exciting -- as "newsworthy." And it doesn't make us feel quite so heroic.

There's so much bitterness out there from gays who have abandoned the Christian faith. They seem to think that all straight Christians are bigoted monsters. If all they hear about, in the news, are the grand protests and the policemen and the arrests, then no wonder they feel that way.

But we are the pets of the Left (both political and religious). It seems good to them to see us as victims -- always victims, and nothing else. After all, if we're victims, then (A) the Right can be portrayed as one-dimensionally evil and (B) those on the Left can promote themselves as valiant heroes in a titanic battle.

It seems we need our Leftist benefactors to save us from everything.

The same principle applies to the violent crimes that keep popping up in the news, like poison mushrooms after a rainstorm.

We must keep all law-abiding citizens unarmed, so the heroic Leftists can rescue us from guns. Guns are portrayed as these hideous, horror-movie objects that just sort of float around, shooting people at random without anybody attached to them. Perhaps the anti-gun crowd believes that guns possess some special, evil magic that casts a spell on anybody who touches one -- turning people into senseless killers by mere contact alone.

Well I, for one, am tired of being a victim. I'm tired of being kept as helpless as possible just so my self-appointed champions can save me.

Boys and girls, the game is all about power. If we ever doubted that, all we have to do is look at the slavish devotion we're still expected to shower on the Democratic Party. These jokers haven't done anything to make good on the promises they make to us. We're just supposed to go on endlessly trusting them to champion our causes.

We are assured that someday...when enough Democrats have been elected to high office...the sun will rise, the birdies will sing in harmony and all our needs will at last be met. But notice that before any of these good things can happen, we must GIVE THE BASTARDS MORE POWER.

It's quite clearly about power for power's sake, and nothing else. The libertarians have been telling us that for ages. Well, guess what: they're right.