Listen to the Silence

Can we please, please, PLEASE just be fucking civil? The various media and newspapers and indie papers and social groups...they're stirring up shit. I get that. That's how they get ratings. "Let's You and Him fight," is one of the oldest games in politics. More than a few journalists have been caught lying about sources, making up articles or doing "he said, she said" to start a newsworthy piece of drama. Groups like that have agendas. Ones that rarely have all of our lovely hearts in mind. I get that. I hope /you/ get that. Because that's the kicker. We're angry people, and they're fucking liars trying to make a buck off us being angry. They're doing the talking for us. They're lumping you into their shit piece of a story and selling it prepacked to channels. And we're just taking it. Fox tilts center right, CNN tilts hard left, NBC waffles, Breitbart has cleared so far out into right field it's out of the park and the WaPo a

Where have all the good men gone, and where are all the gods? Where’s the streetwise Hercules, to fight the rising odds? Isn’t there a white knight, upon a fiery steed? When I was younger, this song was my syllabus.   It was who I wanted to be – the good man.  The hero, at whatever sacrifice or cost.  And there was sacrifice in my life.   There was cost.  I lost 7 years to a marriage trying to be the self-sacrificing hero instead of leaving the first time she hit me.  I have scars from stepping in between a knife and a victim.  I tried to be a good man.  But not anymore.  Somewhere I fell off of that path, and in the last few years I’ve been reflecting on that.  (Amazing what wonders therapy will do for you.)   Somewhere along the decades, I watched the buy-in of “toxic masculinity” by the media and society at large.  That’s where the song (still idolized and beloved by many) became impossible.   The good men are gone – they’ve been burned by a system and a narrative that