2:10 PM -:- Posted by Allen    

Fred Comments

Our great friend Fred Smart comments on "The Doug & Allen Show".

He wonders what set it off.

Doug has apologized on his blog, and David Goodyear has accepted (his archives weren't delivering as I wrote this; to review David's comments, scroll down to Dec 10th).

I accept Doug's apology as well. But not without an explanation, so similar things can be avoided in the future.

Doug says,

I was talking with David Goodyear and Allen Hacker as if they were high school drinking buddies. I could say any off the wall thing to my high school drinking buddies and it would always just be laughed off as all in good fun.

I think perhaps I felt that I was more of a friend with Allen Hacker. And in the blogosphere and, I've noticed also in the past, with email and all forms of electronic communication, words are often misunderstood.

Blogging teaches us to write better. I suppose it just takes losing one or two good friends to get somebody to straighten up and learn a lesson sometimes.

I would never have talked like that to Bob Schulz or Charlie Beall. Why would I disrespect Allen Hacker and David Goodyear by talking like that? Only because I felt a little more buddy buddy with them I guess.

I understand. But there are a couple of other ways to look at it.

What we say here will be viewed from many perspectives over the years, and it won't always be found as a neat and aligned package. Each post should be written to stand on its own merits, and represent within itself what it actually says, so that missing links and fragmented histories won't lead to erronous interpretations out of context. That's one good reason to keep it a little more formal. Posterity won't always know the greater context that revealed when you were and when you weren't joking, or complaining, or playing the fool.

Here's another reason: "taking license". Taking license is what a person does when he thinks he holds a special status with someone. And while that person may see it in a light of great affection, the world (and the other person) may not.

A vivid and all-too-common example is what happens in marriage. Before the license was issued, both parties were respectful, negotiating, and accommodating. After the license is formalized, each to some degree relaxes and begins to conduct business as though s/he has a claim on the other. I like this example so much because it involves both types of license: the metaphorical one that goes with the bone-headed idea that bad behavior is excused where intimacy reigns, and the actual physical piece of paper whereby stupid lovers beg for and are granted permission by the state to take ownership of each other's person and property.

So, Doug took license. He's done that a lot. And with me, he finally went too far.

I never kept drinking buddies who couldn't behave themselves. Where I grew up, most drinking led to brawling, because somebody always went too far and when told to back off, got belligerent and then got his drunken ass leveled. We called that, "being taken down a hitch." The experience was intended to be a humbling, and if it didn't work, after a while that guy would find himself drinking alone.

I mentioned that I had lost respect for Doug. It actually happened over time, watching him be way too much about himself and his problems and not nearly enough about his loved ones and friends. Over time I had come to think of him as an adolescent. Sorry Doug, but I takes it the way I sees it.

Doug said "it was a joke". Which part? I agreed that the first round was a joke, which is why I responded in parody. But what I got back can't honestly be called joking. Calling David Goodyear and I old men and accusing us of being rich and therefore insensitive, and saying "screw" us, can't be in the same class. It's not joking, it's baltantly insulting. In every bar I've ever fallen down in, thet kinda jawin' is a direct request for a broken nose.

I love a good laugh. When I'm not crying, I try to be laughing. But I live in two worlds, neither of which has a place for the kind of behavior Doug spat out that day.

One of those worlds is the Grand Illusion, where the US government has become the open enemy of the people, and in that context we don't have time to waste on bullshit, nor may we tolerate people who even only inadvertently serve the terror campaign being waged against us.

In the other, more metaphysical world, manifestation flows from ideation, and ideas such as those Doug was manufacturing for us all are not where I want to live.

I'm not fighting the enemy, I'm working to out-create him. While the enemy's proactively tearing down the country, and all of my friends are fighting a losing war of attrition trying to stop him, I'm trying to set it up so we can simply ignore him and set about building what we want, and firmly knock down without hesitation anyone who's ignorant enough to get in the way. That included Doug when he tried to reduce it into the despicable with his ill-considered "paytriot" remark.

Either way, from now on I have no atention for bad behavior. I won't contribute to its manifestation by recognizing it as having any place in my world, and I won't play footsie with people who come from whatever places that kind of stuff pretends to be acceptable.

In Jr High, several of the guys got caught up in 3-Stooges / Don Rickles garbage. They thought the jokes and put-downs were funny. I saw them as subtle king-of-the-hill maneuverings to destroy the self-esteem of the butts toward whom they were directed. I stopped knowing those guys. Over time, so did most everyone else. By high school, they were a nasty little clique of about five superior-atitude rude boys. By their sophomore year, every one of them had had his dumb ass kicked three or four times by one senior or another.

I'm reminded of the Chris Carter TV show, Millenium: "This is the life we chose; this is who we are."

Not me. I've chosen differently. Wanna travel with me? Leave the adolescent malarkey behind. Want my respect? Start building something.

All manifestation is affirmative. Attention is the creative catalyst.

I don't have any attention to invest in darkness.

If you want to live in the light, Doug, you are welcome at my table. Anybody else, too. Just do it.

That's all it takes.

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