I'm still there - the laughter turns to tears once again

Two things happened today; Tyler Clementi is in the news because he's dead; and that inspired me to check Street Prophets - only to see I'm still in the FAQ as the poster-child for how atheists are welcome there; my profile links to this very diary and they haven't found it. 

having a link to an atheists diary in your FAQ months after you sent him packing is a little wierd...if not pretty shameless, or just blind.

Here's what you've never addressed:

I may go a little deeper on this, given the current headlines about Tyler Clemente who just jumped off  a bridge because a video of a gay encounter was posted on a public website.

Fox fucking News - a guy named "Dr." Keith Ablow has summarily exonerated the two students who posted the video and absolved them of all responsibility by saying (ya gotta love this) that the temptation provided by the new electronic media was just too much to resist.

Yet here is the most frightening possibility of all: Wei and Ravi may have had no deep, dark desire to bully and humiliate someone to death at all.




The Web and webcams and Skype and Twitter may have hijacked essentially decent people, kindled some potential for intrigue and eroticism and practical joking that resides in millions and millions of young Americans and turned it in a lethal force.

it's not the people's mindset, they weren't bad, it's just that the internet made it so easy to torment someone.

Ha ha ha.

Lets see how far we run wih that

Somebody emailed me and said it's time for me to let this go - it's eating me up inside.

and that's the point

Here - this is a comment left on a Fox news Blog about the dead

"The person who killed himself was entirely responsible for his decision. "

Hoo fucking rah.

Just keep pushing, if the other guy falls over, he's to blame for not standing up straighter.

We should make rape legal, then? If the woman could only redirect what she feels as fear, dread, and trauma and remember there could have been a nice juicy orgasm for her if she had just looked at it differently, I guess that will be next?

Why do we even put brakes on cars - I mean, if you hit the other guy, it's surely his faults because he did not get out of your way fast enough.

I've fucking had it - and you all will too when the ends of these means comes around to consume us all eventually as the brakes are slowly disconnected from our society -

This kid who jumped off the bridge was not living in a vacuum on the moon, in isolation for his whole life.

His life - as is mine, yours, and all others who have walked this earth - a function and a component of the societies we live in. Your actions affect mine, mine affect yours - this is called "sybiosis" - we are a mutually interdependent group of organisms who cannot detach ourselves entirely from the environment of people who surround us.

So this fucking bullshit - I would love to let the cocksucker who wrote that see the look on my face - as I could John Fleetguy from Street Prophets and Dear Old Rain Sarah Reed who is still making quilts to "heal people" but says that my thougths of suicide were unacceptable on her blog -

Blame the people for their thoughts, and well - maybe with all this blame on ourselves you'll get closer to understanding why some people jsut say fuck it and turn it all off.

I wish there was a "G"od - because the pious motherfuckers who have told me about "H"im all my life are the ones most likely by any objective, rational, unbiased analysis to have their own wing named after them in the bowels of whatever Hell might look like.

I personally think the only "H"ell that ever will be is the one we make for ourselves; no ethereal forces or divine beings neccessary. We create this pain and misery - the only species on the whole fucking planet with the power to contemplate or reason any of these thoughts, and how often we turn away, throw up our hands in futile surrender and say, "well, that's just the way it is".

Whether "G"od gave us these big brains and opposible thumbs and the power to use both of them, or we evolved from atoms and void to emerge from the primordial slime to become the "smarter" animals, its' still disgusting and shameful how often sober people simply surrender their power - the only power they do have to make a difference - to the fates of the universe that all the other "lesser" animals are helpless victims to.

Shameful.

Tyler Clemeti did not live isolated with no human contact. I did not live this long without interaction with others - and if all of you are simply going to keep throwing any fucking thing you goddamn feel like at anyone you feel like and cry about your freedom to do so, your shame has no bounds as you then wash your hands of all that comes from your actions and blame others for not reacting to it as you had planned.

Pick one - but not both. You either speak your mind and own what comes next, or you had best check with your "G"od about the legitimacy of pushing someone as hard as you like and then blaming the other guy's spine for being so fragile as to break in your grasp.

Frankly, this is one of the easiest reasons to piss on the idea of there ever being a god - he clearly is a sick creature indeed to watch all this bloodlust and misery and claim it to be part of some greater plan, to be revealed only to those worthy of surviving it under certain rules.

I wish there was a "G"od who I could hope would "damn" this kind of shit -

Maybe that is why so many others invented one.

What Street Prophets did to me was entirely in their rights to do - but if they were trying to set an example of what they felt was the proper way to respect other people by weeding out those they thought had gone too far, look back through my posts there and you'll see they missed a few on their own team.

And so it goes.

For some people, anyway. I know in my worldview, Tyler Clemente's torment is over. He's at peace.

And lets count how long it will take for the first Christian to remind us that he's in Hell...

Google "Brad Delp" suicide - you'll find it. There are dozens of them.

Cold, raining, empty here.

Bout average.

I'm still in the FAQ - do they have any idea

how it feels to be a poster child for how atheists are welcome at their site, and almost ten months after they closed the door, still have me listed as proof that atheists are tolerated?

Well, Joe - it's the way you reacted that caused the problem.

yes - re - acted. If you have the courage and the time, look at my diaries from beginning to end - you can start with the one linked to in the FAQ - i only started to change my tune about August of 2009 when one particular blogger broke their own rules (Don't be a jerk or a hater) and nobody called them on it.

Oh, sure - privately they said things like "well, Joe seems rather sensitive, so you best treat him special" - but nobody paid any attention to the routine manner in which he belittled other religions, in particular atheism - and most sadly for me, the guy who invited me to Netroots pointed out that "proselytization is not appreciated and is considered bad taste"

Want to hurt somebody's feelings other than mine? Specifically count the number of biblical verses in JCHFleetguy's posts - in particular, the number of posts per diary/comment - and get back to me.

This was not about building community, or progressive politics - he's a self-professed political Conservative and even whined about how it was not easy for a Conservative at a self-described liberal website.

And that's why I snapped. I saw him in my diaries over and over; it was always chapter and  verse, or this absurdist argument that everyone has faith.

he'd screw around with the definintion of faith, like Conservatives screwedd around with the defininton of torture or "freedom" - and that would be the same thread over and over.

SO the link I put to his comment - "anyone without faith would be a suicide victim"  - is either an egregiously offensive say to someone months after the person he said it to told him in no uncertain terms that no, John, I - snafubar - do not have faith. I don't want it, it gives me no peace, and yhou have substituted "confidence in things I can understand" for "blind faith in things that can never be explained" - you have ignored the difference and then said "well there's no way I'll come around to your definitions"

And nobody banned him.

he even wrote his own rules for what cookies/troll markers mean - like I said in other threads I sure hope for his sake that he does not start interpreting traffic signals by his own rules. When George Carlin talked about "my brother drives like this" - it was a joke - John still does things his way and simply dismisses standard, agreed upon, conventions.

But in the end, this will always be a blog (my blog) that proves that they simply did not care if I lived or died.

They cared about the liability if the last thing that I wrote or talked about on Earth before i went through with it was on their blog - because that would be too difficult to plausibly avoid cause/effect. This is why I make no apology. If another soul like mine came along tomorrow, based on their lack of culpabilty for how I wound up changing my attitude, they'd simply play the game the same way again, and someone

you know this, I know this, the statistics bear this out

Someone else will pull the trigger - either on themselves or whoeever cannot get out of the way.

And because I even brought that up, they'll say Im "threatening" = but lets' go one step further -

so even if I was - they'd ignore the threat and plow forward.

Tha'ts not about me - that's about kicking me out because I violated site rulese about being a "jerk" or a "hater" - but like Danish Brethren called me a "terrorist" for saying that if I'm in pain it inspires and fuels my anger, if I say that I'm using it as a weapon.

Got it?

If they hurt me, telling them is to use my pain as a weapon.

If I  hurt them, they slam the door.

Thirty thousand suicides a year. More than homicides - did you even realize?

And they'll do it all over again.

I see no evidence that they would change anything.

191 days and they still don't have a clue

What's so sad about this is that what I'm about to show you is posted in the FAQ under the heading

"Who Speaks For This Site"

...and there I am, an example of how welcome atheists are - and it's been over six months since they banned me.

Banned me for being an asshole, for using words like motherfucker.

That's fine - but the forest they were standing in kept me from seeing all the trees.

Because what I saw was the following:

The rule was "don't be a jerk or a hater" - here's some quotes from the people who still post there and who obviously weren't banned for them:

"anyone without faith would likely be a suicide victim"

(I was also banned for frequently mentioning that it was precisely the kind of belittlement and disdain for my point of view that made me accept that if this is how people really saw me, I'd be doing them a favor by leaving their midst and it would surely be more peaceful for me as well to be dead and not worried about any of it)

my personal favorite, since one of the things that I was told was "unacceptable under any circumstances" was talk of suicide - this comment was made by the guy who, for six months, had gotten under my skin because he was so oblivious to the violence he did to my point of view, while playing victim when I got pissed about it.

Thoughts

I think I'm about done with "social networking". I always knew I was different than the other kids, and the more time I spend on facebook and blogs and just my own personal flaw that I ignore the tact not to talk about all the things apparently no one talks about, I'm realizing this fact: I don't know how many of the people I was friends with in my past that I'd be able to be friends with now.


It seems that there is a systematic double standard that always works against my favor:


When someone else tells me their point of view, that's simply their perogative to utilize their freedom of expression and state their opinion.


But somehow the rules change  when I speak up, particularly when I happen to hold the point of view that is in the minority, because that means - well - everyone can see that this is far beyond just a polite opinion, I'm just being "provocative".



I'm not so deluded as to suggest my freedom of speech (protected by the First Amendment) is being infringed, like Rush Limbaugh did when he got fired for saying something unpopular on ESPN. Limbaugh was fired as an example of pure, unbridled capitalism: His bosses fired him because they did not want to take the hit to their ratings when he pissed people off. His current job as political windbag and provocateur is also a captialistic enterprise, and not neccessarily the most noble or sublime use of "freedom of speech"; he gets paid a handsome sum because a lot of people like to hear some other guy say the things they know would get them fired if they said it. Democracy only guarantees the government can't shut you up. But the rest of the population will take care of the ones they don't like on their own.

What does this have to do with me?
All these years with good memories, or at least memories I could live with, and now it seems like I am indeed such an outcast and a freak that I should never leave the house except for groceries.


And of course - that earns me a new label - "depressed". Or my favorite: "paranoid". Why is it when you keep standing in the rain they say  you're not learning very fast, but when 99 out of 100  people tell you to STFU and you just stop talking altogether because you think everyone hates  you, they call you "paranoid"? In both cases, the label is more defeating than the thoughts, and that only makes those who gave it to me demand that I need them more.



A label for me, a career for them, and when they insist that it is not possible for me to heal myself because of my "disease", and I tell them that such a thought is the single most powerful one I could be given that would make me give up completely - the ones who shout it into my ears will only shout louder. They accuse me of hurting others...by telling them how much pain I'm in.



So when you see that the "side effects" for the anti-depressant drugs (expecially Abilify, which is the THIRD drug they insist you should take if the other two aren't enough) - and one of the side effect of that drug is still "Suicide" -



Hey - it isn't the drugs.



It's the society. It tells me I can't feel healthy until they tell me I'm healthy, but when I say their remedies make me feel worse, that's only proof to them of how much more i need.



Hey - if I'm that bad, I'll save the food and energy I'm consuming for someone more worthy and make space for them in my absense.


Holy shit - that sounds like a threat of suicide! Well, lets see here....a long list of people have told me with no ambiguity or equivocation that my ideas are not welcome, I'm outnumbered, and I'm not going to win - but make the best of it!...that's not me sitting in my house being paranoid that I'm not welcome. It's me finally accepting that it's raining outside, and only fools go out to stand in the rain.

Can you see how the rules change to fit whatever side I'm not on?

That's what they call paranoia, depression; I call lucidity and perspicacity. I'm only listening to what they tell me and putting it all together. This country's greatest industry - it's only industry, it seems - is taking people who once gave a shit and convincing them what a fool they are until they stop caring about anything at all. Then they blame them for giving up.



Neat trick.



If I thought fixing me alone would do something, I'd do it. But fixing only me and still leaving everything else as is - knowing that someone else is being crushed and broken as I supposedly heal by shutting all this out - I can't buy that. We won't change what is breaking people, we'll just wrap them in pillows and send them through the gauntlet one more time.

And those of you who are astute and honest with yourselves will have to see that sending me to get "help" doesn't have a goddamn thing to do with whether or not I ever feel better; it's nothing more than a limit on other's liability. If someone is the reason I'm so depressed and they can say, "well, I recognize he needed 'help' and said he get some" then they think they've done their civic duty. The help is never intended to change my state of mind, it only exists for their absolution.

If they really wanted to change my state of mind, they'd recognize their role in forming it, and offer to make changes on their own. That's not what is happening here.

The promise - the delustion - ofhelp exists so that everyone else can maintain the status quo. If I go get "help" that means everyone can now agree that we all knew where the real problem was - me - and now that I've gone to get a tune-up, everyone else can continue on as before without any obligation to change a thing. After all, surely none of my distress could have been their fault; by going to get "help" i've somehow granted them permission to label me deficient and therefore the only thing that needed any modification.


I first went for counseling at the behest of my mother and girlfriend in 1993. I didn't think there was anything wrong with me, and all this stress was just "life". I was told I had a disease; I was told I'd need counseling and medication for the rest of my life or I'd never be happy - and from that moment to this, it seems they were right.

It only seems now that more people have no hesitation telling me not only am I depressed, but they actually become angry with me if I dare hang on to the things that keep me hanging on - insisting that it's dangerous to tell anyone else.

I'm still alive. Whenever I think about the end, about writing a suicide note, I think about some of the conversations I've  had online or in person or in the presence of 'professionals' - all who think they know better than I do what is in my head and how to "fix" it - and say,

"well, I had managed to stay alive for 42 years. After listening to you tell me that you - only you, never me - could have the answer - that's when I finally gave up."

But you and i both know that the kinds of personality I'm talking about would never even pause in reading such thoughts; they'd see my death as further proof of how wise they were and how sound their advice was, "if he'd listen to me, he coudl have been saved".

Religion, therapy - just condescending people who are never wrong - they always disavow their handiwork and find absolution in simply saying "The other guy was sick when i found him, the fact that he's dead only means I didn't get to work with him long enough to save him".

And that, dear readers, is why I'm not letting anyone - neither church nor counselor - ever get their hands on me again.

A quote from a friends Facebook page

Facebook - A post by a friend of mine:

Say what you want but this sounds like the Mark of the
Beast to me! We will NOT be getting one!
National Healthcare Will Require National RFID Chips

 http://www.thenewamerican.com/

Ok, folks - this is what I'm talking about when I say that religion can be as dangerous as it can be transformative. This is someone I know, have known, for 25 years. I admire her. I still like her as a person. But I see her as one who has got "religion on the brain".

First of all, the RFID at best, will be in a "card", just like the one you wave in front of the gas pump to send the bill to your bank account, or the E-Z pass module you can get for your car to go through toll booths without stopping.

But here is a college educated woman who is convinced that

• The government will be requring people to get things implanted under their skin.

• As I remember the Mark of the Beast stories from Revelation, it's supposed to be an easily identifiable mark so that without it no one will be able to do any kind of business of any kind. Given the death threats towards Obama and Democrats in general lately, I'd be frightened more than I can relate in words to see what would happen if Obama were to announce that you must have something implanted under your skin to buy a cup of Latte and a scone at Starbucks, or .30 buckshot at the local gun shop.

• Somehow this will be able to encompass "Woe, to you oh, Earth and Sea, for the Devil sends the beast with wrath. Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the Beast, for it is a human number. It's number is six hundred and sixty-six."

what, so are there 666 transitors in the RFID chip? it only takes 9 digits to give every human on Earth a unique number, so I'm having a hard time rationalizing that a college educated woman can go from this passage in the book of Revelation to thinking that somehow a chip will be implanted under her skin - when the health care bill is not even mandatory.

Smart people are buying otherwise unconscionable and incomprehensible lies, and it is shameful to all America that we have people who are this gullilble, and worse - this reactionary.

Joseph Goebbels would have had better luck with the Christian Right in America 2010 than he did with the depressed and vengeful Germans in 1933.

I am ashamed of my country that we have people this easily led, and that they can be led to ideas that are so bizarre, so that they will turn away from ideas that they themselves don't know they should be embodying.

I wonder if my friend can tell me what is in the Book of Matthew, Chapter 25, verse 31-45.

I'll see if any of you are so astute.

If you care to understand my motivations on this

I'm fairly certain that if any of the regulars or admins at Street Prophets have found this blog that it will only add to their perception that those atheists are just out to piss in the punch bowl and start a fight.

I've given up on trying to change anyone's perceptions. I still ask people to read my first diary and the one I wrote after Netroots '09 and ask how the same guy came to be someone they had to excommunicate by January. I wasn't home alone in the closet reading comic books all that time, I was talking to them.

And now that we're roughly two months past the grenade going off, I've come to one conclusion about it all.

Out of sight out of mind works well for the one with their eyes closed or their back turned. It changes nothing however, about whatever it is that is no longer being seen.

And ultimately, what makes me shivver - literally shivver - is that if you follow the arguments of JCHFleetguy and even the logic of those who gathered in whatever conference took place to lock me out (which I understand involved Pastor Dan) what it means is

...if it all happened again tomorrow and they found another like me, they'd play it out the same way again.

Day 55.

I'm not doing myself any favors here by giving them the heads up; I'm sure the number would get much higher without my hints.

But it just makes my scalp itch when I think about this.
Here's the "end" of the story.

http://www.streetprophets.com/comments/2010/1/14/141729/556/346#c346

He's gone, JCH. (3+ / 0-)



Recommended by:JCHFleetguy, Sister Quarterstaff of Undeclared Grace, linkage


We banned snafubar.

by Rain on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 07:40:55 PM PST



I saw that after I answered n/t (1+ / 0-)


Recommended by:linkage

To find out about me:

http://braincrampsforgod.blogspot.com/2009/09/about-me.html

by JCHFleetguy on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 07:58:24 PM PST



January 15, 2010.

I really should let this perpetuate itself a little longer before I post this, but this will tell me if anyone at all is even paying attention.

You see, I cannot post any diaries or comments or delete my old diaries at Street Prophets, but I can still log in (and view hidden comments just like a trusted user - ha!). But I guess their system is designed to turn certain privileges "on" and some "off". So I logged "in" after I started putting these diaries up here and changed the link to my homepage to here.

no one from SP has noticed yet that this is here. 

Maybe they're proud of that.

But the thing that just blows my mind is the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for the site. The site was started in 2003, I joined in 2007, and aparently my early impressions were so favorable and I was such a likable guy that I was the token atheist (there are others, for sure) they used as an example that Atheists were welcome there.

In fact, the sentence in the  FAQ that answers "Who Posts Here?" reads like a "Believe it or not!"

Who posts here?



The quick answer is "anyone who wants to". There are a wide variety of people writing diaries and comments on Street Prophets. They include adherents of almost all systems of belief, sometimes including Atheists (see this diary). The majority of people posting here fall on the liberal side of the religious and political spectra. However, people of Conservative views are also quite welcome to come and share with us, as long as they do not attempt to interfere with the site mission. If you are polite, you will be treated politely. Unfortunately, there are some who post comments or diaries with the sole purpose of provoking others. These people are called trolls. Some tips and techniques for dealing with trolls are described below.

Now here's the count: That link above - the "here" link in the "Who posts here" answer to the FAQ is not my hotlink; it's the Street Prophets hotlink.

They sent me packing and talked defensively about having no choice but to do so; they held vigils to comfort each other (fuck the  guy who is so angered and hurt by it that he mentions suicide, he's just WRONG. The rest of them need a group hug and a prayer circle) - and the link is still there that even Atheists are welcome.

Maybe they have a point.

Maybe atheists are welcome there, then they'll needle, belittle, condescend and talk down to them long enough that they eventually won't be, but hey -

...everyone should see now that the guy was clearly broken and lost before he arrived, so the fact that he snapped was only a matter of time and the conversation that sent him over the edge was inconsequential to any of that.

In other words, if it already looks broken, go ahead and break it and it's not your fault.

So - here's the count. March 10 since January 14 is 55 days.

And that's the way it is, on the 55th day since we kicked out that crazy lunatic angry atheist, we're still holding up his first diary as evidence of what a welcoming place that even the atheists (gasp!) are welcome at the Street Prophets.

And let's not forget that the guy I had issues with is a self professed political conservatives, which just goes to show you that although Street Prophets describes it's own "blogfather" as the DailyKos (meaning that they descended from a place of politics that is not averse to dealing with faithful/religious/spiritual issues), they have acted as if they are indeed a place that puts the faith/religion/spirituality first and the politics second.

They know good and goddamn well that I'm not converting to conservatism/the Republican party, so it's OK to tell the atheist to fuck off and they haven't really lost anything.

Maybe in a strict membership count, no.

But I'm still hanging on to the last 20 minutes of my audio recording rant that I've released the first 20 minutes to in my other posts on this blog. You see, I have witheld some of that rant, because in the heat of the moment, standing by myself on that day when I tried to find some sense in talking all that out to myself, I said some things that - although genuine and true and from the heart - I dare not share with anybody on the "outside" (of my skull).

You and I both know there are words that when spoken trigger reactions, and no amount of context, explanation, or elucidation will ever change the perceptions of all the people who just know better what's in my head than I do.

"Well, I don't care what you meant, WE ALL KNOW WHAT YOU REALLY MEAN."

And that, to my astute observers, is why suicide makes so much sense to me.

If what I think and feel and can explain never matters, because someone else can erase, ignore, belittle or betray what I say by claiming they know better...well, then they are the ones who are making it clear that I serve absolutely no purpose in trying to change anything. A tree stump or a rock can accomplish as much, at least somebody can sit on them and rest for a while.

As a sentient being -

as a cogent, lucid, sober person who of his own volition can form rational thoughts and explain precisely what I mean by them,

if I am not permitted to explain nor defend that someone else has misinterpreted my words, or ignored the specific connotations thereof, then I serve no purpose here.

And sadly, it goes one step further than that.

John C Howell/Howard wrote to me personally at my private email and apologized for upsetting me the first time we miscommunicated to each other. To date I've saved him the embarassment of his assertion that we were both having so much fun together in these exchanges (when I explicitly told him back then I was very angry all along). I saw him as a person who was the antithesis of me - if every answer to every question or issue is simply some recitation of "chapter:verse", then there is no conversation that cannot be had by simply picking up a Bible and reading it myself.

It's a surreal, perversion of "freedom of speech". Freedom of speech, in a Constitutional argument, means that (with precise few exceptions; inciting a riot, treason, threats to the president) there is no limit that the government can place on one's speech.  Sadly a few people act indignant when their words perterb or enrage other citizens, and they say, "Hey, you can't tell me not to say it!"

...and they are correct. As a citizen, I cannot prohibit their speech. However, they are indeed delusional if they somehow believe that because their speech is protected by law that that also absolves them of the reaction other citizens can have upon hearing it.

This is easy to point out: If you go into a bar with all kinds of Harley Davidsons in the parking lot and lots of guys and girls in leather and you start talking shit about all the whores in the room and how Americans build shitty motorcyles - you'd better have your exits nearby and clear or they probably won't find much of what's left of you.

Yes, it's illegal for them to beat the shit out of you. But then again, you probably calculate that you're going to be a crimson stain on the dancefloor long before the police arrive, so you check your freedom to mouth off at the door and that's how you make it home that night.

On a blog, you're free to mouth off, and some people, like DanishBrethren of StreetProphets even call people like me "terrorists" - for if I say that their words have hurt me personally, then he feels that I'm "holding the site hostage".

Nice.

I guess we can make rape legal now - after all, if the fucking cunt didn't react so poorly to that nice orgasm we gave her, what's the problem, right?

It staggers the mind how the argument got turned around that fast - if we just hammer on the guy who has a bad reaction to what we say and blame him for it - then we're still free to say any damn thing we want to about him, to him, to spite him. It's a great thing.

And to a point they're right - but lets' not allow them to masturbate themselves any longer into claiming that it's still an "open" community. It's open to people who don't say "ouch". Go along to get along, and if you can't do that, the door is over there. And if you don't walk through it on your own, we'll throw you through it and it will pooch you out into the parking lot when it hits you as it closes.

Now I'm not ever going to defend Rush Limbaugh - but to illustrate a point: Rush Limbaugh got fired by ESPN for saying something racially provocative during his time there. He cried on his own radio show that "There is no freedom of speech in thsi country". Um - Rush? Your freedom of speech was not infringed; surely the government had no more to do with his firing than they did in his getting hired in the first place. His bosses at ESPN fired him because they did not want to face the economic or social consequences of Limbaugh's words pissing off a lot of their paying subscribers or customers who patronized their advertizers.

And so in this context, I present my life - the reality of my living, breathing, conscious, corporeal form that can read or listen to the words of others and respond to them - as a counter to "free" speech.

Sure it's an open community, but if you piss us off, we're going to ask you to leave.

"But what if my reaction was because one of your own pissed me off?"

"That's our perogative; its' our site. It's a 'safe place' for people of faith"

"That means that people of faith do have privilege over those who don't?"

"It means we reserve the right to declare by our own rules who was right and who was wrong"

"and what happens to the parties after your judgement?"

"We don't care. That's our privilege."

And so it goes. In a larger context I have had other accuse atheists in general of "attacking" faith - like when the ACLU files a suite to object to the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance, or to hear a Christian prayer at the opening of a courthouse session, or when there is a manger scene placed at the seat of civil government for all citizens. That, according to some Christians, is evidence that faith is "under attack" in America.

Why is it so egregious that a person who does not hold to any faith object to having faith waved in my face? Do you think I could run around town and claim that "G"od was a fraud and that churches are a place where only fools and liars gather and nobody would object?

This is where democracy may ultimately meet it's match.

That's a mouthful, ain't it? Yes, what I am saying is that democracy can fail. And Democracy (captial D) can fail when the respect for what it means is lost. Democracy is not merely means to an end - the Protestants who founded this country did not escape the rule of the British throne simply so they could create an environment that was precisely as exclusionary as the one they left behind. The men who founded this country declared that freedom was more important than religion, so that each individual must be left to find their own faith and method of demonstrating it.

John Howard was entitled by law to speak his mind.

Street Prophets can grant him deference and privilege to say it on their forum.

Street prophets can even exclude others who they feel violated their rules of decorum in their reaction to John Howard's attitude.

But what none of them has the capacity - whether or not the right to do so exists - is to somehow manipulate, control, censor, or otherwise have any certainty over how anyone else reacts to those words.

That's what got lost.

What Street Prophets said to the blogosphere, the liberal/progressive voters they serve, and anyone else who happens to trip over their site by accident is that their faith, their harmony as a site came before the feelings of one lone man (or two or three of us as one other got excommunicated and they strongly admonished a third).

That disappoints me. I'm sure they dont' care I'm disappointed, that's one of the privileges they exercised in my excommunication - out of sight, out of mind.

But I'm still here.

I'm going to carry this around for who knows how long. It's not healing now - since I still see my name show up every now and then and the whole thing is referred to in couched references and hushed tones.

And in the end, the mother fucker - yes, I want you to envision his mother crying through her tears begging him to stop because that's how I felt - was smiling, and confident, and not concerned about anyone but his own right to just keep on going.

That's fine, John. You can legally do that.

And some other people will simply silently slink away.

Others you can wind up and taunt for a while and they'll make a scene, and then the group chapperone will escort them out.

But in the end, there you were, a child of "G"od, and you effectively said, "hey, man, I don't care what my words or actions make you feel, I have a right, and I feel an obligation to make you feel them, and if you have a problem with that, I don't care"

And this is supposed to be a guy who, by virtue of his noble religion, is a better man than I. Remember - I'm the guy who lost my temper - I must have been sitting alone in the vacuum of space while sequestered on the Moon, right? It wasn't like I was a guy who was lauded in the group only a few weeks or months or for  two years before - somehow I just turned into a fucking monster and NOBODY can figure out how or why.

At least that's their story and they're sticking too it.

Good luck with that.

After all, I'm probably the only guy in the history of mankind that has ever lost his temper and acted out inappropriately, right? Surely, now that they've thrown me off the boat and sailed further away from me, there will never be another.

If it were that easy to believe the problem belonged to me and only me, the suicide would have been a forgone conclusion a long time ago. If I really felt that all the blame was mine alone - all those shrinks I'm not going to any longer can tell you that I'm a purely reactionary person. If I was pro-active, I'd be able to get past this.

It's all good. Other people can continue to masturbate their brain that things are precisely the way they see them - and only that way - and they need not adjust anything nor consider any alternatives. They're right, and everyone else is wrong.

They will act shocked if you accuse them of that, but in truth, the stand they took in this instance proved that is exactly how they see it.

Them good. Someone else bad.

On the night I was last held captive against my will in a "hospital" the "doctor" asked me "Do you have suicidal thoughts?"

I said, "Yeah. All the time. But I'm (was then) 37 years old. I've had suicidal thoughts since I was 16. So that's an unbroken streak of over twenty years of successfully dealing with those thoughts, isn't it?"

They kept me for four days, and I was finally discharged "against doctors orders".

Street Prophets kicked me out for mentioning suicide. And I've already put up the link where the unforgivable gaping asshole who drove me to that point had months earlier had insisted that he knew so much about who I was and what my existential beliefs meant that anyone who really did feel as I said I did MUST be suicidal - but he was not admonished for saying so.

John C Howard can insist that anyone without faith must be suicidal and he gets a pass.

But if I, after having had this dickhead wave himself in my face for six months say that his words make me feel so insignificant and belittled and ignored that I wish I was dead - well, now I've gone TOO far.

God, I'm still waiting for you to rule on this one.

I can only assume that your silence on these matters must mean I was right all along and you're not there in the first place. Because I've tried to find you, God. You haven't said a goddamn thing to me, God. (ironic, eh?)

And so I start my count.

Six months after a prick with a Bible in his hand declares for me that anyone who does not have faith must be suicidal, two months after the people who claim they are an open forum for even atheists excommunicated a guy for saying that he felt suicidal thanks to the hypocritical asshole with the Bible kicked me out, they still have my first diary up as an example of how welcome the place is to atheists.

Go back and read that diary, if you would - please.

Then read a few more of what I wrote.

I didn't come in there to burn the place down and  tell them they're all full of shit.

In fact, the diary I wrote in August is most hard to explain.

Three years later: Catharsis, inspiration, friendship, renewal. Thank you all.

How did the guy who wrote that in August of 2009 become a guy who was so angry at the very same people that they had to throw him out by November?

Surely it was because there was something inherently wrong with me. Surely it had nothing to do with the reality that I blogged there constantly during those months. How many diaries and comments did I write in those months?

How many of them were put on your front page?

Boy, that guy just snapped, didn't he? Must have been something in the water. There's no way that such a radical change could have been the result of the people he was spending most of his time with during those months.

The defense rests, God.

One last thought that I keep forgetting: There is a thing called "troll rating". This can be applied to comments or to cookiejars (first comment by an author in a diary) to express the sentiment that the comment is just so egregious and flagrantly in violation of the spirit of the website, or just so vulgar and counter-productive, that it should be "hidden" from all but the site admins and the "trusted" users.

Not once in all my comments and diaries I posted during the two years I was at the Street Prophets did even ONE SINGLE COMMENT get a hide rating from ANYONE.

But somehow they had to ban me outright. That one says something to me; I don't know what you will think it means. But here were a group of people who never once took the opportunity to use the tools that were put at their disposal to give feedback and moderate the discussion; yet somehow a discussion was so far afield that although not one single person felt the need to ever hide a single comment, two users had to be banned.

And the guy who ostensibly started it all - JCHFleetguy - he says that he still thinks the whole thing was a wonderful exercise and healthy for all parties involved. Oh, isn't it just great that everyone who wasn't kicked out all came together for the group hug!

Wow. How little things change over the centuries, eh? Us: Good. Them: Bad.

Continue on.

Dear God, I wish I could believe in you so that I could have some candid conversations about matters here on Earth. I think some of your followers have a lot of reason (and yet sadly they appear to have little actual intention) to ask your forgiveness.

But I don't see that  happening; it's too easy for them to blame others and move on.

Let me know how that works out for you.

Not real easy on this end.

But that's the way "G"od wanted it, right?

This must be all part of "H"is plan.

Good luck with that.

We all know that whatever happens to the guy who wrote this diary, that sick bastard was broken and rotten long before he got to Street Prophets. They had no bearing on him what.

So.

Ever.

And if you can believe that,

well I want the drugs you're doing and ask you how you can take them and still pass the test.

Faith? Is that the drug?

Sorry, I can't take that pill, it makes me feel like a hypocrite.

I finally figured it out.

Suicide.

Hey, 30,000 people every year in the Greatest Country In The World (TM) come to the conclusion that it's just the thing to do.

So how does the country deal with it?

"YOU! YES YOU! GET HELP!"

Did you see it?

Here - look at it again - see if you see it this time?

"(you) GET HELP! (from somewhere else, not from me)!"

There it is. Whenever I'm in a one-on-one conflict with some person, the answer is always for me to concede that I need "help" (never specifically defined what that actually is) and therefore, if I get "help" from somewhere else, the person I'm having the conflict with one-on-one is off the hook. Presumably, after the "help" does whatever it does that "help" is supposed to do, then I'll be in such a state that they will find me more agreeable.

And there it is - that's what the 30,000 have figured out. If the answer to all conflicts is that I am to be sent away to become more malleable and agreeable to others so that they don't have to change, then all problems are solved.

Just be more agreeable to everyone else,

get the "help" to become more agreeable from someone else,

and when I come back all better (read: more like everyone else - as if the way everyone else treats each other is working SO well) - then life is good.

Some people assail me for being so argumentative and combative. There is an alternative to that as well - I can be quiet.

I can stay quiet.

And they don't like that plan either.

There is no way to make these people happy.

And that may have some bearing on our situation.

The movie Avatar has caused some to be depressed. Me? Not so much...

'm just going to put this up here because it was as fluid, spur of the moment as it gets. I have no local friends who have time for me, so I'm the guy who sees movies alone. Maybe this will explain why I have no friends.

If (when) you listen to my diatribe, be sure to read the quote I found on the liner notes of the 7-CD collection of George Carlin called "The Little David Years" - the CD versions of all the comedy albums that made him famous (Including the Supreme Court case)

I write this post on the weekend when J.D. Salinger and Howard Zinn have both died, and after reading Salinger's words from the only interview he ever granted,



There is some confusion about "bringing people back to life" and "bringing planets back to health"; Avatar was not solely what I was thinking about when I screamed that; I was thinking about all the other movies that allow mere mortals to commune with their dead loved ones, or bring them back to life, and there was that one moment here with the "spirit" that enveloped the Navi.

My point is that only in a stone-cold atheists world do we realize that IF there is no "G"od or gods to repair the damage we've done, or bring our loved ones back to life (or who is harboring them for us to be with when we die) - then this moment -

- this planet -

- this life -

- this one chance is all we've got.

And if we fuck it up, we fuck it up. Too late after that.

I was inspired by a woman I met in 2006, a very nice woman and devout Christian who said she believed in God because she just "could not take the chance" that the stories of Hell might be true; therefore, because the stories of what Hell is like as told in the Bible MIGHT be true, she could not risk thinking otherwise, and therefore must seek God and obey his commands.

I had a very pleasant conversation with this woman, and I even apologized to her husband for occupying his wife as we sat at the bar eating dinner in this restaurant; he almost seemed indifferent as he really did not miss talking to her for that one meal.

But the point is that if a person is willing to play "what if" games with existentialism and religion, why not take the opposite view? "What if" it really is only humans, the rocks, and the trees? What if there is no God coming to save us? What if the battle of Armageddon is not inevitable, and such catastrophic death and destruction are merely the wanton hubris of mortal men who don't know enough to think that their side might lose - or that both sides might lose even if one side thinks they "won"?

What if there really is no "G"od?

The aliens who find the Earth after we blow it all up thinking that is what "G"od wanted us to do because it was written in the book of Revelation are going to have to call on their own Shakespeare and Funk and Wagnals to re-christen the meaning of the word "tragedy" -

"Here lies Humanity. They had everything they needed to live in peace, and to sustain themselves - including the knowledge to know when they did the wrong thing and to correct their path - and because they were seeking answers in the ether from a God who was not there; because they did not have the courage to own up to their own errors and failures and had invented this "G"od to forgive them (and such forgiveness was only in their own individual minds), all the planet was lost.

All the humanity is gone.

All the other lives have had to pay the price.

We've seen that movie before too - "The Day The Earth Stood Still" (2009).

I first had this thought when I saw "Independence Day" (2005) - President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) has some kind of mind-meld with the aliens and he says,

"I saw what they're planning to do. They're like locusts - they move from planet to planet; after the consume all the natural resources, they move on"

Hey - President Whitmore - News Flash! Humankind is doing that all by itself!

Why are we afraid of aliens who might take it from us by force, but we're utterly indignant and outraged if any mere mortal human suggests we might be doing just as much damage (with no hope to save ourselves) all on our own.

So the aliens will arive and leave this epitath on the tombstone they erect on the dead, empty Earth:

"Here lies humankind. The fantastic randomness of the universe delivered life to this planet. They grew intelligent enough to understand the consequences of their actions, but in their desperation to invent some larger purpose for their own existence, they denied their own hubris and lack of courage to take responsibility for what they were doing.

Here lies humankind. Smart enough to understand what was happening, too proud and arrogant to admit to themselves what they must do to save themselves, and they took the whole planet with them.

May other forms of life learn from this tragedy and never repeat these most tragic and egregious failures of conscience and responsibility."

Since this blog is being read by absolutely no one

...I'll take advantage of that for my own purposes. (that seems to be the thing to do these days). I heard that there are so many blogs and so many other things competing for our time that each blog has basically one follower - the one writing it. After all those years we kept our diaries secret, we finally leave one open for the world to read and they're too busy.

Ha!

So...what would you talk about when you knew no one was listening?

Suicide of course. This is a funny one, actually, because I'm going to diagram for you how the people die who many want to live, and the people who arguably many people probably wish were dead are still alive to piss them off.

Some people care what others think of them. Other people don't.  Which group of people would you want in your life? - those who care what you think of them, naturally. It's kind of waste of energy to be around people who don't care about you since all your efforts go unnoticed or unappreciated.

But what basically is a therapist/counselor/psychologist/psychiatrist (and even your priest and your best friend) telling you when you open yourself up to them and tell them all about what is making you so depressed? Take care of yourself first. Don't cast your pearls to the swine. Don't allow yourself to be too vulnerable. Don't share so much, people will take advantage of that.

Share just enough so that people will find interest in you, but dont' share so much that they are overwhelmed or burdened by you.

That's a bit vague, don't you think?

Especially if you're a man and you see the cover of all those woman's magazines in the grocery store checkout lane (I've often wondered if the reason that the line doesn't move any faster is because the cashiers are being paid to sandbag so that the customers will have more time to buy chewing gum, batteries, and magazines).
The woman's magazines all say how men are rotten because they never open up and share their feelings; they say that the men they want are the ones who can show their emotions and be "deep" with them.

But wait - don't we live in a paternalistic male-dominated society?

Yes, what's your point?

Well if you're  a woman and you know that the world has you by the throat because you're not a man, when you go looking for a man aren't you going to be searching for one of the guys that has other people by the throat so you can hopefully share in the spoils of his conquests? Women want a guy who's confident, strong, and arguably dominant so that when he's out there earning his living and managing their mutual affairs that he can slay all the enemies, dragons, and other forces that get in his way.

...and then when the woman realizes he's strong enough to treat her like all those other things she wants him to dominate, control, and defeat, she somehow can't figure out why.

The alternative is the guy who's emotionally as vulnerable as the woman is; a guy who's learned to be open and expressive about his feelings so that he can share them with her. The women love this....for a while. Suddenly they realize that any guy who opens up with this kind of ease will get his little candy ass bruised and beaten (if not slaughtered) by all those other dominant forces that are out kicking ass and taking names.

So what women want doesn't really exist - A guy who's strong enough to be a US Marine and White Knight while he defends the righteous and noble and slaughters the demons and devils, who then can instantaneously turn himself into a soft, cuddly teddy bear who brings home flowers and writes poetry.

When the Myers-Briggs interest inventory came out and put us all into four codes- meaning that of the eight choices, your answer to 200 questions would classify you into four of them with opposite polar classifications, I became a freak for sure. We often say that if something is "one size fits all" then it won't fit anyone very well. Of the four choices I/E, N/T, F/S, P/J, I am one of the few people who is very close to the middle on all four scales. They call me "lateralized". You might think that a person who could fall into either one catagory or the other if only a few of the 200 questions were answered differently would be well adapted and well balanced.

Not so, say the shrinks. They blame us for making their test look bad. I was told by one "doctor" that my answers were very "inconsistent". Hmm....let's see - Meyers/Briggs takes what are really only about 25 questions and asks each one of them 8 times by changing the wording slightly. They say this is done to try and pin down the people who don't obey the instructions to the test and answer each question on one's first impulse. But imagine a person who can't be that impulsive, and does contemplate each question, and then envisions or remembers situations where sometimes the answer was A, on other days in different situations the answer was B.

The real world is a lot more like that last scenario, where things are unique and must be judged in the moment on the merits. But if you actually take the test that way, the test administrator will accuse you of screwing up their results and say you are "inconsistent".

How did deep and introspective and capable of elaborate consideration with a stake in the outcome become a liability like "inconsistent"?

I started out talking about suicide. I'll do that later, because apparently in writing this out I'm not so obsessed about dying right now.

Go figure.

Hey Rain, I think you better get God on line one for a judgment call on this one

This is part 3 of a series in my response to the self-righteous, hypocritical sanctimony of a few people who think they have the calling to put thoughts into someone else's head and then disavow their handiwork.

Part 1 "Beyond Your Control: An Exit Interview

Part 2 I found precisely which straw broke the camel's back, and the camel hasn't got a clue

Audio is available of my version of therapy on youtube at



Now, having said that, let's go through a little history:

Here's the comment that earned me my first "suspension" at Street Prophets; and here's Rain's explanation of why:

• snafubar, (3+ / 0-) (recommended by Sister Quarterstaff of Undeclared Grace, Maureen, ladybug )


The not-so-implied threat of suicide here is unacceptable.  I asked loggersbrat to call you last night to check on you.  She did and, thankfully, you were okay.  However, using suicide threats as a rhetorical tool is not okay.  Ever.
Nor is not acceptable to attack another member the way you did JCH.  His very presence seems to set off violent emotion in you.  I went back to the thread where you attacked him and he did not do what you accused him of doing – he was simply replying to a comment of Ojibwa’s, not to you.  
The front pagers have discussed the situation.  This is what we are going to do.
You will be able to read but not post for the period of two weeks – a “time out”.  Then, your posting privileges will be restored but you will be on probation.  After that point, a personal attack on another member will result in banning.  Another suicide threat will result in banning and a call to the police in your area for help for you.

We will write to JCH and speak to him about refraining from pushing buttons.  We will also ask him to stay away from any diary you may write in future.

by Rain on Sun Nov 29, 2009 at 08:07:09 PM PST

Pasted from <http://www.streetprophets.com/comments/2009/11/25/164625/67/98>

Now, first of all, you got any judge to throw your case out of his court. If it was rhetorical, then you had no reason to call the cops because rhetorical means it was not serious. If it was serious, then who are you to accuse me of using suicide as a rhetorical "tool"? You wouldn't last five minutes in a courtroom before the judge threw you out for contempt. Marie Antoinette said, "let them eat cake", but Rain wants her cake and she's gonna eat it, too.

Now buckle your fucking seat belt sweetheart, because this is gonna suck if you have any vestige of hoping you were truly objective in what was happening.

That was November 29. The conflict and condescension dumped on me by John Howard, JCHFleetguy, (and there is a shitload more of it if you really have the time; I do) had been going on since at least June and you had been involved personally already once.

So I thought you ought to read the day that I decided that I wasn't taking Mr Fleetguy's attitude any longer that he was a good Christian and I was something else .

You blame me for bringing up suicide?

This mother fucker had already told me that having such thoughts was what he expected of me. And you didn't see it, or if you had, you didn't say a word about it. If that "Judge not lest ye be judged" verse is important, somebody's screwed.

I was serious about sitting down. Here is the sanctimonious prick on September 29, and you didn't have a problem with this discussion of suicide:

(note: this is JCH standard response to anyone who mentions "more people have been killed in the name of God than for any other purpose", which I will take on in future installments.)

A few points (0 / 0)



It is interesting that people want to count bodies until the body count doesn't favor them. Frankly, I think you bought into a generally believed urban legend about faith causing more wars than anything else, and now simply do not want to say that should have been debunked in Snopes. So be it.

People have found lots of reasons to kill each other for a long time. I can take my share of credit for that - just about 7% of the credit.

. . . faith - blind or otherwise, and regardless of what dogma the faith is based on - deserves to take it's share of causing misery in the history of mankind than any misery caused by people lacking faith.

No one really lacks faith - unless you are using it synomously with religion (i.e. Catholic faith, Muslim faith, etc). Faith is not an organized thing, faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see.

All human beings who are not suicidal or otherwise terminally pessimistic share that – but faith has an object.

Before that though, let us make sure we understand the word "hope". This is not "I hope I get a pony for Christmas" - this is confident expectation.

Everyone exercises faith in "something" (and indeed many things) nearly every day. Therefore, faith is a meaningless word unless you attach the "object of the faith" to the faith itself. It is "faith in [fill in the blank]' that you have to discuss. So, now this paragraph

If I follow your argument, you seem to indeed be claiming that without faith in something - anything, even if the things that one has faith in are competing amongst each other for supremacy - is always and unconditionally preferable to having no faith at all.
So, since you say "something, anything" I would say yes - although actually I would say it is just flat unavoidable. People who absolutely could not exercise faith in anything probably would be suicide victims. We cannot operate without "having a confident expectation of the results of things which we cannot see". Period.

So, if you want to discuss what your faith is "in" (or the many things) and I want to discuss what my faith is "in" (or the many things) - then we can start to have a rational discussion.

However, back to violence. Since science doesn't deal in absolutes but really in percentages and odds - the odds of being killed in the 20th century by someone exercising something coming out of their faith in God is far far less than you being killed by their faith in something else . Indeed, the odds of you being killed in the United States tomorrow by someone acting out of their faith in God is far far less than your chance of being killed by someone acting out of faith in something else.


To find out about me: http://braincrampsforgod.blogspot.com/2009/09/about-me.html

by JCHFleetguy on Wed Sep 02, 2009 at 06:43:35 PM PST

[ Parent ]

OK, I gotta go. This is way too close to home (2+ / 0-)

Recommended by:JCHFleetguy, linkage


People who absolutely could not exercise faith in anything probably would be suicide victims.

Well, now we've found agreement.
But they aren't victims until they go through with it, and that's where the fun stops.
If you have real courage to see me frothing at the mouth and throwing heavy objects, and crying - but nevertheless being unflinchingly honest in the thoughts I have on the subject -

then I'll explain that to you.

I know I have to go unwind for a while because I realize you must not have any way to know what that might imply.
The condescension is showing when I read

"then we can start to have a rational discussion", which implies that the one we're having now is not rational, and I'm pretty sure you're not admitting any culpability in that.

Peace.

SNAFUBAR: I know things will always be FU from time to time, what I'm working on is that we stop being so damn comfortable with it as "Situation Normal"

by snafubar on Wed Sep 02, 2009 at 07:59:14 PM PST

And in his typical passive-aggressive way, the motherfucker (and when I use the word, I want him to see his mother crying and begging him to get up off of her) had the balls to recommend the comment.

I'm going to put up a whole new diary about how John C Howard sumarrily re-wrote the rules on what a "cookie" and a "troll" was for, and what life would be like if he decided to be that unilaterally arrogant about the colors Red, Green and Yellow when displayed by a traffic light. But for now, here's an analogy for the hubris and wisdom of using something in a completely different manner than everyone else is using it: (George Carlin made a lot more sense to me than Jesus on so many levels)



But beyond his arrogance, what is more sickening is his indifference. This heartless - and yes, Rain, soulless bastard, would stand eye to eye to me while I had a nine millimeter Beretta held to my temple with a full clip and keep telling me I had faith while the tears ran down my face and I cried for him to shut the fuck up.

ANd you didn't say jack shit to him, but you threw me out for what?

Because you're all too afraid to admit you're no better than me.

And that's how you sleep at night.

Now I know why people say "sweet dreams" - because only in a dream could you believe this shit made any sense and that God loves you for it .

You can kick me out of Street Prophets - but I promise you that if you pick up the phone and try to get anyone involved in my personal affairs like you have threatened to do, you had better be goddamned sure you have a good lawyer and a lot of fucking money, because I'd love to retire and live fat and happy for the rest of my days after you lose your shirt in court trying to explain why and how you think you care if I live or die.

You care about your own liability, not one god damned fucking ounce about who I am, or how I feel, or if I live or die.

ANd that's why I don't need God to help me sleep at night.

Let me know what he says about your blessed objectivity. I am sincerely curious to see how this one plays out.

I'm going to keep going on this - there's a lot more of Mr Fleetguy's sanctimonious hypocritical condescension. You gave me shit because the "rules are very clear" about being a jerk and a hater. You seem to have exceptionaly acute radar for what you think is hate, but you're blind and in the fog on what a jerk looks and sounds like.

And so it goes, Rain.

I'm sure you'll find a way to see how God will forgive you.

I don't see a God, all I see is you. So if you want any such thing on this temporal Earth, it has to come from me and I'm - as of now - a long way from thinking you have earned it.

And stop with the vigil already - you made your choices. Have the courage to stand up to them without feeling sorry about it when you clearly don't give a flip-happy-flying-underhand-fuck if people live or die.

I found exactly the straw that broke the camel's back

This is Part 2 of a series in my response to the self-righteous, hypocritical sanctimony of a few people who think they have the calling to put thoughts into someone else's head and then disavow their handiwork.

Part 1 "Beyond Your Control: An Exit Interview

Part 3 Hey Rain, I think you better get God on line one for a judgment call on this one

Audio is available of my version of therapy on youtube at



When I wrote the following comment, I was trying to commend the person who wrote the diary - virgomusic - for finally putting some response up on the site to Pat Robertson's latest "Haiti made a deal with the Devil so they deserved the Earthquake" comment. Because I had been checking for a week to see if anyone would say something about it.

Sadly, like I do, it looks like I left off the last half of the sentence; I lose things. I would have read like this

"If I had seen these kinds of refutations when the events happened, I might be less offended by those who merely distanced themselves or excused themselves from Robertson/Fallwell and others."

What follows is a cut/paste of the comment that I didn't see, because once I had been "banned" I had weird time that night. It's strange that they are acting as if they are grieving themselves right now, but that's how it goes.

And that's what they tried to teach me, that's how it will continue to go, apparently. 

• If I had seen those kinds of refutations when (2+ / 0-)

( Recommended by: JCHFleetguy, JDsg )




...he said that wildfires in Florida were the result of a gay pride rally in Orlando...

...when he said 9/ll was the fault of everybody but Christistians...
...when he almost caused an international incident by suggesting the assassination of Hugo Chavez...
...when he told the "good people of Dover (PA)" that they should not call on God in time of need beecause they had rejected God in throwing out the school board over Intelligent Design -

I will direct you all to this diary - I hope you'll get the analogy.

http://frothingatthemouth.blogspot.com/2008/05/story-behind-name.html

The punchline is:

Is is more outrageous that I would ever dare to say something so unthinkable, or is it more outrageous to realize that it was only once I said something so unconscionably obscene that the he finally took me seriously?
If Pat Robertson can get away with saying all the things he has said in the past and only now face a backlash from his fellow Christians, that should stand on it's own as a legitimate reason that people like me have become (in the eyes of some here) "extremists".
I wasn't sitting in a closet somewhere reading Winnie the Pooh cartoons all my life, these are the kinds of things that have been raining on me all my life and every time I spoke up about them in the past the answer was almost universally the same,
"Well, I'm a Christian, and I didn' say it, so it's no skin off my nose"


SNAFUBAR: I know things will always be FU from time to time, what I'm working on is that we stop being so damn comfortable with it as "Situation Normal"
by snafubar on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 05:33:39 PM PST

A few points that are important. Note that JCHFleetguy is one of the ones who recommended the comment. He's the guy I've been so mad at in recent months and one of the reasons is that he has unilaterally re-written the meaning of a 'recommend' himself. He says he rec's every comment he reads just so everyone who reads it will know he was there - like a calling card. Well then would it not seem strange that if he had been criticizing me for all that I had wrote (or re-writing it by posting corrections and telling me I had just never learned history correctly or my definitions or wrong or....) he would give what is supposed to be a 'thumbs up' sign.

Nope, not to John. Although to recommend a comment might be a universal thumbs-up sign for everyone else, he is OK that he uses it differently and doesn't care what I feel about it. That is a quote, although It will take me a week to find it. He said he's been like that for years, and will not change for me.

I wonder if he how he deals with traffic lights. Red might mean stop to everyone else, but John feels it's perfectly OK to assign a completely different meaning to it...



He also said that he's never TR'd a comment in all his time there. So the tools that are at his disposal to express approval or discontent have either been forsaken or misused, and he can't figure out why someone might be getting the wrong message from him.

Now, for the responses:

○ Right (0+ / 1-)



Nice anti-theistic garbage.
Thanks for sharing.


Not

by Danish Brethern on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 06:39:45 PM PST

This is the guy who says he's a counselor of some kind. Where is there an anti-theistic message? I said I was upset not about theism but about lack of condemnation or denial from people on his camp. No atheist or secularist could attempt to correct Robertson, for any attempt to do so would simply inspire more of his outrage, and more of this bullshit victimization that these pious whiners cry out about people taking away their religious freedom. So any correction of Robertson has to be from a fellow "theist". Again, more labels - no constructive progress on how to solve the problem any more than he feels mine was not.

○ You would find (1+ / 0-)


if you looked as I did that there was equal unreported reaction to Robertson then

To find out about me: http://braincrampsforgod.blogspot.com/2009/09/about-me.html

by JCHFleetguy on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 07:15:17 PM PST

Get that? If only I had lived my life the way John has, I would have gotten all the information that I needed. Nothing condescending or insulting in that attitude, right?

This is the person who had set me off all these last months. He just did it again - you see, he wants me to know that my experience was invalid, and if I had only lived my life as he did and "looked", then I would have found what he feels I should have seen. That's too convenient; I guess I should just have to live my life standing right next to him so I would be sure to experience the world precisely as he does, then I would see the world the right way after enough time.

That's not specificially proselytizing; it's condescension and I find it much more offensive and demeaning. But remember - it's their house, and they are  interested in  harmony and a 'safe place' for faithful people. So if people like me are out sharpening our fangs because of whatever reason, they'd rather not know about it.

That's fair - it's their right and perogative to manage their own site. I would suggest though that they ought not to be surprised at the hostility that might be present still; and I will demand that despite their claim that I was surely broken before I got there and therefore it's not their fault. I wasn't drunk, stoned, or otherwise under the influence of anything other then the feedback and contributions of others when I lived through it all.

In other words, I was reacting to people at Street Prophets as much as I was Pat Robertson, so now that they have restored harmony to their site by banishing the dissenters, where am I now?

Out of sight, out of mind - but they'll still be writing diaries about the tension between faith and lack thereof.

And so will I.

He's gone, JCH. (3+ / 0-)

We banned snafubar.

by Rain on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 07:40:55 PM PST


□ I saw that after I answered n/t (1+ / 0-)

To find out about me:
http://braincrampsforgod.blogspot.com/2009/09/about-me.html
by JCHFleetguy on Fri Jan 15, 2010 at 07:58:24 PM PST


What I think is most telling about JCHFleetguy is that every post has a link to his personal blog. I think he's insecure and needs validation as much as I do; and maybe he felt I was getting some of his light or at least taking it away from him. But I won't be so arrogant as to use that as a reason to shut him up; I just want him to recognize he can be doing damage to people by being so innured, indifferent, aloof to how he makes other people feel.

If you look at my history at SP, I just posted my own diaries and then I tenaciously defended my position. I rarely ever went into other diaries at all; I was just there to know that I had left my footprints somewhere, and I gained my energy from those who saw them. I lost energy when someone tried to tell me my footprints did not belong there or tried to fill them back in with something.

So I banged heads for many months with a guy who's seeking validation and feedback as much as I am, and someone else made a judgment call to declare who was right and who was wrong.

I'd say my outlook on life is pretty accurate - other people are going to throw stones no matter what I do. I was a fool to think I should try to ask them why they felt the need to; that wasn't my call.

…beyond your control? An "exit interview"

This is part 1 of a series in my response to the self-righteous, hypocritical sanctimony of a few people who think they have the calling to put thoughts into someone else's head and then disavow their handiwork.

Part 2: I found precisely which straw broke the camel's back, and the camel hasn't got a clue

Part 3: Hey Rain, I think you better get God on line one for a judgment call on this one

Audio is available as a playlist in two parts, A and B of my version of therapy on youtube at



Here's a quote from a comment left to me by the editor of the site to justify why she sent me packing:

... there needs to be respect for each other’s beliefs. It is so stated in our FAQ and it has been our way since the Street was opened.

I don't believe she wrote that. She's the one who declared - by her utter oblivion of what a jerk he is - that it was OK for one person to continually show disrespect to me and my beliefs, and then call me a hater when it became so absurd it made me angry.

How can I say that and claim to be objective? Well if she wants, I can show her the emails I have gotten in commisseration from other members of Street Prophets who recognize that John C Howard (JCHFLeetguy) is a sanctimonious ass towards more people than just I. As a self-proclaimed political Conservative, he may be a fox in the henhouse all this time, but since he's a real good Bible guy the radar apparently goes right over him.

Yes, I agree there needs to be respect for each other's beliefs. What seems to be most important, however, is who gets to decide what a "jerk" and a "hater" look and sound like. The objectivity of the referee is what matters most.

What follows is a fictional exit interview between whatever counselor/therapist/warden that anyone thinks is keeping me off the streets right now after the fourth great trauma in my life about religion. This is the stage of the interview where the counselor must first ask only questions so that they may first learn what happened; they cannot give advice until they think they understand what created the problem.

Snafubar: Well there it is. God was in control. It was "beyond their control" that snafubar felt belittled and dismissed by their constant apologies for all things religious and faithful that offended and condemned him. They first apologized for the Pat Robertsons and Sarah Palins and then they just ignored that on certain days some of their arguments and tactics were almost identical.

Counselor: But Joe, they were assailing you because you were an asshole?

Snafubar: Wait - they said it was beyond their control because my being an asshole is up to me. They excused that what the asshole was reacting to was up to them.

Counselor: Yeah, so what?

Snafubar:  If a guy is swearing at you because you just poked him in the eye with your finger, rather than object to his swearing you migth consider taking your finger out of his eye. THAT much was within their control.

Counselor:Yes, but it was their house. People should be allowed to control behavior within their own house.

Snafubar: Unless it's supposed to be an open house. If the goal is to promote community, if the ultimate "godfather" of the house says you should be impelled to align for political purposes despite your religious disparity, then the community of political goals is what should be preserved; not the community of religious harmony. What is so unforgivable now is that they're all gathering in sorrow as if they had nothing to do with this.

That's the beauty of this new found "get help" mentality in America. If you can label someone as "needing help" then you have absolved yourself from having any responsibility for how that person came to need "help" . If snafubar was living in seclusion on Mars, for example, isolated from all other human interaction, then it's perfectly reasonable to say that his bad behavior originated and was inspired by things that Street Prophets and the people who write there had nothing to do with it.

If the guy has spent hours per day at Street Prophets in recent months because he was isolated for the most part from the rest of his world, and he went from a guy who was grateful to them for their community and the spirit it brought to his life by being welcomed there, and then he comes to say that he doesn't feel so welcome any more because at times certain people want to defend their own positions at the expense of his, then others who contributed to his increasing anger can't erase their participation.

Counselor: But all you had to do was moderate your reaction. You were disrupting the harmony of the site.

Snafubar: I only asked them to consider how the actions of words of people in their own larger community - religion - affected me, which they simply excused or disavowed. What ultimately inspired my ire was that it became clear their own attitude was not much different. They knew they were all right, and if there was discord, the solution was for the outsiders to concede they must change and accept the others perspective - "for the good of the community".

Counselor: That's fair, don't you think? It was after all, their community.

Snafubar: Only to the point that even after I'm no longer there, I'm still somewhere. And I now carry the memories and scars of what happened that have shaped me. And - this is where the irony becomes almost crippling - the people that shaped me and helped form that anger they are so upset about have absolved themselves from any responsibility for it. They label me "sick" or "dangerous" or even just "angry" and they're off the hook.

Counselor: What if it's true? What if you are sick?

Snafubar: Hey - if all it takes to claim you can keep doing what you're doing and that whatever pain it causes others is not your fault; if all it takes to be absolved of your personal effect on others is to insist that the other person feeling the pain is too sensitive, then we can go ahead and make rape legal. After all, if we just train the women to respond better to being raped without having such a bad reaction to it, then what the rapist does to them is no longer a problem.

It's always the same problem, no matter how large or how small the circle of the community is: Whether it's two people in a marriage, or a community of 30 bloggers, or a political party of 60 million voters, or a country of 310 million people, or a planet of 6 billion of them - if the way to deal with strife and tension is to summarily label one party to be out of line and dismiss them (but to take no responsibility of what happens when they leave) then we should look forward to a world with more fences and walls, and a lot of rocks being thrown between the camps.

Counselor: Are you saying you're a victim of Street Prophets?

Snafubar: No. I'm saying that if their goal was to bring people of different world views, faiths, religions and philosophies together for political purposes  (and not preserve a safe place for people with religious foundations to say what they will and disavow the results) then they may not be who they think they are. There are examples that are still up on that site now where a person was admonished by site admins for criticizing Islam or Christianity for causing death, and two comments down the people who are still there blame atheism for causing death but suffered not admonition from the administrators.

Faith and religion always has an excuse - When a person with faith does the unthinkable, the others with that faith or religion say either that someone isn't doing it right, or what you see is really something else. Lack of faith, absense of faith - that always take the blame at face value.

My goal was always to point out the hypocrisy.

And in the end the hypocrisy proved itself.

It takes no courage, no effort, no real sacrifice to maintain a community where everyone already agrees. The people who impress me are those who can make peace even in the face of the most disparate points of view, the people who can keep harmony without declaring anyone "right" or "wrong", or "good" or "bad", or "healthy" or "sick".


Labels are good for cans, because otherwise you have no idea what is inside. If you want to know what a human being is thinking, you can ask them and they can tell you. But if you ask them their point of view, you must be at the absolute minimum, prepared to accept their answer. Their opinion is as legitimate to them as yours are to you. To insist otherwise would do as much violence to them as a person as if they did it to you. The danger is in the comparisions.

You can ask a human being what they're made of, and rather than slap a label on them and insist you know what they're made of, you must realize humans are too complex and dynamic and interactive for any one-word label to have any meaning.

There is no "community" smaller than that of humankind itself. We're all related whether we admit it or not. To do otherwise is to preserve "enclaves", not a community.

Street Prophets has preserved their "community" and it is shocking to read anyone write that what happened was "out of their control".

Counselor: But it is their community. And they are now reacting to what happened as a traumatic event to their community. They're actually demonstrating a grieving response.

Snafubar: Pause and think about that before you say anything. Beyond their control? No. Beyond their willingness to control it. There were a hundred chances to control it, when one person or a few persons could have realized that even if they did not agree with my point of view, it belongs to me no less than their own belongs to them. It doesn't have to be a zero sum choice all the time. My anger was in response to those who always had the same answer every time: Chapter and Verse, or "What others say while under the auspices of our shared religion or faith is not our responsibility, and we disavow even the impact it may have on others." Just as they want some other to make changes, they too can also make changes. But it's too easy for them to act like victims when in the end they are the people who inspired the reaction.

Whether or not the chicken or the egg comes first matters not, if your goal is from this day forward to keep having both chickens and eggs because they both have unique value. You can't make an omelette with a chicken, and you can't make a Chicken sandwitch with Grade A Fancy USDA inspected Large Eggs...

And if you have a problem with what is said here and feel like picking up the phone after you google where this person lives, all you need do is look back at this diary after Netroots Nation 2009 and ask yourself how the man who wrote those words in August became the one who you said was "beyond your control" in January.

That man lived alone. He had no family to talk to. He had few friends. His neighbors all love the NRA, or the Republican Party, or Fox News, so they are not a "safe place" to discuss anything political, economic, religious or civil. That man spent a lot of time on a computer blogging to keep open a lifeline to a world where others weren't so eager to convince him to change his favorite color. He sought a place where he could say "I'm pretty sure my favorite color is red" and not have to be told to go home and stay there because everyone else thought surely blue was a preferrable color and they didn't want to hear him disagree any more.


The squeaky wheel does not always get the grease. Sometimes the owner of the car just asks the mechanic to replace it with another wheel. In doing so the mechanic won't realize that it wasn't the wheel that made the noise, it was the bearings that allow the wheel to rotate. By then the bearings have failed and the car is disabled.

I'd like a ruling from "G"od from this one. Because every time I talk to "H"im, he tells me that logically I'm on pretty good ground. The other people who think they know "G"od hear my words and they think "G"od says I'm unforgivably wrong. I'm sure there will be someone who can tell me that their faith, their religion, they're interpretation surely says something different, because those are all subjective to the reader's interpretation. I'm just the wrong subject.

Beyond your control?

What happened to

"Be the change you want to see"

Sure, but if the other guy won't agree with you, don't change a thing, kick him out and wash your hands.

I got thrown out the first time for mentioning suicide. Someday, but I am not hopeful, it may become obvious that perhaps a cause of suicidal thoughts might be a large chorus of voices that always say that one person is wrong and they are not.

People like me get built; by hand. They get built by people who say they care.

A community preserves it's members because it values their contribution, even if their contribution is to be an indicator light that things are not all well.

If it were true that I really was the only one to apologize for anything, and that it was solely my actions alone that were regrettable - if I really knew that I was the one problem and the only problem - that would be the moment when I would look at myself in the mirror and realize that my critics were right all along. That would be the moment when - if my goal was not to cause pain in others like that I feel inside myself, and I realized I was causing other people pain merely by telling them I was in pain -

Tell me, counselors, that you can write that next sentence for me.

If a person who cares about you feels that he really is harming you, and what he wants is less harm all around, wouldn't that be the proof he really is such a horrible person that it is time to stop causing other people pain the only way that will be sure to work?

The Center For Disease Control website will confirm this for you, or you can look at a blog on Daily Kos and see how it works in real time:

In America, the Greatest Country In The World,

...where 90% of people believe in some kind of god,
...where there are  counselors and therapists and doctors and churches all around to offer "help" to people with troubled thoughts, how can it be true that

...40,000 people a year die in accidents.

...20,000 people a year are killed by others

...but 30,000 people a year

...more than 80 per day

...over three people every hour...

...reason that it's better to give up than to stay and fight it.

It might be because it's easy to blame it all on one simple problem and ignore all the things that might have caused that problem.

I wish you great success with your current program.

You've got roughly 30,000 more to go when you've fixed me. This year.

Be the change you want to see.