I will DESTROY you

Just back from Burlington, VT where I had an enjoyable weekend at the terrific Vermont Comedy Club. Always a good time there in Granola Town, USA. One highlight: there’s a vehicle-free street called Church St, which is also the main street for shopping. The street was hosting a sidewalk sale, so there were lots of people out, including a woman in her, I want to say, early 30’s(?), who had a three foot ribbon on a stick and was twirling that sumbitch like there was no tomorrow. Just an epic performance of adult ribbon twirling. Perhaps you are thinking, She must have been an incredible ribbon twirler, Michael! To which I would say, “No, no she was not.” She was as good a ribbon twirler as I am, and I am exactly as good a ribbon twirler as you would expect me to be.

Photo by Phillip Kaminiak

While at the comedy club, I recounted my Andrew Dice Clay story to the terrific comedian, Meredith Gordon (“Vermont’s funniest person”). If you haven’t read the story, I got into an altercation with Dice after one of my shows. You can read it here. Anyway, when I finished the story, Meredith said that she’s too afraid of confrontation to have stood her ground. I told her that I’m also terrified of confrontation.

This morning, however, I got into another confrontation, this time with my erstwhile acquaintance, Scott Adams, which ended with him telling me to fuck off and never speak to him again. I am not going to publish that private correspondence, but the end came after I challenged his belief that climate change is a hoax, telling him that his biases are so extreme that he ends up just echoing the same rightwing talking points he accuses the left of doing. He did not care for that. I will repost this small exchange:

For the record: I do not believe I acted him personally, but that’s always in the eye of the beholder.

Meanwhile, over on Twitter I’m currently defending my absurd claim that “Biden outlawed saying ‘Merry Christmas’ in 2012, but that it is rarely enforced on a federal level.’” Obviously a joke but there are lots of people trying to make the claim that Biden did no such thing, forcing me to invent evermore elaborate lies to make my case.

The point is, I’m realizing something new about myself. I am, in fact, not confrontation-avoidant. In fact, the opposite is true. I relish confrontation. Which is both a surprise and a disappointment to me. The surprise is the belated recognition that I love arguing with people. The disappointment is the belated recognition that I love arguing with people.

Does this make me an asshole?

I think it might. The current narrative I’m telling myself is that I only confront when I think some great wrong has been committed, ie: Scott Adams implying Tim Walz is a pedophile based on, literally, nothing. Or when I think I’ve made a point and want to press it, such as in my current conversation with the conservative actor Dean Cain who, days ago, like five days ago, said that he thought menstrual products in boys’ restrooms was a bad idea.

We went back and forth on whether the actual text of the bill supported his claim that such menstrual products are mandated to be placed there, and once we agreed (I think we agreed?) that the text is somewhat vague, I returned to his original point. Why does he think menstrual products in boys’ restrooms are a bad idea? Having argued with me about the bill for a couple hours, he suddenly refused to answer that simple question. So, every twelve hours or so since, I’ve been asking him to answer the question. He hasn’t done so. The dickhead part of me wants to keep this up, but to what end?

Why am I like this?

The answer: because I’m one of those horrible people who chooses violence to make a point instead of choosing peace by letting it go. It’s a terrible quality and I need to work on it. Maybe you’re wondering if this is how I act with my wife? More often than I would care to admit.

Worse, I’ve always been this way. I’ve told this story before but once, in high school gym class, I jokingly asked a kid with whom I was vaguely friendly if he’d gotten laid the weekend before. We were sophomores, we were both almost assuredly virgins (I definitely was, and if’d you seen this kid, you’d agree that he almost certainly as well), so it was kind of a “locker room talk” joke made famous by our Republican presidential nominee decades later. The kid took the remark seriously, though, and said, “Yeah.”

I knew he was lying. He knew I knew he was lying, but instead of letting it go, I pressed him for details. Really? Who is she? She lives in the next town over? I know a lot of people in the next town over. What’s her name? I probably know her. Eventually, he got so mad at me that he told me to meet him in the parking lot after school. I told him I would not because he would hit me and I didn’t want to get hit. This built for days, until one day he attacked me in the hallway. Neither of us were injured in the fight, but it ought to have taught me a lesson about other people’s pride. Unfortunately, the lesson didn’t stick.

Obviously, it’s not just me. The entire online world is filled with people DESTROYING each other, which leads to unnecessary confrontations made worse by people’s refusal to hear the other person’s point and try to understand them rather than simply trying to END THEM. It’s ridiculous, counter-productive, and very fun. But the fun is similar to the fun you get from going on Hot Ones. Yes, you may enjoy it while it’s happening but the after effects are likely to not feel great.

I’m going to try to do better and, in fact, in my personal life I’ve made great strides at this. For many years, Martha and I have rarely had the sorts of arguments that would end with her kicking my ass in the parking lot after school, but I still take too much delight in pedantic minutiae, and I need to do better. And I promise to do so. Right after Biden repeals his preposterous law banning the saying of “Merry Christmas.”  Maybe even sooner than that. Otherwise, I’m just like that lady on the street twirling ribbons for nobody’s amusement other than her own.