If you had not have known better, you would have thought I had taken my leave of absence from planet Earth. There I would not have blamed you one bit if you thought I finally got those aliens to come back and pick me up. There is no longer enough brain power to sustain this rock. Take me to your leader.
I often wonder if Nero may have felt this way as he watched Rome burn. But alas, Nero wasn’t fiddling because the fiddle had not yet been invented. Nor was in Rome when it burned. It is troubling when pesky little things get in the way of a good story isn’t it? Pesky things such as the truth. It seems the truth has changed over my lifetime. It used to be this thing that one sought out and verified. Now, fiction has become the new fact. All you need is a good angle, some nice little tidbits thrown in the middle and the ending just sort of writes itself. Its the equivalent of ordering a shit sandwich without the buns. Just know they will be added later on to complete your meal. That is how the truth gets morphed into a new truth. A truth that fits the storyteller’s narrative. While that storyteller’s mind is rather weak, he is good with graphics. So even though the actual story doesn’t hold much weight, with a few cuts in the right places and just like magic, a new improvised truth emerges.
If you have been on social media in the past couple of years, you have probably come across people that have used that creativity of accusing others of ridiculous acts and criminal offenses. All the while, yelling how their voices will not be hushed. They will get the word out. They will contiune to spread the truth. However, like anything else, the truth, as I said before is a little trickier these days. Its not reality. It’s this fantasy that people pull you into. A seesaw battle of believe my reality over another’s reality. This is where the weak minded people come in. The followers of said person. They click their likes, they offer their emojis or their one liners. “You really told them. You are spot on. Thank you for showing us who to blame.” I happened to take the time to watch one of these people for about 2 months. Just to see what their angle was. What was their reasoning behind what they were doing.
The person happened to be male. Coming from that chromosone side of the board, I did find certain things odd. There was never a mention as to why they were performing this civic duty. If you’re old enough the remember “The Hunt for Red October”, then you remember the line, “The Russians don’t take a dump without a plan, son.” I am not blind to the idea that people may just suddenly get this idea of becoming an advocate of something. But, I’m also exceptionally skeptical to think that most anyone does not have some deep seated reason for doing what they do. Being a man all of my life, I consider myself somewhat of an unbiased expert. There is usually a reason behind someone’s madness. If it detracts from the hatred you wish to cast upon the thing you are railing against? Well, you just conveniently leave that part out.
For the sake of sanity, I am not going to reveal anything about this idiot. I think at this point it would provide him with more views. While I don’t expect to attract the same type of audience that he does, I don’t want him to see his views climb and think his rhetoric is actually reaching people. When I attempted to engage with this person, I had a lot to say. Some of it was not pleasant. What I found myself doing was going to their level to fight them. I got angry at my own self for doing that. While not an out, I suppose I knew that he didn’t possess the ability to come up to my level so I went to his. When I am on social media, I keep my comments private to the people I share my opinion to. This is really the only place I venture outside of those lines. You trust people whom you have developed a reprieve with. Who don’t always think as you do but allow you your say as you allow theirs. Its what was truly meant when the 1st Amendment was put into the Bill of Rights. Upon attempting to comment on this person’s page, it was removed most of the time. Which means I am only going to allow those people who support my way of thinking. Or, I don’t actually support “Free Speech”. I support the right for people to hear or read what I have to say while silencing any opposition to my way of thinking.
The person I was commenting on was running a page dedicated to whom he and his followers believed were conducting online panhandling, begging, poor business practices, and other nefarious things on the web. I suppose from a personal vantage point, I found it rather odd for a man to decide this is the mountain he is choosing to plant his flag and die for his cause. But, to each their own I guess. The more I sat and watched, the more I was honestly drawn in. Not by the content, but by the complete blind trust that was being given over to. For a lot of the videos, it woudl be the equivalent of saying fill in the blanks, We – – – – over to —–place —–I saw —– they were ——. I can see where this could be a fun game your family plays by the fire around Christmas time. But in the real reality or real things and people, the only part of the sentence that had any sort of evidence was who’s place they went to. Evidence of the beginning and the end were nowhere to be found. In the fantasy world they have created, there was no shortage of people ensuring they had the whole story figured out. It was Colonel Mustard in the library with the lead pipe. Sorry, I hit a 80’s speed bump and nostalgia came out. Anyhow, I hope those of you capable of reading more than 3 sentences strung together can relate. In all of the time that I played insult ping pong with this idiot, the biggest piece of their sheer stupidity came at an “AHA” moment he wanted to capitalize on. In a couple of videos, he accused someone of grooming children for certain behavior. So, if you were someone who felt this was actually happening, what would be the first thing you would do? If you picked share the video out again, so more people who didn’t see the kids having this done to them can view them and seek them out, you win a prize. It sort of puncuates the behavior of arrogant and ignorant people When you point out stupdity, they don’t possess the ability to think that maybe, they could actually be wrong. While the video was not made nor intended in any way to promote any certain behavior, the fact that this person’s instinct told him that the most important thing he could do was to show this to other people shows you where the motiviation. Are you advocating for awareness or acknowledgement. At the end of the day, I saw people reporting his behavior to the sound of not much of anything being done. Eventually, some of his content was flagged but he still has the ability to post. All the while yelling about his freedom of speech.
Therein lies the problem of the defenders of today’s democracy. When you are fight for rights that you never served to defend, it leaves those of us who have done so with a bit of a bitter taste in our mouths. Not becasue we think you should be denied them, but because your fundamentalist concept of that freedom is based on only one voice being heard. None of us stood a post, folded a flag, carried a brother or sister to their final resting spot so that just one of you could be heard anymore than the other one. And that you respect the others opinion in the same way you expect for others to respect yours. It should be obvious to anyone that history has taught us that someone will whatever they feel necessary to silence the voice of another. Just because they do not think the way you do. For those of us who defended your right to a voice, if you can’t stand and listen to someone oppose your beliefs or stance without reverting to violence, then honor their right by removing yourself from the conversation at all. For those who have seen people speak their mind and lose their employment from it. Those people are indeed free to speak their minds. However, celebrating the demise of another human being just because they did not share your values defines your character. To deny a family their son, a wife her husband, a child their father based solely on his ideals destroys the very fabric that those Bill of Rights were penned on.