“I Have No Mouth,
And I Must Scream”…
By Alfred Lehmberg
Like many, I’m abruptly removed, excluded… banned from what passes for a spot
on the world stage: Facebook. I won’t belabor any inordinate “unfairness” or
senseless “arbitrariness” provoked by some algorithmic boobytrap I triggered,
other than to say that when one becomes outraged by the outrageous one might
be provoked to further outrage! I offer that that speaks, and abundantly, to a less than abundant
fairness.
At astonishing issue and provocation WAS a malicious declaration
of a mal-informed and conscienceless Religious hypocrisy by a craven enemy of
the inclusive American ideal. You know, selling: Browns down, Blacks back, Queers nowhere
near, and Women second tier. Those are the facts of history and conscience.
All this was revoltingly personified by a crass faux-Christian
media-vangelist, one Dave Hayes, a person entirely given over to salacious rumor,
wholly unsupported conspiracy theorizing, and some outdated and wholly discounted
superstition! Too, here is one pronouncing authoritatively, still, by way of
Facebook, his unctuous sermonizing on the callous need for the destruction of The United States (let that sink in!) as a Democratic Republic of working men and women, proud and
healthy men and women attempting to enjoy productive lives aspiring to real fairness
and enlightened efficacy in a sensible science-based world! This “media-person,”
this QAnon conspiracy theorist Mr. Hayes (aka "Praying Medic"), was belligerently
opposed to all that:
https://www.facebook.com/rightwingwatch/posts/10158216570951748
The suggestion he declares (on Facebook) is the not-so-thinly veiled
proposal that rendering our Republic over to a fascist Trumpian dictatorship of rabid
wolves and evil weasels was in our nation’s best interest... best path and practice going forward! Yes,
preying on one other in untenable little lives harboring no satisfaction but
mean survival, in abject rightlessness, and living only to despair? That was
the path forward!
It is ever a choice… …why, the question is begged…
yet, a choice, still. Hell is as close at hand as is heaven! Though, last but not least? This person criticized would DARE to foment an unrest in
America’s super-power military to achieve this end! Yes! The potentiality of some "just" Mutiny in the military is proposed!
Full stop by record scratch!
I found this outrageous and was outraged. I wrote “Hey,
Dave! Push a sock in that stuff or get your f'n wish, you vapid unamerican!” This was all I wrote. Bam! Three days in Facebook stir.
Let’s review the perplexing scene.
OK, for Dave Hayes’ glaring clarion
call for foul sedition and its fulsome encouragement for our military to lurid and
felonious mutiny... as God’s will... mutiny leading to the cruel soul-death and the
subjugation of our Nation to traitorous criminals and psychopathic scalawags? Well, I asserted that he should muffle such talk with a sock
stuffed into the provenance of that treason, the foulest treason (I remind the reader)... sputtered in such thoughtless
and obscene exclamation... that it deserved, at least, a sock! At least!
Further, I offered that were he to continue his unwarranted
and unconstitutional call for traitorous sedition and mutiny, he could have it his WAY and
our Nation actually be rendered to the banana-republic military dictatorship he
called for. Those always end so well; the reader can agree!
I closed with a terse assessment of his patriotism as one
wholly toxic, insipid, and tediously dull: “…You vapid unamerican,” I wrote, outraged and
disgusted. I’m a retired officer of the military, reader; I was Regular Army still on inactive roles! This writer knew about that which he was outraged! ...And disgusted!
…So, where is my sin? Can we understand that perhaps an
error or betrayal of a “law’s” spirit may have been made… right, wrong,
or indifferent, here, in this instance? That some laughable irony of injustice may
actually reward a clear traitor, credulous fascist, and unhinged seditionist,
Dave Hayes… but punish the person (me) outraged by same and moved to express that
outrage unthreateningly to said individual: a right-wing religious extremist down for Proud Boy mayhem and shouting
biased lies and mawkish distortions on public airwaves… a maleficent purveyor
of egregious stupefactions encouraging obvious disinformations, gonzo Q-insanities,
and other faithless faux-political mendacities… mendacities so sophomorically drawn from some cooperative toxi-rumor
of gladly ignored as contrary-to-agenda fact… that a sentient person’s
imagination is thrown over a wing-backed chair and rogered to in-sentience! Maybe
that’s the plan…
Outrageous, like I said, but he goes on, unmolested and sans
all sin, to spew his seditious sewage from a protected speech spot on Facebook’s
page or radio and television, still! And then we come to it…
There is no appeal for my dismissal! Dave has a TV and internet platform! I'm betting he's even blue-checked!
I’m booted off the
stage aforementioned, summarily, by, at best, an algorithm aping human anxiousness,
a soulless and reprogrammable machine of bland indifference, an insensate tool
of a sad number’s uncalculated if calculating mal-calculus, great on Newton's spin, rate
and charge… right? ...But sucking at Heisenburg's nuance, subtlety, emotional response, or humanity. That
was "at best," remember. At worst?
At worst, I am expulsed by a canted human ham-hand living a
life of untested and toxic hypocrisy switched out for faith, one embroiled of gravid hypocrisy in an
autocracy serving him or her but having their autocratic and inexorable heel
down on me and you. Yeah… it could be a lot worse, but it’s this, outlined here, that
puts us on the road to exactly that... worse! That’s been this writer's experience!
See, in the words of the late Harlan Ellison, a person who would know my outrage, understand it, be similarly outraged, but then be
outraged anew at such an arbitrarily imposed inability to sensibly and even benignly express
that outrage in a public venue where it might be heard… where that provoking the outrageous
provokes the outrage in the first outrageous place, but then skips away untroubled? That's outrageous!
No, Facebook’s unbased, poorly foundationed, and unevenly applied "time-outs" for its supporters, meted out, domineeringly, so arbitrarily, autocratically, and nonsensically, sans all consistency and professional responsibility... as a juvenilely intimidating punishment to "hens and roosters" more largely supporting it (chilling reasonable dissent!), while letting the psychotic wolves and ferrets run free? That seems as cross-purposed to efficacy as it is prejudiced against a "best practice."
The subject was the touting of a seditious call for a military mutiny on public airways, the reader will recall. ...No lipstick for THAT pig.
“I have no mouth,” reader, “and I must scream.” Mr. Ellison
knew what I’m talking about! Wounded and in pain, I must scream... but I have no mouth! Not an untroubled and un-trifled one!
***
Thanks, and a hat-tip to Driftglass, suffering similar slings and arrows on Twitter, but for life... when his is the message of sanity you need to hear... not that risibly treasonous and seditious drivel of one Dave Hayes!