I Think I Might Be a Dick

I think I might be a dick. That’s a very difficult for me to admit, but in the interest of honesty and forthrightness, I think it’s time to re-evaluate my interactions with people. Regular readers to this Substack have already read about my recent encounter with Andrew “Dice” Clay, 66 years of age, who threatened my life when I entered the greenroom he was occupying. Readers of my Twitter page may have read about this incident yesterday, which involved me calling out a poker player for what I believed to be a racist remark. I regularly get into beefs with “people” on the Twitter social media platform, all of which end with me feeling inappropriately righteous. Taken together, all of this leads me to the conclusion that I might be a dick.

(I put people in quotes because it’s unclear to me how many of the accounts are manned by actual human beings and aren’t troll/bot accounts.)

This dickishness is born from a rigid and annoying sense of morality. When I see or hear something I consider to be out of line, I feel it’s my duty to speak up. Why?

Why do I involve myself in other people’s business? In my rotted-out brain, I’m standing up for the little guy. Isn’t that what people are supposed to do? At the same time, I have been known to interject when somebody is neither bullying nor being confrontational towards another, but is only guilty of being demonstrably wrong.

Beautiful Mt. Vernon, one of the many sites of my dickish behavior.

Case in point: once the wife and I were touring Mt. Vernon, George Washington’s home on the Potomac, when an older gentleman standing in line behind me starting explaining, incorrectly, a Glenn Beckian view of American politics to a group of foreign tourists.

Had I been a better person, I would have just kept my stupid mouth shut, but because I am a dick, I began questioning this person, asking for his sources, and generally making myself a nuisance. I did this because I didn’t want the foreigners to get the wrong impression of my country.

Needless to say, as soon as I confronted the older gentleman about the inanity he was spouting, those tourists got exactly the correct impression of this nation; we are a people who do not mind giving false information, and then standing by that information no matter what. We are equally a group of busybodies, ne’er-do-wells, and nose-butters.

(I may begin a line of lubricated cocaine called “Nose Butter.”)

What the hell do I have to be so righteous about? My opinions are often horrid and my grasp of facts regarding any given subject is tenuous at best. Yet my self-assuredness is, apparently, boundless. All of this is, of course, the hallmark of a dick.

Even so, I will defend myself thusly: although I often make somebody else’s problem my problem, I only do so when the initial party demonstrates some general loutishness. When that happens, and nobody else speaks up, I feel honor-bound to interject, potentially ruining everybody’s day. But what’s the point of having convictions if you’re unwilling to defend them? Perhaps there is no point.

I really mean that. After all, my dickishness has gotten me exactly nowhere in terms of ever changing anybody’s mind about anything. Only rarely has it ever led even to a constructive conversation. Instead, what ends up happening is that people yell at me, which allows me to feel morally superior for not yelling back. It’s a terrible combination.

Perhaps the problem is in my approach. In my mind, I am always the picture of calm rationality. To another’s mind, I most likely appear to be - as one of fellow poker players told me yesterday after speaking up against the racist remark of another player – “a liberal Hollywood ass.”

That is, I fear, exactly what I am.

What would happen if I just kept my mouth shut? Most likely, all of these incidents would have blown over without any further provocation; I’m like a bad cop who wants to be right more than he wants to protect the citizenry.

On the other hand, why should the blowhards continue to be rewarded for their blowhard behavior? Why is it that the guys (it’s always guys) I fight with are allowed to open their own pieholes with the certainty of their positions, which they spew without regard for anybody else, while those of us who generally keep our opinions to ourselves are meant to live in a state of perpetual circumspection?

Again and again, I see the loudmouths and bullies of the world getting rewarded for their behavior. The problem is, I worry the only way to deal with them is to become a loudmouth and bully myself.

I don’t know what the solution ought to be. Maybe to meet them with more compassion and less confrontation. Maybe to remain in a self-imposed cone of silence. Maybe to just not be a dick. Yes, I’ll probably keep arguing with Twitter “people” but I will try to maintain civility and compassion. Futher, I apologize to all of those I have needlessly antagonized. Except for Andrew “Dice” Clay, 66 years of age. That guy’s a fuckhole.

Bonus: here’s an interview I did with dick icon Steven Crowder, in which I demonstrate exactly what I’m talking about. Just pure dickery on both of our parts from start to finish.

Bonus bonus: Here’a a video of Crowder’s sidekick at the time, who I believe he referred to as “not gay Jared,” but to go back and check I’d have to watch the above video, and there’s no chance I’m going to subject myself to that.

https://twitter.com/TheJaredMonroe/status/1772594355620270141